“I don’t have the bandwidth right now.”
A semi-modern saying, meaning “there isn’t the mental capacity available to deal with whatever it is that someone is trying to add on.”
While it’s very true that cognitive load is a drain on energy and can heavily compromise decision making skills (therefore impacting tasks that are already open), we also need to take a look around.
How we live, how we manage our time, how manage our devices and technology and even our entertainment all can heavily impact how much cognitive load we are under at any point in time.
It’s typically not that we can’t do more in a week, month or year, it’s usually that we can’t do more with our current number of open tasks and distractions.
Any opportunity to reduce cognitive load that isn’t helpful is one that is worth taking.
