Vox

Leitura de 11 min

Lower Cognitive Load - Pick Your Tools, Then Do Your Work

Summary

This episode continues the series on reducing cognitive load by introducing a practical heuristic: choose just three primary tools that cover 80-85% of your work in primary activities. The host explains that constantly evaluating tools while working divides attention and increases cognitive load, so the solution is to pick tools deliberately and then focus on using them.

The host categorizes tools into four types: external information processing (like email or Slack), internal information processing (like journals or note-taking apps), creation tools (like IDEs or design software), and scheduling tools (calendars or to-do lists). The key insight is that these categories often overlap, especially for managers, but limiting tool choices reduces the mental overhead of deciding where to store or find information.

By having a singular solution for each type of problem, you eliminate the wasteful cognitive load of searching across multiple tools or deciding which tool to use in the moment. The host acknowledges that engineers have many tools available but emphasizes training your brain to associate specific tools with specific modes of work, potentially even automating tool selection with scripts.

The underlying message is to separate tool evaluation cycles from work cycles. Instead of constantly assessing tools while trying to work, choose your tools deliberately during planning phases, then use them without second-guessing during execution. This preserves your most important tool—your brain—for focused, productive work rather than divided attention.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction to cognitive load reduction strategies — The host introduces the episode’s focus on reducing cognitive load and mentions leveraging previous work as the first strategy. He references the previous episode’s exercise about identifying primary activities and modes, explaining that reusing this work prevents reloading context unnecessarily.
  • 00:02:14 — The three-tool heuristic for lowering cognitive load — The host presents the main heuristic: choose three tools that cover 80-85% of your primary work activities. He emphasizes eliminating multiple tools that do similar jobs to stop the endless treadmill of tool evaluation. The goal is to reduce decision fatigue and mental clutter.
  • 00:03:17 — Four categories of tools in your primary toolset — The host explains that most tools fit into four broad categories: external information processing (like email/Slack), internal information processing (like note-taking apps), creation tools (like IDEs or design software), and scheduling tools (calendars or to-do lists). He notes these categories often overlap, especially for managers.
  • 00:05:41 — Why limiting tools drastically reduces cognitive load — The host discusses how having documentation across two tools instead of one more than doubles the effort to find information due to increased cognitive load. He gives the example of note-taking: having two note-taking tools creates decision overhead every time you need to take notes.
  • 00:07:17 — Applying the heuristic to engineering work — Addressing engineering listeners who might question limiting tools to three, the host clarifies the goal isn’t to use only three tools total, but to train your brain to have singular solutions for singular problems. He suggests automating tool selection with scripts for specific activity modes.
  • 00:08:02 — Separating tool evaluation from tool use — The host concludes with the core message: we shouldn’t evaluate tools while using them. Instead, we should choose tools in discrete evaluation cycles, then work with them without second-guessing. Divided attention during work is the definition of cognitive load.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2022-07-27T07:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:09:34

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] We’ve been talking about reducing cognitive load for a handful of episodes now.

[00:00:22] And I want to share a few more strategies for reducing your cognitive load.

[00:00:28] And in today’s episode, we’re actually kind of demonstrating one of those, and that is

[00:00:32] to leverage work that you’ve done before, in this case, we’re leveraging the exercise

[00:00:38] that you did in the last episode of identifying your primary activities and then the modes

[00:00:45] within those activities.

[00:00:46] We’re going to leverage that work.

[00:00:49] So that’s actually kind of our first strategy that I want to talk about today, which is

[00:00:53] leveraging work that you’ve done before.

[00:00:56] If you have not done this on a regular basis, or if you don’t have a habit of doing this,

[00:01:01] it’s likely that you haven’t been able to make the connections between your current

[00:01:07] work and your previous work.

[00:01:09] And this is also critically important to understand that this isn’t just your previous work that

[00:01:15] you can leverage.

[00:01:17] Hopefully most software engineers can identify with the vast amount of kind of preceding

[00:01:24] knowledge and work that came before us in this industry that we’re leveraging every

[00:01:29] single day, whether it’s open source software, architectures, or even tools that you might

[00:01:36] be building on top of.

[00:01:38] So this is kind of a bonus one, leverage the work that came before so that you don’t have

[00:01:42] to kind of reload all of that context.

[00:01:46] For example, in today’s episode, I could have gone back through that same exercise and if

[00:01:51] it was just slightly different, we would have redone about 95% of the work that we have

[00:01:56] already done in a past episode.

[00:01:59] But I’m going to give you a heuristic today that will lower your cognitive load.

[00:02:04] And hopefully this heuristic will make immediate sense to you if you go back and look at your

[00:02:09] primary activities and even if you go and look at your different modes.

[00:02:14] I want you to choose, choose three tools, just three, that you use in the majority.

[00:02:25] When I say majority, I mean 80 to 85% of your work in primary activities.

[00:02:32] Choose three tools and here’s the thing, I do want you to treat this as strict for the

[00:02:36] sake of this exercise, but if you need to expand that to four or five, do what makes

[00:02:43] sense to you.

[00:02:44] The key here is to eliminate the endless treadmill of multiple tools that do similar jobs.

[00:02:54] Multiple things that do similar jobs.

[00:02:55] So for example, if you take company notes, do that in one note-taking location.

[00:03:03] And it just so happens that a note-taking location may also be a coding location if

[00:03:09] you choose this as one of your tools.

[00:03:13] Most of the time, tools fit into essentially four categories.

[00:03:17] This is a very broad generalization and we’ll get into the nuances and semantics after this.

[00:03:24] Your primary tool set, your tools are likely to fit into one of four categories.

[00:03:30] One is external information processing.

[00:03:34] Tools that fit in this category might be email or Slack.

[00:03:38] Now you might think that these are communication tools, but that is external information processing.

[00:03:44] There are other tools that are not communication tools that still fit in this category.

[00:03:50] The idea here is that the information is somehow shared or it could be shared.

[00:03:56] The second type of tool is internal information processing.

[00:04:00] This would be something like a journal or a note-taking application.

[00:04:05] The third tool is the one that people get most excited about.

[00:04:09] That is some kind of creation tool.

[00:04:12] This could be a code IDE.

[00:04:14] It could be Photoshop or Sketch or Figma, or it could be a flowchart application.

[00:04:22] It could be anything that you use to produce artifacts that are a core part of your output.

[00:04:28] It just so happens, by the way, that these tools can often overlap with each other.

[00:04:33] This certainly happens for managers.

[00:04:36] Managers’ output may be communication that originated in an internal processing tool

[00:04:42] and got moved into an external processing tool.

[00:04:46] The creation tool for the manager is also the internal processing tool sometimes.

[00:04:53] The fourth kind of tool is typically a scheduling tool.

[00:04:58] This takes information that you’ve processed elsewhere and the outcome of that information

[00:05:03] might be some kind of planning.

[00:05:06] There are two kind of subtypes of scheduling tools.

[00:05:10] One is a direct scheduling tool and the other is an abstract scheduling tool.

[00:05:14] A direct scheduling tool is something like a calendar.

[00:05:18] You’re saying that you have an appointment at a specific time on a specific day.

[00:05:23] An abstract scheduling tool is something like a to-do list.

[00:05:27] You’re scheduling something to be done, but exactly when it gets done is unclear.

[00:05:33] Most often, people tie these concepts together for some of their work and leave them separated

[00:05:39] for other parts of their work.

[00:05:41] The challenge here to reduce cognitive load is to limit your tool set and limit it drastically

[00:05:48] so that you have three primary tools that do those major jobs, whatever those major

[00:05:53] activities are for you, and we’re not going to prescribe those in today’s episode.

[00:05:58] Hopefully it’s clear why this has the possibility of lowering your cognitive load.

[00:06:04] This is especially true if other people on your team can align with a similar tool set.

[00:06:10] For example, if you have your company documentation across two tools rather than one, that more

[00:06:16] than doubles the effort necessary in order to find that documentation.

[00:06:21] This is almost entirely attributable to the increased cognitive load.

[00:06:26] Where is that particular piece of documentation?

[00:06:29] Where did we track that particular process or method?

[00:06:33] Well, it’s in one or the other of these tools.

[00:06:37] The fact that we spent the time to ask this question and then we went and looked for the

[00:06:43] thing in both tools is, and you probably already know this, entirely wasteful.

[00:06:50] The same is true at the micro level.

[00:06:53] If you have two tools for taking notes every time that you have a cue, which we talked

[00:06:58] about in the last episode, that it’s time to take notes, now you have a little bit of

[00:07:03] cognitive load to decide which tool, which note taking tool is most appropriate for this

[00:07:08] particular scenario.

[00:07:10] I can hear the engineering minds turning as they’re listening to this episode in the future.

[00:07:17] They’re asking, how in the world can I limit my tool set to three things?

[00:07:21] That is not what I am intending for you to do.

[00:07:24] Very clearly, we have a huge tool set that we have to pull from as engineers.

[00:07:29] Instead, this exercise is about training your brain to think in terms of having a singular

[00:07:35] solution to a singular problem.

[00:07:38] And when you see these different modes, knowing what tools tend to be tied to that mode.

[00:07:44] There are some ways to automate this even.

[00:07:47] If you have a particular series of primary activities in a couple of modes, you may be

[00:07:53] able to write a script that opens up the proper tool, the singular tool, so that you don’t

[00:07:59] have any of that decision making to do.

[00:08:02] The underlying message here is that we shouldn’t be evaluating our tools every time we use

[00:08:08] them.

[00:08:09] Instead, we should use our tools and evaluate them in different cycles, trying to do both

[00:08:15] at once means that we aren’t really able to take full advantage of the most important

[00:08:21] tool that we have, which is our own brains.

[00:08:24] Our focus is split, our attention is driven in two different directions, and when your

[00:08:31] attention is divided, that is essentially the definition of cognitive load.

[00:08:39] Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode of Developer Tea, this discussion on tools.

[00:08:43] I hope that it encourages you to start thinking about your tools as something to be chosen

[00:08:49] and something to be worked with in discrete events.

[00:08:53] You’re not trying to choose the tool that you’re going to work with while you’re working

[00:08:57] with it, but instead you choose the tool and then go and work with it.

[00:09:02] Thanks so much for listening to this episode.

[00:09:04] I hope you enjoyed this discussion, and if you did, I’d encourage you to join the Developer

[00:09:09] Tea Discord.

[00:09:11] You can join totally free today, and there’s always great conversation happening there.

[00:09:18] Thanks again for listening, and until next time, enjoy your tea.

Visão de gráfico