Okay, We Have a Massive Problem: The Cognitive Load Crisis

I’ve always been a pretty organized guy. I like to put things on calendars. I show up on time. I like to keep healthy margins, with a bit of built-in give, so unexpected stressors don’t send me into a tizzy.

Since the beginning of the year, there’s been a noticeable… evolution. Which is another way of saying problem.

I’m forgetting stuff.

In the past two months, I’ve whiffed on three meetings. Granted, it was a notifications fail, but I’ve never allowed that to be an excuse in the past. Three meetings in two months. It’s embarrassing to say out loud. I’ve been told awareness is the first step.

Why is this happening? I’m forty-five years old now, so some might say it’s that. But I know better. It isn’t a mystery to me at all.

It’s AI. Suddenly, I’ve never been more capable. The gap between idea and iteration has shrunk to near-nothing. Suddenly, that idea you’ve been noodling on for years is in your grasp, as you no longer need to convince a platoon of humans across a variety of skill sets to come on board with your cockamamie scheme.

So you’re faced with a choice: you abandon, or you try. And for those of us who suffer from perpetual curiosity, the answer is obvious.

We try.

So this time I’m supposed to be saving is now being reallocated in the happy pursuit of building things I couldn’t build before. It’s a boom, no doubt.

But with each new project, tool, update, and upgrade, more and more of my brain is being needed to service all these ideas. It’s a lot.

It’s as if I’ve been driving on cruise control for twenty years, and suddenly I’ve stomped the gas, only to discover that my car is suddenly much, MUCH faster than it’s ever been before. So fast.

So… where do I go?

When the AI tsunami hit this year, content creators across the globe were quick to start counting things, making claims, counting jobs, hyperfocused on the impact AI was having. I remember seeing a few articles and posts about how AI actively reduces our cognitive loads, or some such. Seemingly worrying, no? Gives you that nagging feeling that you either use it or lose it.

Fast-forward a few months and the unshakeable reality is that I’m experiencing a completely opposite problem. My brain is overloaded.

Productivity gains make vacuums, and vacuums get filled.

There was a Super Bowl commercial this year. In it was an office full of people who were discovering how AI made them more productive. As a result, they were sitting back with their feet up, watching the computer do their work for them, suddenly less stressed, more confident, in total control. They even hired Matthew Broderick to land a joke about how AI will allow you to “take a day off.”

Dumbest commercial of the year. Anyone who watched this nonsense without a snort needs to have their head examined.

I’m having daily, ongoing conversations with coworkers, family, and friends about the impact of AI on our lives, and the results are clear:

Absolutely no one I know that is regularly using AI is experiencing less work, stress, or cognitive load. It’s the opposite.

It’s completely against modern human nature to, when presented with the gift of time, to do nothing with it. Especially when society as a whole is incessantly inundated with ever-present reminders that people, everywhere, are constantly doing amazing things.

Costs are rising. Value is decreasing. Humans are in a collective state of worry, as the machines we’ve made are showing signs that they might be a whole lot better than we are at a whole lot of things.

Not enough time has passed yet. We were, are, and are going to be, the first wave of casualties in this seismic evolutionary event. A lot of businesses, old methods, and old thinking will get swept into history. It’s how these things go.

But we’re not well-equipped to do nothing. Not anymore.

So yeah, I’m forgetting more things lately. What to do then, about this brain-drain? Is it enough to take a walk? Play the piano? Pet the cat? Are we to seek out more magnesium, more zinc, more ashwagandha?

Mindfulness? More like mind-fullness.

Oh, I almost forgot—

I want to apologize in advance for any of you who made it this far. There is no answer in this article. I don’t have one. Now is not the time for hindsight.

Don’t tell anyone, but I’m having a ton of fun. Finally, for those of us designers, developers, product-makers, and the like, we get to wield a host of tools that were beyond our grasp. They say we learn by doing, and that’s exactly what’s happening right now. A seismic surge of doing.

You’ll have to forgive us, friends. This phase will pass into the next one, to be sure, but for a little while, you may have to help us locate our car keys.