Cognitive Overload

When there’s a lot happening all at once, it’s not uncommon to experience cognitive overload: a nonstop feeling of overwhelm, memory problems, difficulties with focus, and an inability to healthily (and thoughtfully) deal with any volume of complexity.

“A lot” is a relative term, of course, and there will be moments in which near-tornadic levels of chaos swirl around us, but we’re in exactly the right mindset to wrangle those eddies into order (or in some cases to join in on the action, embracing the disorder and making it our own).

In other cases, though, these these anarchic variables and unforeseen happenings will disrupt our plans and disarray our thinking, which can be uncomfortable and anxiety-inducing, while also leaving us with a muddled sense of how things work and who we are within the new reality in which we’ve found ourselves.

In such moments, I find it can be helpful to step back and recommit to the things over which I have control: getting enough sleep, investing in my relationships, rebalancing my habits so that I feel healthy and strong, and tweaking my efforts and spending so that my economic fundamentals are stable, come what may.

It’s also often beneficial to refocus on the big picture, recontextualizing contemporary happenings through the (often less emotionally volatile and stressing) lens of historical and global scope.

Said another way, ensuring our fundamentals are sound and thinking in broader terms can make the stressors of the moment, and the myriad unknowns evoked by such stressors, seem more survivable and addressable—and in some cases even fascinating, educational, and harnessable.

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