🪨🔥 Info Overload Is Real. Here’s a Stone Age Fix.
Old Brains, New Problem
Our brains were designed to dodge predators and find our way back to the cave — not juggle Slack pings, email chains, and 43 open tabs.
Even “smart kids” like us get overwhelmed. 😵💫
In fact, we take in about 34GB of information a day (roughly 100,000 words). That’s a whole novel before lunch.
Cognitive Overload = No Bueno
When too much info hits at once, your brain short-circuits. Mayo Clinic says cognitive overload can lead to:
🔒 Paralysis – You freeze. You can't even.
😡 Anger – Conflicting info causes stress and frustration.
😴 Passivity – Brain’s too tired to think critically, so it defaults to whatever’s loudest.
🪣Bucket your brain.
Your brain is a faucet. It gushes thoughts, ideas, emotions.
Trying to hold them all in your head? Like catching water in your hands. Most of it slips away.
Use tools instead.
🖍️ Whiteboards, paper, napkins, sticky notes.
📝 When we write, draw, diagram, we lighten the mental load and think better.
Cognitive scientists call these “external memory fields.”
We just call it: getting the ideas out of your skull so you can breathe again.
So next time you feel that info-flood coming on — at a meeting, a conference, or just life — go full caveman. 🪨 Grab a scrap of paper, a napkin, a whiteboard… whatever you’ve got. Sketch it out. Get it out of your head.
Your Stone Age brain will thank you. 🙌
Until then…
Happy sketching,
– K.
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