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The mental load and the cognitive load are essentially the same things
There are slight differences but they are very similar
The mental load is the amount of mental work in your brain and in the background while the cognitive load is the amount of work in the working brain. Both are important to understand as a mom so that you can work effectively without exhausting yourself
I am a multitasker
Science tells us now that there is no such thing
Multitasking is actually impossible
What we are really doing is switching from one task to another very quickly
Every time we do that, we lose both energy and time
As moms, our mental load and cognitive load are always very high
We are just like a computer
We have a working memory that can be maxed out
The heavier the load and closer to 100% we get, the less effectively we function
What is the mental load?
The mental load is talked about a lot of social media right now
These are all of the invisible tasks that you do
It is the meal planning before you cook dinner
Or keeping track of where the kids are
Remembering appointments thinking about what you need to buy for the household
It is even as simple as thinking ahead to prevent an issue
Everything that is invisible is the mental load
Both actively functioning and what is in the background of your mind
There are a lot of ways you can reduce your mental load
But my favorite is to write everything down
If it can go on paper, write it down or use speech to text to put it in your phone
If you don’t need it in your head right now, don’t keep it there
This helps you function better and helps prevent you from forgetting things
It is a win-win
Just make sure you have a system to keep track of what you are writing down
You don’t want to write something down, forget about it, and then lose the paper
What is the cognitive load?
Cognitive load is similar to mental load
It is what you are using in your active memory
Multitasking uses a lot of cognitive load because you are actively working with a lot of different things at the same time
Cognitive load can include thinking about what to have for dinner, listening for the kids, and doing the dishes at the same time
Dishes don’t require a lot of thought, but they still use some memory
The more you are doing at once, the more active memory that you use
That isn’t a big deal until you start maxing your active memory out
Then you start struggling, getting emotional and start losing some of the tasks
You have to pay attention and get to know yourself
You can feel the change if you pay attention
But keep in mind that paying attention uses cognitive load too
It is a trial and error until you figure out how your brain works and how to keep your working memory low
The main way you can reduce your cognitive load is by reducing what you are doing at the same time
The less that you are multitasking, the less working memory that you use at once
How are they similar or different?
They are similar because they both work with invisible tasks that most people don’t recognize as work
But they are
The mental load is more of a list of things that you are doing throughout your days
While the cognitive load is what you are currently working on
They are similar and they overlap, but there are small differences
But both are important to understand so you can function well
Why are they important for every mom to understand?
The mental load is like the to-do list of your brain
There is so much to do and not a lot of time
Some things come and go while others last a long time
Listening out for your kids is a task that never really ends
At least while they are young
But remembering a doctor’s appointment comes and goes with the appointment
Knowing.
0 how this works helps you reduce that to-do list
You can’t write down and let go of listening to make sure the kids are ok
But you can write down and let go of remembering that doctor’s appointment
If you have less on your to-do list, then you are less likely to overwhelm your cognitive load
The cognitive load is what is making your active memory
What is on your brain right now?
If you don’t have a lot on your mental load to-do list, the need to multitask reduces
You don’t have to actively think about as much
If you have the day’s plan written out, you don’t have to think about what you need to do next while doing what are doing now
It is already decided
One less thing on your working memory
If you reduce your mental load and cognitive load, you are also saving a lot of time and energy
There is no such thing as multitasking
It is just quickly switching from one task to another
While it feels fast and seamless, it’s not
You lost a lot of time and energy switching tasks
The more tasks you are doing, the more time and energy that you lose
If you are doing 5 or more things, you lose 80% effectiveness
That means you would have been 80% faster doing each thing one at a time than you did multitasking
I don’t know about you but I don’t want to be less effective
Of course there is more to it than just counting tasks
There are tasks that use very little cognitive load because you have done them so many times
Like dishes
So doing the dishes and then doing a speech-to-text mean plan isn’t that big of a deal
But you have to get to know yourself and how you function in order to function at your most effective