Wish you had two more brains?

Do you ever have days where it feels like your brain is just “full” and anything else you hear, read or say is just fuzzy? Well, that’s because you’ve reached your cognitive load; or the amount of information your working memory is able to process at any given time.

With information coming at us at hyper speeds, our biology can not keep up! We need to innovate the way we receive, store and process information…and it goes beyond getting better organized.

Take a 5 minute break….

INSIGHT
(what we need)

We need extra brains today not only to store an excess of information but to helps us process relevant insights for creativity and innovation.

The volume of data generated and shared daily has increased exponentially. It is said that the average worker is processing between 5x that of what someone would have to deal with 30 years ago…but our brains have not gotten 5x more sophisticated! How do we deal with this onslaught of bytes and constant flow of digital information that needs to be processed, analyzed, and synthesized into relevant solutions? 

We’re not dealing well. The increased volume and complexity of information is making it harder for workers to focus and make decisions. Even with the addition of workflow tools and productivity stacks, people are still unable to manage and process the information efficiently – especially if lacking the skills to absorb, adapt and prioritize how to use them. Causing even more overwhelm.

One McKinsey study analyzed the impact of information overload on productivity and found that employees spend up to 20% of their work week just searching for internal information or tracking down people to help them reduce task load. Another study in Nature assessed the effects of cognitive overload on working memory and attention span to find they decrease by 15% and 25% respectively, leading to difficulties focusing and retaining information.

It’s not just our brains getting fried, our bodies are also shutting down. Countless studies connect the high cognitive demands associated with physical health issues from sleep disturbances, gastrointestinal problems, headaches and anxiety levels leading to high blood pressure and heart issues. Many a corporate wellbeing program are trying to tackle the issues there: often mistakenly “adding” programs rather than “reducing” load.

Since our bodies are our brains, we end up dissociating as a way to quiet the constant dopamine hits of information speedways. With this, the processing of sensory information gets hindered as well – sending us into habitual numbing and passivity. My theory here is that this is when humans revert back to wanting the simplicity of stories. Not only as a way to relax and be entertained, but reconnect to our human-ness. Lacking available options to join the village fireside storytelling hour, we succumb to the convenience of our remote controls to find stories in film. But we miss that much needed social attuning to regulate our nervous systems back to a healthy baseline.

The digital overload is not going away. The IDC (International Data Corporation) reported just from 2019 to 2025, the global datasphere is expected to grow almost 4x from 45 to 175 zettabytes on terms of generation and storage. This shift will have profound implications for how work is conducted and managed in the modern workspace…but also how we all go about daily life taking in inspiration for processing! Because there’s the stuff we need to deal with for work (~30% of the work week is spent on processing email alone) but then there’s also the things we actively consume all day to become more inspired, creative, and changed human beings. Like this newsletter 😉. I couldn’t find the data on that % but would garner it’s also a lot!

Not losing our creative sparks. The thing about inspiration is that it comes in fleeting, unfinished blips or sparks once our rested brains are able to switch from executive processing to default mode and make new neuronal connections. Those A-HA moments are critical to anyone working in a creative capacity. They need to be captured…then fed with more kindling into the raging fires of innovation to then become a unique post, idea or solution. But our ability to keep track of those fleeting insights or tidbits is waning…”where did I see/read that again??…” and we need to upgrade the way information coming our way is processed, indexed, and then released as meaningful stuff.

INSPIRATION
(what we want)

BASB (Build A Second Brain): a proven method to organize your digital life to increase productivity and unlock creativity. 

Goes beyond tech productivity trends by designing from the principles of how the creative process works: capturing information, organizing it so it’s easy to find/use, distilling it down to the best ideas, and then expressing those ideas with our unique voices.

• Find anything you’ve learned, touched, or thought about in the past within seconds

• Organize your knowledge and use it to move your projects and goals forward consistently

• Save your best thinking, so you don’t have to do it again

• Spend less time looking for things and more time doing the best, most creative work you are capable of

• Create a digital environment that promotes clarity and peace of mind

• Turn work “off” and relax, knowing you have a trusted system keeping track of all the details
  

  (Quoted directly from the site)

INNOVATION
(what we wish for)

Sparks AI: an intelligent one-touch interface to verbally capture and curate our “A-Has” when we are at rest.

Harnessing the necessity of sleep and importance of relaxation for creativity, Sparks AI is a one-touch app that helps you seamlessly capture “sparks” of thinking right after daydreaming, meditation or sleep. 

• Designed for those moments in the day when the brain switches to the DMN (Default Mode Network): when the mind is at rest, no longer focused on the outside world, and we tend to connect dots between disparate things.

• Before the brain starts to actively process, Sparks helps gather these fleeting “A-HA” moments when they emerge to do some preliminary sorting for later incubation. 

• Downloadable on your phone, Sparks is a one-button interface app that you hold down and leave yourself a voice message about the “A-HA”. 

• Add spoken tags – detected with the phrase “Something to do with…(X)” – to help Sparks categorize these thoughts into backend dashboard accessible by computer.

• When you set up Sparks to be personalized to you with a starter “Mind Map” of the things you like to think about, you get trained on how to do these spoken tags effectively so that Sparks can work optimally and make some interesting connections for you. 

• Schedule weekly sessions into your calendar to do a second layer of processing of these sparks on the dashboard, which integrates with your favorite project management application (like Notion) for distilling and refining towards your creative content.