Managing Mental Load

Any discussion of how to make space for creativity in our lives must address Mental Load. Mental load is about how much space a task takes up in your brain, which is a very different measure than how much space the task has on the calendar. A five minute phone call might be a quick chore easily checked off the list, or it might require hours of pre-call anxiety and avoidance with more hours of post-call recovery. Mental load is often not logical because it is about emotions and unintended reactions. 

In January of 2024, the month I was pushing through a revision pass on this book, I had just finished six months where I was frazzled to the point of near burnout. When I looked at my calendar there were long stretches of empty space. Yet I was frazzled. A closer look at what had been happening showed me why. Each of the few things on my calendar was surrounded with a cloud of anxieties and repeated small decisions that I had to make. I was also carrying a lot of small simple tasks that needed to be tracked and repeated over time. My problem wasn’t in the number of things I was trying to do, it was the combined mental weight of those things. 

You can reduce mental load when you organize for efficiency of process, reduction of decision making, external reminders, and create appropriate space for emotional processing. By doing this you save creative energy for the work you want to be doing instead of spending it on carrying mental load.

When assessing the mental load you carry, the first challenge is to be honest with yourself about how much mental space a task takes up instead of how much mental space you think it should take up. You’re better able to make that assessment when you understand the variety of things that contribute to mental load.

All of the following increase the mental load of a task:

1.           The more decisions required the higher the load. Even tiny micro decisions add up.

2.           If the task is step one of a multi-task process. 

3.           If the task requires any sort of future contingency planning. For example if you pass the test then____ but if you fail the test then ___. 

4.           Extra mental load if your brain is an anxious one that will contingency plan around every circumstance. 

5.           If a task is unpleasant or repulsive to you. 

6.           If the task repeats but is not intrinsically interesting or pleasurable. (Staring at you dishes and laundry)

7.           If the task triggers any strong emotion whether positive or negative, you have to give brain space to feeling and processing that emotion or to suppressing it. 

8.           If doing the task means that you have to give up something else, it has an opportunity cost. 

9.           If the task requires you to track or remember information particularly detailed information. 

10.       If the task requires you to remember its existence with no external reminders. 

We’re going to talk about these sources of mental load in sections, grouping things together into categories. Numbers 1-3 on the list are about decision fatigue. Number 4 is about anxiety. Numbers 5-6 are about willpower. Numbers 7-8 are about the emotional weight of tasks. 9-10 are about tracking or remembering. But before we dive into the categories, I have an overview analysis activity for you to start thinking about your mental load. 

Mental Load Activity #1: Analysis

You need a grid with columns for tasks, decisions, anxiety, willpower, emotional weight, and remembering. In the tasks column write down 4 tasks that you do regularly where the process for them is smooth. Then write down 4 tasks that feel hard, heavy, or guilt inducing. You almost certainly have more that four tasks of each type and you’re welcome to do a full analysis of every task you can think of, but four of each gives you a starting place to see if there are patterns in what is difficult for you. In the remaining columns you’re going to assign the task a number from 1-4 based on how heavy or hard the task feels to you.  If a task has a lot of decision making, it should get a 4 in that column. If you don’t have to decide things, then give it a 1. Go with your first instinct rather than trying to carefully consider the perfect number. 

With everything filled out, look to see if there are any patterns in the tasks that are flowing easily for you vs the ones that are tangling you up and not getting done. If the higher numbers cluster in a particular category column, you’ve probably identified a category that you might need to tackle first.

I’ve labeled this category decision fatigue, but an equally viable name for it would be executive function fatigue. Each judgment call or decision we make is an exertion of energy. Similar to a physical activity where as you repeat the motion your muscles get tired, your brain can also become tired and less able to make additional judgment calls or decisions. The size or consequence of the decision matters less than the quantity of decisions. The best example I have for this was when I was parenting four young children and the preschooler asked for a cracker. It seems like a simple binary question, yes/no, but in order to generate that answer, I had to evaluate 

All of these factors and more have to be evaluated in thirty seconds or less or we might move straight to the whining / tantrum mode that will summon complicating factors (such as additional children)  

When looking at the decision fatigue around that simple yes/no question, every single bullet point counts as a judgment call or decision. This is why care giving life roles such as parenting, elder care, and household management can take up so much creative energy, they require people to make constant micro-decisions all day long. 

Add in the fact that, just like some people are physically able to lift more weight than others, some people have more capacity for judgment calls and executive function than others. The amount we have is variable from day to day. Physical fatigue, lack of sleep, illness, burnout, and a host of other factors can all reduce our ability to process and make decisions. Also some people’s supply of executive function is naturally smaller than society expects, which can lead to those people either feeling like failures or developing complex coping strategies that make them seem odd to others who don’t need those strategies. (I love that you have your complex coping strategy if it is working for you!) 

If you’re working with limited executive function or coping with decision fatigue for any reason, then these adaptive tools might help.

Task clumping - we previously discussed task clumping in Curating your Commitments and even had an activity around it. Treating multiple similar tasks like a block of tasks which flow into one another can reduce the decision fatigue because you’re not making individual decisions about multiple task. Changing the bedsheets and folding the laundry are no longer separate tasks, they are two portions of the same task. But be wary and watch to make sure that you don’t clump two easy tasks into one difficult one. Perform experiments to see what works for you and what doesn’t.

Pre-deciding - If you are faced with a decision or evaluation process that you know you’re likely to face again (like the child asking for a cracker) take a little extra time to not only decide for this instance, but also to create some rules that make future decisions easier. You can decide “no snacks after 4pm until dinner” and then the cracker question does remain a quick binary yes/no. Before 4pm, sure, after, no. Similar cluping and pre-deciding can be applied to a host of tasks. If you consolidate your grocery shopping onto one day per week, then not only to you free up time that you’re no longer spending on quick trips to the store, but you’ve also reduced your daily load of decision making. Out of an item? Put it on the list, you’ll think about it on grocery day. In order to make once per week grocery acquisition work, you may also need to deploy meal planning. This will also help you, because when you’re hungry, you can go look at what you assigned yourself to eat and do that instead of standing in the kitchen trying to figure out what to make.  I know some creatives who have simplified their wardrobe so that they don’t have to spend energy deciding what to wear that day. Some people assign tasks to days so that they don’t have to spend mental energy monitoring whether the task needs to be done.  

Efficiency of process - Pay attention to how you get a task done. Count the steps, both the steps of the task and perhaps also the literal steps you move. For example my laundry process involves dumping the dirty clothes hamper, sorting the laundry into like colors, running loads, clean laundry goes into a clean hamper, which I carry to my room then sort, fold, hang, and put away. Other adults in my household manage their laundry but skip half of the steps. They don’t sort by color, and they don’t fold, hang, or put away. My process is optimized for my clothes looking tidy. Their process is optimized for efficiency of effort. Neither of us is wrong, both of us have clean clothes to wear. Not coincidentally I have a surplus of available executive function while they have to carefully ration a smaller supply. If you need to reduce the executive function load in your life, see if you can make your tasks have fewer steps. Have a coat hook right next to the door instead of trying to make yourself put the coat on a hanger in the closet. Store cleaning supplies right next to the thing they’re for cleaning instead of making yourself collect those supplies from the “cleaning closet”. 

Borrow a brain - I once had to completely take apart my office and then refurnish it because of a flooding disaster. Having my office in disarray broke my brain because it disrupted hundreds of tiny habits and processes that I had in place for getting things done. I was having to do extra thinking about everything. It was exhausting. I reached the day when I had to buy a desk and figure out how I wanted that desk situated in my space. I stared at the options for hours feeling more frazzled and unable to choose. So I called  friend who kindly came over to my house and made a whole host of tiny decisions for me. 

When you’re struggling with decision fatigue, reach out for help. Include the other members of your household in the discussions of pre-deciding, task clumping, and efficiency of process. Take into account that the mental load of a task for one person may be very different than for another. If folding laundry is a huge obstacle to one person and an easy task for another, assign the folding to the person who finds it easy and hand a different but equivalent-in-effort task to the other person. If you live in partnership with other people, then building interdependencies where you task swap can increase everyone’s ability to have enjoyable relaxation or creative time.