This week marks the six-month anniversary of my bike accident. If you’ve read my blog about the accident, you know that I had a severe concussion and was told to rest my brain so it could heal.
Now I’m mostly better. I would say my brain is 95% healed.
The last 5% I can best describe as my brain feeling full, as if it’s a smaller bucket. If I pile on the mentally taxing activities, I need to back off and rest. The good news is that a little rest does wonders.
It turns out I’m not alone in the overload problem. Maybe it has nothing to do with my head injury.
Most of us get inundated with information every day. How many emails did you read yesterday? What did you read, see on TV or hear on the radio today? What conversations did you have? You get it.
Information overload can shut down our brains
A friend who knew about my concussion gave me a Newsweek article titled “I can’t think!” The article described the brain research of Angelika Dimoka, director of the Center for Neural Decision Making at Temple University.
Dimoka ran a bidding war experiment where the subjects received more and more bits of information. She measured the activity in the area of the brain that makes decisions and controls emotions. As the information load increased, the activity increased. But when the information reached the point of overload, the brain activity suddenly stopped, as if it had thrown a switch.
According to the article, “They start making stupid mistakes and bad choices because the brain region responsible for smart decision making has essentially left the premises. For the same reason, their frustration and anxiety soar: the brain’s emotion regions—previously held in check by the dorsolateral PFC—run as wild as toddlers on a sugar high.”
Other research found that participation in a 401(k) plan decreased as the number of options increased. Similarly, people make worse choices in online shopping if they have 50 options instead of 10 to choose from.
We need to think less
It turns out that we make more creative decisions if we allow our unconscious thinking to play a role in solving problems. The best way for this to happen is to turn off the information tap: don’t think you need to find out everything before you decide.
Brain scientists have found that many of our best decisions come from unconscious processes. One study had subjects evaluate a “rather daunting amount of information” about four made-up apartments: size, location, friendliness of the landlord, price and eight other features. Scientists had some of the subjects do a memory and attention task, so they couldn’t think about the options. Instead, they made unconscious decisions. The outcome: they chose better apartments (with objectively better features).
What to do?
In this blog, I usually give tips for people who are communicating with others and trying to persuade them to make a change. This time I’m going to give you, the information consumer, some tips to help protect yourself from thinking too hard and making bad decisions. Credit mainly goes to the same Newsweek article.
- Deal with emails and texts in batches. That gives time for your unconscious mind to kick in.
- Don’t attempt to assess all of the complex information about a decision you need to make. Sit back and let it process.
- Set priorities: which criteria are most important? Focus on those.
- Leave an issue for a time, say overnight. Come back to it later.
I just gave you a good excuse to go out for a latte or a walk around the block. Enjoy it!
Annette Frahm is principal of Sage Enviro, which specializes in green marketing communications and creating strategies for a green future.
