358. Unlocking Your Decision-Making Potential: Tackling Cognitive Overload (Refreshed Episode)

Welcome to episode 358 of the Brainy.

Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy Today's episode is all about the overwhelmed brain and its impact on decision making. Ready? Let's get started.

You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer.

Hello.

Hello everyone.

My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Today's episode is all about what happens to your brain when it gets overwhelmed, specifically when it comes to the decisions we make. I am so excited to be refreshing this episode for you today. It was originally episode 32 of the podcast, so it came out way back In January of 2019, almost five years to the day to when it's coming out this time. Love it when that happens. What's great about this one getting a refresh today is I still talk about this a lot. It's amazing how quickly our brains get overwhelmed. You'll hear more about that in the episode. So being able to reduce the cognitive load and say something more simply make it cleaner, clearer and get things out of the brain is so impactful on making better decisions. The coolest thing about refreshing an episode.

Like this that was so early and.

That I talk about so much means there are tons of related episodes that hadn't come out when this one first.

Aired, but which are so closely related.

And I can link for you in the show notes. That includes the episode on Bike Shedding, Planning Fallacy, Expecting Error and Giving Feedback Nudges the Dose Brain Chemicals, as well as interviews with amazing authors about books on these topics.

There is tons of great content now.

And in addition to what you're going to hear today, I want you to know that all those goodies are waiting for you in the show notes along with a freebie worksheet. They're all found within the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 358.

All right.

Let'S talk about overwhelm and decisions.

As I just mentioned, the show notes, they are a great place to start as I talk about the overwhelmed brain.

What?

Why do I have extensive show notes for every episode? They take extra time, they're an investment and not everyone will use them. I know that. So why do they matter? I know that if you are trying to remember something, anything that I say, if you get that feeling of oh my gosh, that's so perfect and amazingly important for my business. I have to check that out as soon as I get to the office or as soon as I get home or whatever it is. That feeling we all get. You're going to try to repeat whatever that item is in your head over and over, saying, look up the study on chocolate cake. Look up the study on chocolate cake. Look up the episode on chocolate cake. You will stop listening and retaining the content you came to the episode for, which is in this case, this episode here, the entire episode. I will get to the study on chocolate cake in a minute, by the way, but I don't want you to have to gunk up the limited processing power of the conscious brain with little tidbits like this. And if you know the links all exist for you somewhere, you can relax and take it all in instead of dwelling on something that one thing you need to remember. This is the same reason why my strategy sessions are done over zoom and they're all recorded. I want my clients and I to be in the moment. I want us to be able to really talk and engage in everything going on in that hour instead of wasting time taking notes and or thinking about taking notes. If you know you're going to be getting a video of the call, it takes the pressure off. You can relax and focus on what really matters in the moment. Working on your business instead of trying to remember tiny details and take copious notes. You may not revisit and which may take more time trying to decrypt than actually use anyway. And then we can get to more creative areas. When your brain is freed up and able to really concentrate and talk and focus, focus in the moment. It makes a huge difference when the brain is not overwhelmed in that conscious space. This is another testament to nudges and expecting error. I do not expect that someone will remember every little tidbit they want to from every conversation we have, be it them listening to the podcast or in a strategy session at a networking event, whatever. There are two errors really at play here. First is the inability to remember everything that was discussed because there's a lot. And two is the inability to really focus in the moment because the conscious brain can only devote so much. So to combat both of those things and improve the advances in thought and conversation, I have show notes and videos to help relieve some of that pressure. And when I say the show notes are detailed, I mean it. For example, if you go to thebrainybusiness.com 20 which is the resolutions episode, you will find that I first introduced the concept of willpower and the snowball versus battery effect, which I will talk about again on this episode at 22 minutes and 33 seconds. So if you're in a hurry or just want to hear something specific, you can check the show notes, find the exact second you want to start listening to, get what you need and just jump from there. Pretty useful for an overwhelmed brain. All right, now that I've left that teaser of the chocolate cake study, I feel like I need to go there next. I don't want you to be focusing on it too much while you're waiting for me to talk about it. In this study, participants were each given a slip of paper with a number on it that they were asked to remember through a series of tasks and to tell another person when they got into a second room. There were two groups. One group was asked to remember a two digit number and the other group got a seven digit number. Not a huge difference, right? Just five digits. It seems simple enough. On the way to the room where they need to repeat the number, each person was instructed to select a snack for later. This, of course, was the actual item being tested. And what did the researchers find? Those remembering the two digit number were much more likely to choose the healthy fruit salad as their snack. Those remembering the seven digit number, they were more likely to choose chocolate cake, up from 41% in the two digit group to 63% for the seven digit group. What happened? Why do we do this? You have likely heard me say before that our subconscious brains can process about 11 million bits of information, information per second. This is compared to the conscious brain which can only do about 40 bits. Big difference there. When your conscious brain is focusing on something, it tunes everything else out, especially when you're focusing really hard, like when you have an incentive to remember a number. Now that your conscious brain is otherwise occupied, the subconscious is tasked with taking the wheel. It's now running the show and using its rules of thumb to make all your decisions that are not remembering this number. If you remember from the episode on habits. Our brains are fueled by rewards like dopamine, which it gets from all sorts of things, including the copious amounts of sugar in that ooey gooey chocolate cake. So you know, the effects were amplified when people could see see the cake either in a picture or if there was an actual slice of cake in front of them, which should not come as a shock to you now that you've listened to the episodes on the sense of sight and smell, which are linked in the show notes in case you want to Revisit them. At the end of the day, your brain is fueled by rewards like dopamine. And the subconscious has all sorts of ways to get them. Motivations like eating healthier or counting calories are primarily a task of your conscious brain. So when it's otherwise occupied, subconscious can jump in and make a decision to get the treats it desires. And of course, you will justify to yourself after the fact why you made that choice and why it was the right thing to do. I've been good all day. I ran this morning, so I deserve a little reward. Just think of all the times your conscious brain is able to get overwhelmed. You have much more than an extra five digits jumping around in your brain all the time. So how is it we get anything done at all? Subconscious rules of thumb, of course. And one of them is to ignore things that are too complicated. If you notice from that experiment the number wasn't too long because the brain is lazy and would give up without even trying. A seven digit number is achievable. It's like a phone number. We have to remember those all the time. It seems like something you could remember for a few minutes. What if the slip of paper had a 25 digit number on it? Or if it was made more complex by being a mix of letters and numbers, or even symbols? Our brains would look at that and say nope, and write off the task as too hard. In reality, we're capable of learning and remembering very complex things. But it takes time. In an experiment like this, it isn't worth the trouble. Your brain would file it in the maybe next time bin or use its overconfidence and optimism bias to say, I could remember that if I wanted to. Unless there's a very substantial incentive to remember this jumbled mess of letters, numbers and symbols. Say, if it was a code you had to remember because the next room had a safe in it and that was the key to get in, and there was a million dollars inside that you would get to keep if you opened it successfully. Hmm, maybe this is an idea for a new game show. Anyway, in that scenario, you would probably put a lot of effort into remembering the nightmare code. Those 25 numbers, letters and symbols. And unfortunately, the extra stress and pressure you would put on yourself would likely counteract the efforts you put in, because you would be flooded and overwhelmed with emotions, making your brain start to panic and not retain anything while you're all bogged down with the gravity of the situation. If you've ever watched a game show and from home you say that's so easy. How can you not get that right? I could absolutely do that. And all the contestants say it was so, so easy at home. And then they were there and they couldn't perform as well. You know, this is why our brains get overwhelmed whether we want them to or not. Dan Ariely provides a great example of this in his book the Upside of Irrationality, where giving people an opportunity for a large bonus like five months of salary severely lessened their ability to perform on somewhat easy tasks. The adrenaline and the weight of the opportunity made them perform worse than those who were offered smaller bonuses, which were equal to a day's pay. The Lesson the amazing computers in our heads are very easy to bog down like a deer in the headlights. Your brain will often revert to rules that don't help you, especially when it's overwhelmed either by the task at hand, the weight of the possibility from the outcome of the task, or something completely unrelated. What do I mean when I talk about something completely unrelated? Studies have found that those in poverty have reduced cognitive abilities, perpetuating their vicious cycle. In this study, farmers in India performed cognitive tests before harvest when at their poorest and after harvest when at their wealthiest. And they did considerably worse in the pre harvest tests because they had less ability to focus on the tasks at hand. Think about it. When you're worried about money, it consumes so much of your mental focus. Constantly running calculations to see if you'll have enough for all the groceries this week and to put gas in the car. And little Susie just came home with a note about money for band uniforms, and her brother needs money for soccer, and the car desperately needs new tires. So many things to remember. No wonder it's hard to focus on other tasks and the subconscious is allowed to take over, making decisions in whatever way it sees fit, seeking rewards and the path of least resistance. This definitely gets at the core of why it can be hard to break a pattern when you're in it and to get out of a vicious cycle even when you want to, for anything, really. There are lots of things beyond money that can clog up cognitive processing ability. Let's revisit the Texas A and M study about the snowball versus the battery for willpower and self control. Which one you get really comes down to whether your brain is overwhelmed or not. If your brain is overwhelmed with to do lists and schedules and fear about money and everything else you have going on, you'll probably reach a point of fatigue much faster than you would if you were in a relaxed state to remind you of how this works I will use an example of being healthier as an overarching goal. In the morning, you skip your donut and have a sensible breakfast instead. Whatever that means for you. If you're in the battery mode when your brain gets overwhelmed, you are more likely to give in to future temptation. When someone comes by your desk with cupcakes at 2 o', clock, justifying to yourself, you know I was good this morning so I can have this now. I earned it. If instead you were in snowball mode, you would say something like no thanks, I've already been so good today and I want to keep the momentum going. You have more willpower when your brain isn't living in the constant state of overwhelm. This makes it easier to reach your goals and just have less stress in your life and work in that sense. Same episode on resolutions I talked about expecting error, which is the E in nudges, and I will dig into that more in a future episode. However, there's a very specific type of error that occurs when your brain gets overwhelmed, and it happened to me a few hours before writing out the content of this episode. I actually wrote out this episode from my seat on an airplane. At this point, apparently I was about halfway to Houston where I grabbed a car and drove up to College Station to be visit the Human Behavior Lab at Texas A and M. If you follow me on social media, you saw some of the early posts while I was on site testing out their cool equipment and touring the facility. By the time this comes out, there will be several videos on my social media channels showing what it's really like in a lab like this and the types of results and information they can find. You can find those on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter where you can find me as the brainy Biz B I Z. And spoiler alert. I'm not going to get into this all too much because next week's episode includes an interview with Dr. Marco Palma, the director of the lab. Anyway, I travel quite a bit, but when I'm packing for important trips I tend to do a lot of running through lists in my head. IPad, Check. Shoes, check. Toothbrush, check. You know what I mean. And I do this over and over, almost obsessively as I'm going out the door. Thankfully, my husband is understanding and doesn't complain when I check for the 56th time since we got in the car if I have my wallet and if my ID is still in there since I checked five minutes ago. Maybe you can relate. Anyway, one thing I tend to do when my brain gets overwhelmed and focused on too many things is I can't remember if I closed the garage door. Have you ever done this? The morning of writing this script, as I was almost out of the neighborhood, I got that panic moment.

Did I?

I didn't explicitly remember watching the door close or hitting the button. What if it's open and someone breaks in and there's no one home? Depending on the distance, I usually drive back like I did that morning to put my mind at ease and confirmed that the door was indeed closed. And it is probably 99% of the time. So why does this happen? Why do we sometimes forget to bring our purse or wallet to work? Or grab the one thing we actually need at the store or drive away without putting the lid back on the gas tank? This is called post completion error and it happens when we complete some or most of a task and our brain marks the whole thing as done. Another example is I am notorious for putting clothes in the washing machine, running it, and leaving them there all day without ever moving them into the dryer. Have you ever done this? I hope so. Hopefully it's not just me. Post completion error and an inability to remember if you fully completed a task is a sign of overwhelmed brain when you feel scattered or notice it in your customers. This is why relieving some of the pressure from your conscious brain will help to fix it. My two notes for myself to be better in the future and I wrote them down and decided to commit them to you here to help overcome time discounting so those two notes for myself are one. I'm going to make myself a checklist of all the items to take with me on a trip and all the things I need to do before I go and I'll have a bunch of them printed and ready for me to physically check off as I pack for each trip. In case you didn't know, your brain holds more weight and importance on things you write down, so having a physical list you can check off can help really mark it as complete in your brain. If you're one of those people who makes a list of the things you already accomplished just so you can mark them as done. This is a reason why the second thing I'm going to do is have a sticky note method to help nudge me about the laundry so I don't have a family with funky smelling clothes. I'm going to test out both having sticky notes in the laundry room that I can take down with me to put on or near my computer while I'm working to remind me of the laundry or simply writing laundry on a sticky note when I get back to my desk. This one seems like it's a candidate for its own post completion error though, and the point is to remove the task from my conscious brain as close to the full task as possible. Which is why I think a pad of sticky notes in the laundry room will probably work best. So my question for you is threefold. First, how could you help yourself in your work and personal life by relieving some of the overwhelm from your conscious brain? Could be little things like those sticky note by the laundry or remembering where you always hang your keys. Second, how can you be a resource to your customers to help them relieve some of their overwhelm, allowing them to get more done faster and with less stress? That is a reason people will hire you or buy your product for sure. So if you can do this and communicate it properly, you will put yourself ahead of the competition. Third, and this might be the hardest one, how often are you overwhelming your current or potential customers? Really try to dig deep here and remember back to the extra five digits in the chocolate cake study. Try and think about how long it took you to learn and understand all the stuff you're placing in front of people. Do you have specialized training? Lots of past experience that they don't? What did you need to hear when you were a novice and would the order matter? Are you giving them enough time to grasp each concept? If you don't, you could be overwhelming them faster than you think. And if you're trying to get them to do something they don't know they need yet, or that they haven't fully gotten on board for, or that it's going to be a cumbersome process, get ready for them to say goodbye. If you have a lot of people who say, hmm, I'll have to think about it or I need to check with my husband or I'll take this home to digest and get back to you. Chances are you're overwhelming them. So to make it easy on you and not be overwhelming, I have a few simple tips to combat overwhelm both for you and working through with customers. And this is the foundation of that freebie worksheet I created for you. If you want to use that to follow along, go ahead and grab that and I'll be here when you get back. Welcome back. Here is the list of things to do to help combat overwhelm and be more effective. Number one, write things down. This is like my checklist for packing or something as simple as a grocery list for the store. If you are overwhelmed, you're more likely to be sucked into the rules of your subconscious, meaning you will over buy, overindulge and over stress and probably still forget things. And as I said, writing things makes them more real, powerful and important. As far as your brain is concerned, you don't even need to keep the paper you write them down on. And if you don't have a pen handy, move your hand as if you're writing and imagine the words appearing on the paper. Remember last week about mirror neurons and episode 24 on the Sense of sight vision happens in the brain and the act of moving your hand and telling your brain there's something being written to remember for later can be enough to make it relevant and a priority Number two Do One Thing at a Time Multitasking is a myth and a path to productive procrastination where you keep yourself busy running around never really completing anything, but constantly half done and trying to remember where you left off on all these different items. It sounds exhausting, doesn't it? Let's not do this anymore and instead allow our brains to focus on one important thing to move past it and be more productive the rest of the day. I remember back at my corporate job I had an employee who was getting married. I had monthly coaching meetings with each of my employees where I would use the Susan Scott model from Fierce Conversations. Great book by the way. There's a link in the show notes. Anyway, her model was to start each meeting by asking, what's the most important thing we should be talking about right now? The employee would get to choose because it was their meeting. I was simply there to support them. In this particular meeting, I remember my employee joking, I wish we could talk about my wedding or something to that effect, and I said, sure, what's going on? She was a little taken aback and said, really? Are you sure? To which I said, of course it's your meeting and if that is what would benefit you the most, let's do it. She'd been debating over flower arrangements and whether to have the bridesmaids wear pink or yellow, and was trying to decide how to send her invitations. These tasks were all swirling around in her head constantly during the day when she wanted to be productive at work, but I'm sure she wasn't as much as we all would have liked. So we talked through them. I was more of a sounding board, but by the end of the meeting she made some decisions, had some tasks written out, and was able to have a really productive rest of the work day. As much as we wish we could compartmentalize work and personal lives, we often can't. People who have a lot going on in one area, like the poverty and financial situation I talked about a little bit bit earlier, you get distracted and overwhelmed in your brain and that impacts all other areas. How can you support your employees who are going through big life changes, or customers? Or yourself? Taking enough time for each item as soon as you can will help get it off the mental list and out of your overwhelmed brain. In short, finish things as quickly as you can and then move on from one to the next to the next. Number three on the list is to make it a pattern or a habit. If there are things you need to do consistently and don't want to have plagued by overwhelm, turn them into habits. Check out episodes 21 and 22 on Habits for more on that. Say you need to have productive time connecting on social media to help increase visibility for your business. I need to do this. I spend a lot of time on social media and it's intentional, but it's easy to get sucked into the rabbit hole. So I need to have a plan so I don't spend too much time there. Instead of just flitting in and out whenever the moment strikes and never getting all the way done, set aside a time and explicit task each day. For example, like comment and share on three posts on Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook. Perhaps this is on your calendar from 8 to 8:30am and then you can also have a couple of check in points during the day if needed to respond to comments. It depends on your brand and goals. While it's hard to believe you can still run a very engaged brand and only check in social media once or twice a day, especially for smaller organizations when it's a habit and the time is set aside, it makes it easier to remember freeing up space in your brain. Block it out on your calendar and stick to it. You can also, you know, pre schedule that every Friday afternoon you spend an hour and a half going in and scheduling everything for the next week or for the next month or whatever it happens to be. Have a list you cross off each day so you know you accomplished your tasks and you could get really fancy and track who you commented on or shared a post for to make sure you're engaging with the right people and have ongoing intentions toward meeting your bigger goals. Which brings me to the next point. Have a goal. Hopefully you already set your one to three goals for the year. After listening to the Resolutions episode. If not, I recommend listening to it right after this one. It's number 29. Once you properly set goals in the method I laid out for you in in that episode, it means you have accepted there are things you cannot do because they are a distraction and will keep you from your goal. If you only have three main goals and your avoid at all costs list, it's really easy to know what to say no to and what gets your attention. This will help move those goals and decisions into your subconscious rules of thumb so even when you do get a little overwhelmed, you can still be on the right track. It's true. This works Even though I was in super overwhelmed brain the morning of travel to the airport when I had to go back and make sure the garage was closed and I was sure I forgot something, I did. And the thing I forgot was my healthy snacks. Of course, instead of reverting and saying, you know I have no choice, I'm just going to have to go eat all that non paleo stuff at the airport because I forgot and then getting into this really bad snowball from the depleted battery, I knew that overall health and balance is one of my three priorities for the entire year, so it was easy for me to say no. Take a breath. I need to come up with a plan. How can I get my healthy snacks? I took a 10 minute detour to run into Trader Joe's, get the couple items I needed, even though Aaron had gone to the store the night before and bought a bunch for me that were sitting on the counter at home. I got as much as I would need to get through the trip, plus a couple extra so I have no excuses while I'm traveling. And you know what? It was easy and it was interesting to watch this really build on itself in its sort of snowball moments. On the plane, when I ordered club soda instead of Dr. Pepper or Coke, which I always want, and black coffee to keep the good things going. And when I was at the lunch meeting at A and M, I did not accept the Dr. Pepper that was on the table even though I really wanted it. Because I'm telling you, this works. When thinking about this for your customers, consider what their goals are. Don't know. Ask. I start almost all of my strategy sessions with clients by asking about their goals, and this is one of the first things I ask in my discovery sessions as well. Knowing the goal helps everyone to work in the same direction, and it's a very simple thing to ask. If they don't yet have a goal, who do you think they will ask to help them?

That's right.

You. You are now a trusted advisor because you cared enough to ask and this is a great place to be when it comes to future buying moments. This is also using reciprocity, which was the focus of episode 23 and linked in the show notes. The final tip is to incorporate constant check ins and breathing points for yourself and with customers pushing through fatigue is a recipe for a battery brain which means depletion, overwhelm and bad decisions take breaks. People, get up from your desk, walk around a little, go do something else. For customers, think about the points where they might be wondering what's going on and looking for an update. For example, if someone was applying for a mortgage, there are a lot of points where they're sitting around and waiting to hear back, wondering where things are in the process and having an unproductive internal dialogue which overwhelms the brain and keeps them from being productive elsewhere, which can be frustrating. They may constantly check in with the bank or the credit union, though not as often as they would like. I'm sure that every five minutes is when you want to know if something is happening. Maybe checking their phone constantly Do I have an update yet? Do I have an update yet? Do I have an update yet? And they start to feel like a nuisance. It makes the whole experience feel really jaded. What if instead they received a regular proactive update from their lender which said something like hi Sally, I just wanted to give you a quick update on what was accomplished today. We got the appraisal paperwork back and the team is planning to input that information tomorrow morning. We'll give you an update at end of day if everything is in order in case there are any items we need to discuss. Is there a window that would work best to reach out and call you tomorrow? Ah, isn't that nice? You would feel valued, taken care of, relaxed and the beauty is an email like that is a win win. It helps the staff at the lender get their priorities in order and avoid wasted time calling over and over while someone is in a meeting or on a plane. And it helps the customer to feel valued and like a participant in the process instead of a bystander in their own life. Awesome way to bring value and endear yourself as an organization. This is also an act of reciprocity which can come in handy when you ask for referrals or reviews later on in the process. So to recap what we learned here, the five big tips to help you overcome and avoid overwhelm personally and in your business because as I've shown you, the line between them is gray at best. As far as our brains are concerned, those five things to do are number 1 write things down, 2 do one thing at a time, 3 make it a pattern or habit, 4 have a goal and 5 incorporate breathing room and checkpoints.

So what got your brain buzzing as you learned about overwhelm and decision making today? For me, as I said at the.

Top of the episode, I I talk.

About this concept all the time. It's so foundational in behavioral economics application, not only in the way we humans tend to procrastinate and not do the things we know we should, but also in the way we communicate in our life and in our businesses. How often is a message convoluted? Is a call to action not clear? Assuming it's even there at all? Is a page or email so full of text you can't even make it halfway through? Before you zone out, the biggest thing.

To keep in mind as you leave.

This episode is to get things out of your head.

I know, ironic.

Don't assume you can remember unless you want to eat way too much chocolate cake. And don't try to do too much. Limiting your focus and goals is a big way to be able to reduce overwhelm and stress that can keep you stuck. I've linked to lots of past episodes and books in the show notes for you, most of which came out after this one originally aired, like those on time discounting bike shedding, which I call productive procrastination, planning fallacy, and others which are so critical to getting more of the right stuff done. There's also an episode I did on.

How to set, achieve and exceed brainy.

Goals and so much more. And there's a very special book waiting for you in the show notes as well, which is by the author I'm interviewing in the next episode of the podcast, which comes out on Friday. It's called the Anatomy of a Breakthrough by Adam Alter.

In it, he talks about how we.

All get stuck and tips to help you get unstuck based on our conversation and what I thought would be the best primer for you leading into it, I figured this episode on the overwhelmed brain and decisions was the perfect place to start.

So as you prepare for that episode.

To come out, take a moment to reflect on where you're stuck. As Adam found In his research, 95% of people say they're actively stuck on something at any given time. That's a lot of stuckness, and most of them could come up with a place they were stuck almost immediately. So consider where you're stuck and why.

You'Ve been stuck for how long, why.

It matters to you, stuff like that. There is a freebie worksheet on Overwhelm waiting for you in the show notes with those five steps I mentioned earlier in the episode. So download that, take some notes using the prompts and considering your stuckness, add that in there. It's going to help that episode and this one have an even more lasting impact for you. And to make it easy, there is of course a link in the show notes for everything, including related past episodes.

Books like Anatomy of a Breakthrough, that.

Freebie worksheet, a timestamp summary of the episode, and more so you don't have to keep it in your head. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 358 and just like that, episode 358 on overwhelm and decision making is done. Join me Friday for a brand new episode with Dr. Adam Alter to discuss his book the Anatomy of a Breakthrough.

It's going to be a lot of fun.

You don't want to miss it.

Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me. And remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.