Are you feeling overwhelmed by the relentless surge of digital information? Explore the concept of 'digital intensity' and delve into potential antidotes that could help restore balance in our increasingly connected world.
As remote work has set in, we are relying entirely on digital tools to keep in touch with each other and get our work done
This all-virtual-all-the-time nature of our everyday has led to a worrisome spike in ‘digital intensity’
- People are using digital tools more to work more
- Feeding into these longer working hours is the fact that we are pinging colleagues more with chats, sending more emails and scheduling more meetings
- All this plugged-in time is creating a cognitive load that’s tough on our brains
We’ve entered a new era
We need new habits, new practices, new cultural understandings, and new cultural norms
- Instead of seeing workers as “robots in a factory”, we should be building a new culture that sees workers as elites
- Everything we know about athletic training applies; we need intense sessions of work, then recovery
Let’s do it better
We must re-assess how we communicate at work
- A video meeting is not the answer every time we need to talk to someone
- Long meetings with one person talking, and everyone else listening is a waste of time
- Most meetings are “wasteful”
Our brains have to work harder in virtual meetings
During a virtual meeting, with multiple participants in little boxes, our brains try to process each participant individually, listen, comprehend, and take in visual cues
- Even before you start trying to focus on the meeting’s agenda, your brain is working overtime
- Just working on a screen puts a huge cognitive overhead on your brain
- The more meetings there are, the worse it gets
- Short-term fixes
- A 10-minute break can help mitigate the effects of digital intensity
- Taking breaks lets you reset and maintain better brain health across the day
To reduce overworking, Lister says companies have to communicate policies and expectations to workers clearly
Ending presenteeism means creating a culture where workers know they can – and should – be logging off
- Finding new ways to connect with our colleagues, and reducing the number of daily meetings, emails and virtual check-ins will do more than lessen the digital load. It will also pave the way for a reinvented post-pandemic workplace
Cognitive overload
Microsoft is trying to address video chat’s cognitive overload issue by developing new software features.
- “Together mode” is a virtual filter in Teams that puts meeting participants on a shared background
- Eliminating participants’ individual boxes and backgrounds helps reduce some of the subconscious processing taking up cognitive space.
