Imagine starting your workday like this. You've got a full to do list already. Then your boss drops by at 9:15 with a hey, one more urgent thing we need you to work on today. And then at 11am, an internal client's top priority shifts to be something you're responsible for lands in your inbox. Then at 11 o', clock, a close call colleague asks if you can drop everything to help with a project just for a few minutes. By lunchtime, you can't even remember what you were supposed to be working on. And it leaves you feeling lost, anxious, frustrated, and in a state of complete and total overwhelm. Well, that's exactly what competing priorities do to you and your team.

Overwhelm isn't necessarily about volume alone. It's about shifting priorities and broken focus. And today I'm going to show you how to beat overwhelm with UX thinking. Teams are not breaking down because of sheer volume. They are breaking down because of cognitive overload caused by unclear and constantly shifting priorities. So we're going to tackle that head on in this episode. And what you're going to come away with is, first of all, you're going to learn what cognitive load is and how too much of it results in a complete and total state of overwhelm. You're going to learn how a UX tool like card sorting can help bring clarity and focus to the already too many things on your plate.

And you're going to learn how leaders can provide clear navigation to help keep teams aligned, headed in the right direction and reduce overwhelm. So that's where we're headed today, and I'm glad to have you along on the ride.

All right, let's start with this whole snarly problem of overwhelm. And when we think of overwhelm, I mean, we just always think of like, too many things to do. Like, I'm being asked to do the job of two people, or sometimes three people. Well, when you find yourself in that state, I want you to start to distinguish between volume of work and complexity of work. And they both have to do with cognitive overload, or cognitive load, if you will. So let's talk about what cognitive load is.

You see, our brains can only juggle so much information before our level of performance starts to degrade. There's only so much we can again handle at one time without just becoming that in that state of overwhelm. So this is all explained so clearly and effectively through something called cognitive load theory. So let me just geek out on you for a few minutes and talk about cognitive load theory, and I promise it's nothing you can't handle. So it was developed in the 1980s by John Sweller, who is an Australian educational psychologist. And Sweller's core idea is this. Our brains have a limited amount of cognitive processing power. We can only handle so much.

And I think we could all agree with that central premise. And what Sweller did is he looked into how our performance begins to degrade once we reach this sort of critical mass or this tipping point. So he was learning how performance starts to suffer when, when that cognitive load begins, becomes too big, too heavy, too much. And he broke it down into three specific types of cognitive load. The first one is intrinsic load. And intrinsic load has to do with the complexity or the difficulty of the task itself. So if you think about doing something fairly rote, like maybe processing your email, that requires a fairly low cognitive load. But then maybe you have to do a report that's going to senior leaders, that's going to require a higher amount of intrinsic load, like a more thinking capacity is needed.

Now, I know I've talked about this on the podcast before, but when you think about the work that requires more focus, and you need that focus, time with that is the distraction free time. I've often asked you, what time of day do you work best? When do you have the most innate focus? And that's when you should be doing the work that has the highest intrinsic load. So the work that is the most challenging should be done when you are at your core cognitive best, if you will. But intrinsic load is how hard is the work itself or how much complexity is involved in the work itself, how difficult is the task itself.

Then we have extraneous load, and that is the way the task or the information is presented to us. So if it comes to us with confusing instructions, if it is maybe not necessarily as complex as it appears, because somebody's having a difficult time explaining to us how to do it, that's again going to add to our overwhelm. But that's the extraneous load. That's how it comes to us from someone else. So it could be sometimes a relatively simple task, but somebody has over explained it or mansplained it to you or explained it again in some way that just is not effective. So that's extraneous load.

And then the third part of cognitive load is germane load. And this is the effort devoted to making sense of the information and integrating it into either the other things that you're doing or into your long term memory, if this is something that you need to hold on to for a long time, like you're learning something or memorizing something. So that's germane load.

Now, the implications of this for our work, well, when we've got constantly shifting priorities or when we've got things coming to us in an ambiguous or confusing manner that are impacting the extraneous load, again with unclear directions and what have you, that eats up more mental resources that could be spent on actually doing the work. So the result, when we've got things coming at us that are adding to our extraneous load, again, whether that's unclear priorities, unclear instructions and so forth, the result is more errors, missed deadlines, burnout, disengagement, and that overwhelming sense of overwhelm. Now, when we apply and implement UX thinking as it relates to overwhelm, we realize that to large part, it's a cognitive overload pro, a cognitive load problem. And again, I want to give you some tools to help address it.

And first, I mean, the first and foremost tool is just understanding cognitive load and understanding how that implicates and impacts the work that people are doing. So when we implement UX thinking and we find out that it's a cognitive load problem, just like with a good product design or good software design, and how that will minimize the extraneous load with clear menus, clear labeling and so forth, well, the same thing applies to leadership.

When we apply those same design principles, that same UX thinking to our leadership, we're going to get a reduction in cognitive load because there's going to be reduced clutter, the instructions are going to be clear and effective, and teams can then focus on meaningful work. We're going to give them a good way to prioritize the various tasks they have to do, and we're going to give them a good path through all of the tasks that they have to do, whether those are simple, simple tasks or more complex tasks. So again, the team can focus their work, the individual can focus their work and get more done, and again, without that sense of overwhelm. Because it's not just about sheer productivity, it's about reducing overwhelm and reducing cognitive load as a way to reduce overwhelm. Okay, so let's presume that we've taken that into account now as, as we thought about the intrinsic load, like how difficult is the work I'm giving my team and then we've talked thought about the extrinsic load, am I giving them clear instructions on it and then I've talked about the germane load. How does this fit into a wider set of things that they're working on? Okay, let's say I've thought through that as much as possible and I've tried to reduce cognitive load as much as possible.

Well, now what can we do with what's left? Because even if we've been able to reduce some of that cognitive load, I think a lot of people are still feeling that they're doing the work of multiple people or that they're having a hard time prioritizing now that they know what's left. What did, what do I do first? So what do I work on first? And this is where card sorting comes in. So card sort is a UX technology, if you will, a UX methodology that helps sort things into, like, piles. And so when you think about a task that somebody's completing, let's say, in a piece of software, if they need to, let's say, fill out their address on a form, well, we're going to put all, we're going to group all of the address fields together in one area. We're going to. And you've heard me talk about chunking before on the podcast. So that might be a way where we're using card sort and chunking together. But as you think about, let's say, all the fields that maybe need to go into, into a form, and we just write them all down on separate pieces of post it notes, and then we think about, okay, how are we going to design this form or this web page? Well, we want to put the things that belong together, together.

And that's where sometimes card sorting can really give us some good insight on what are the like items. And then when we put those together, it helps people understand and it reduces their cognitive load essentially as well, because things are grouped in, in ways that make sense to our brain. So again, the result of a card sort can end up in chunking, but card sorting is really again, organizing information by grouping and prioritizing at its simplest. Now, when we translate this into leadership, we can think about putting all of the priorities on the table. And for an individual, that might mean writing down all of their tasks on separate action post IT notes or using a software that does something similar. And then you start to identify what's most important. You also might start to look at what's most urgent. And then once you have that clarification, you can then start to prioritize your tasks in a way that's much more meaningful and effective and helps you determine what needs to go first, what can wait, and maybe what doesn't belong at all, or what could be delegated to somebody else.

Now, a quick and easy way to do this is with something called the Eisenhower matrix. And many of you have probably heard of the Eisenhower matrix. Maybe you didn't even know it was called the Eisenhower matrix. But it's a two by two matrix that's got urgency across the x axis and it's got importance across the y axis. And again, it's four quadrants. A lot of people are familiar with this. In fact, I would say most working professionals are familiar with this if they have gotten to a certain point in their career where they've gotten, you know, more responsibility than they feel like they can handle.

And then this tool shows up, somebody teaches them this, or writes it on the back of a cocktail napkin or a whiteboard in a conference room or something like that and teaches it to them. It's also taught in lots of leadership development programs. In fact, I teach a leadership development program in which we absolutely drill this into the minds of emerging leaders because it's just that important. It's just such a good tool. Again, I find that most people know the, the Eisenhower matrix, even if they don't know it by that name. But when I go back and ask people, how often are you using it? Especially when people tell me how overwhelmed they are, I said, well, do you know that you know the two by two matrix with the importance and the urgency? And they go, oh yeah, I know. Are you using it? Oh yeah, not so much. So people know it, but they don't necessarily utilize it.

But again, I want to just quickly go through it with you. If you're not familiar with it, you can just always Google the Eisenhower matrix. But it is a two by two matrix with urgency across the x axis from low to high and then importance from low to high on the y axis and you make those four quadrants. So then you take all of those post it notes where you've written down all the things that you're supposed to do this week or all the things that are related to a particular project, if you want to take it on a project by project basis, but you write down all of the things and then you start to identify, well, where does this fall in terms of importance? And then once you know, low to high, then you say, okay, how urgent is it? Is this something that absolutely has to be done today or even this morning? Or is this something that can wait until later in the week? Or maybe even next week. So then you're putting it on that scale of both urgency and importance. Now, when you finish prioritizing all of your tasks, you're going to find that the things that are in the highest upper right quadrant that are the most urgent and the most important, those are the ones that feel like the virus need to be put out and to do those first. Now you want to try to have as few of those as possible. And that's by getting the things into important but not urgent and then remembering to work on them when they are important but not urgent.

Because anything that is important, if you don't get to it soon enough, becomes then both important and urgent because people are waiting for you or the project can't move ahead, or customers are getting frustrated or angry because they haven't gotten their product or service delivered. So as you can see, you want as few items in the urgent and important category as possible. And the way to do that is to make sure you get the urgent ones before they become super important and you get the important ones before they become super urgent. Now this is essentially a card sort method and you can do it with post it notes on the wall, you can do it on a conference room whiteboard, you can do it in software, you can do it on a piece of paper with a pencil or a pen. So it is super easy to so many people forget to do it. But it is essentially a card sort method to help you prioritize competing tasks. There's other ways that you could do a card sort as well, but I like to share this one just in the sense of it is both a card sort and as well as it is a leadership and business methodology that people have heard either in Agile software development or in a leadership development program. But it's such a great tool and I think incredibly underutilized.

But when we put those on, when we put all of our tasks into this Eisenhower matrix, it really creates a shared understanding of what is most important. Especially when you've got too many things that are important and urgent, then you could take just those things and you could almost do this again just with those things and figure out which ones you need to prioritize first. And this again creates a shared understanding between you and the rest of your team. And if you're a leader between your yourself and the team. And if you're an individual contributor who is feeling totally overwhelmed with too much to do, this is a good thing to show your manager or supervisor and have a discussion around because your manager or supervisor can then help you sort through those things that are urgent and important both and help you with that prioritization if it's, you know, if it's not immediately clear to you what should be done first.

All right, now let's talk about UX thinking solution number two, and that is providing clear navigation. So I want you to think about again, when you're using a piece of software, there is something built into good software called wayfinding. So when digital designers are designing new products and services like there should be a what's next or where do you click to get to the next step or the next screen or save your work or whatever it is that comes next.

So that wayfinding is built into digital design again when the design is done well. And again that could be clear menus that could be obvious buttons that take you to the next screen or the next step or save your work. Clear labeling throughout the product or online digital product as well. So if you have ever been in using a piece of software or in some sort of a digital product where you can't figure out what the next step is, or you can't figure out how to save your work, or even if you need to save your work, or if the system is saving it for you as you go, then you know the confusion of not having wayfinding built into that piece of software. So sometimes we can't even guess what the next step is because if it hasn't been designed into the product again, it's very confusing. So the same is true at work. We need that wayfinding. We need to know how do I get to what's next, how do I save my work, complete my work and, and so on.

And so leaders can provide this clarity. They need to be able to spell out what's next. They need to be giving that high level direction so that inside of that high level direction you can do your two by two matrix and figure out what the tasks are because you know in broad strokes where we're headed.

So this also, this wayfinding also coming from leaders also needs to be really clear about what's non negotiable, like which things are absolutely drop everything kinds of things. And you've heard me talk in this episode, in this podcast before a couple of episodes ago about how important it is for teams to define certain terms, even like important or urgent. So that if your manager says that something's urgent, you know, is urgent a bigger deal than something that's important? So how do these things rank or are these terms being used inter interchangeably? So we want to make sure we're removing any ambiguity around what is the exact top priority and the benefits of doing this when that direction is clear and specific and the wayfinding is obvious, it creates more trust. It makes it easier for people to focus because you don't have these competing priorities shuffling around in your head and it gives you a certain sense of psychological relief. You don't feel as anxious and as frustrated by things because you know what's next.

All right, now let's talk about what is the opportunity here for leaders? How can you use these tools we've been talking about to be a more effective leader? So leaders often unintentionally add to cognitive overload by failing to align or failing to make clear which tasks are most important or that they are constantly shuffling or reshuffling things from underneath you. You know, maybe you've done your prioritization of tasks, but then that manager is stopping by with, oh, can you drop everything and work on this? Well, how does that fit into the prioritization that we've already talked about? So if you are the leader who is dropping by with the, or you know, popping into teams with the, hey, can you do this? I want you to think clearly about what else might be on that other person's plate and, and give them some guidance. Now sometimes you absolutely still do have to do the please drop everything and do this first or next. And when you are doing that, I want you to acknowledge that there are a competing set of priorities on this person's plate. And I want you to be thinking about where does this piece fit with what else they're working on right now. And I mean, quite frankly, you might not know exactly what else is on their actual to do list today. And so instead of just dropping one more thing on them, I want to say just engage them in even a five minute conversation to say, hey, what's on your plate right now? And then give them the context of why you want them to work on this thing or why this thing needs to jump to the top of their priority list. When people know the why behind shifting priorities, it is so, so much easier to get aligned with them and get your head around them.

So when you use UX thinking and specifically the tools that we have outlined today, understanding cognitive load, using methods like Card sort, whether that's the, the Eisenhower matrix or some other prioritization process, and then using clear and direct wayfinding, you as a leader can shift from confusing the team to being a much better guide for the team. So I want to reinforce overwhelm is not inevitable. Overwhelm does not have to exist. It is a design problem. And design problems can be solved. And they are best solved with UX thinking. So I want you to use the UX thinking tools that we've talked about here today. Cognitive load, card sort and wayfinding you in your work this week because competing priorities do not have to break your team.

Again, understanding cognitive load, using card sort techniques and providing clear navigation can make all the difference. So my call to action for you this week, my friends, is to use a card sort method, whether it's the Eisenhower matrix or a different one of your own devising or one that you've learned somewhere else. Use a card sort method to sort your competing priorities into priority order and see what emerges when you put it all on the table and when you start to group your priorities together and and take them on that way. So you are not broken if you feel overwhelmed. Your team is not broken if you feel overwhelmed. This is a design problem and design problems get fixed with UX thinking.

My friends, thank you so much for being on the ride with me today. If an idea here sparked your imagination, caught your attention, or is something that you are going to try, I would love it for you to do me this just one favor. The way podcast spreads is through word of mouth. So if you could just text this episode or email this episode a link to this episode to somebody who could benefit from it. Just one person makes a huge difference for me because I want to have an impact in the world and you help me have an impact in the world. So send this on to just one more person and I would be so eternally grateful. All right, my friends, have a fantastic week and I can't wait to hear how you use the card sort methodology to reprioritize your work this week. Be well, my friends.