Cognitive Load

March 2026

• Mar 11, 2026Work SkillsCommunicating Clearly: Science and Practice of ClarityThe tappers could hear the melody in their heads and could not stop hearing it, so they could not model an audience without it. That is the curse of knowledge, and it is why experts bury their point. The page's fix is structural rather than verbal: lead with the recommendation, because an audience can stop reading once it has enough but cannot reach a conclusion it never got to.17 MIN4.5k
• Mar 6, 2026ConceptsDecision Journaling for Better Judgment Over TimeLevav and colleagues tracked 1,067 car purchases at German dealerships and found buyers deliberated carefully over early options then increasingly accepted defaults by the end of the sequence. Linder and colleagues found inappropriate antibiotic prescribing rose 26 percent in afternoon appointments across roughly 21,900 visits. This page is careful about the contested science: the famous parole board finding is reported as an association, not a measured depletion state.26 MIN34.5k

February 2026

• Feb 18, 2026ConceptsFramework Overload: Managing Mental Models EffectivelyMichael Porter complained in a 1996 Harvard Business Review essay that executives were filling in his own templates and calling the result strategy, with the tools replacing the thinking they were meant to support. Collecting frameworks costs almost nothing and feels like insight each time, so libraries grow past the point of use. The three traps: collection without depth, retrieval failure under pressure, and paralysis when frameworks contradict.22 MIN36.9k

August 2025

• Aug 18, 2025IdeasUnderstanding Decision Overload and Its EffectsA 2011 study of 1,112 Israeli parole rulings found favorable decisions ran about 65 percent at the start of a session and fell to nearly zero by the end, resetting after a food break, though later critiques argue case ordering partly explains it. Baumeister's work describes the same depletion: as capacity drains, the brain defaults to the easiest option or postpones. Hundreds of micro-decisions crush the few that matter.21 MIN73.3k

June 2025

• Jun 7, 2025ExplainersUnderstanding Cognitive Load in LearningThree loads, and which to cut. Intrinsic load is the material's own complexity, extraneous load is wasted effort from poor presentation, and germane load is the productive work of building schemas. Sweller's 1988 paper established the worked example effect, and Kalyuga later documented expertise reversal, where the same examples that help novices start to hinder experts. Working memory holds roughly four to seven chunks.25 MIN41.4k

November 2023

• Nov 18, 2023ConceptsWhat Is Decision Fatigue and Its EffectsBaumeister's 1998 radish study had participants resist cookies then quit sooner on an unsolvable puzzle, and the glucose extension claimed a sugary drink could restore self-control. Direct tests produced inconsistent results and re-analysis raised publication-bias concerns, so glucose is no longer supported as the fuel. Covers the Danziger parole findings, choice overload, and status quo bias.14 MIN11.4k