Cognitive Load vs. Workload: Why Simplicity Wins When Everything Changes
Something comes up regularly in my conversations with senior leaders. They describe their week and it sounds relentless. Back-to-back meetings, a full inbox, decisions stacking up, a team that needs direction. And when I ask them what the hardest part is, they rarely say "too much to do." More often, they say something like, "I just can't think clearly anymore."
That is not a workload problem. That is a cognitive load problem. And until we understand the difference, we keep solving for the wrong thing.
The difference between doing too much and thinking too hard
Workload is the volume and intensity of tasks assigned to you. It is measurable. You can see it in the calendar, the task list, the deadlines. Cognitive load is something else entirely. It is the mental effort required to make sense of everything, to process information, to decide, to coordinate, to anticipate. You can have a manageable workload and still be cognitively exhausted. The tasks are not always the problem. The system around the tasks often is.
Researchers distinguish between different types of cognitive load. There is the inherent complexity of the work itself, which is unavoidable. And then there is the mental effort caused by how work is organised: unclear priorities, fragmented information, decisions that sit unresolved, processes that require constant interpretation. That second type does not have to exist. It is the noise generated by systems that have not been designed with human capacity in mind.
A 2025 integrative review in Frontiers in Cognition found a strong, consistent link between high cognitive load and burnout across multiple studies and settings. That is a significant finding. But what strikes me about it is what it implies. Burnout, in many cases, is not caused by the work itself. It is caused by everything layered on top of it.
Thinking versus reflecting
A while back I shared that I had taken a break. Not to think. But to reflect.
There is a real difference between the two, and it matters. Thinking is about doing. Solving. Planning. We do it constantly, often without noticing, and the world rewards us handsomely for it. Reflection is slower. It is about pausing to make sense of things. And it is where the insight lives.
For me, reflection might be a quiet moment on a walk. Looking back at a meeting and asking what went well, what did not, what I actually learned. It does not have to be formal or take long. But it requires intention. Giving yourself space to grow, not just to keep going.
Research from MHFA England highlights that 69% of UK employees say their manager has the biggest influence on their mental health, more than their own doctor or partner. That places something important in the hands of leaders. And it asks a question worth sitting with: what kind of presence are you bringing, and are you doing enough to protect it?
A number that should give us pause
Research estimates that people make somewhere between 33,000 and 35,000 decisions every day, with roughly half of those work-related. Most are unconscious, but they still draw on the same cognitive reserves. Every notification: do I respond now or later? Every ambiguous request: what is really being asked here? Every meeting without a clear purpose: why am I here and what am I supposed to contribute?
The cumulative effect of that is decision fatigue. And decision fatigue does not announce itself. It arrives quietly, as procrastination, or impatience, or a tendency to default to whatever feels easiest rather than what is right. For leaders, it can quietly transform someone who is capable and considered into someone who reacts, avoids, or over-delegates, simply because the tank is empty.
A 2026 review of executive decision-making published in the International Journal for Multidisciplinary Research noted that high decision frequency and time pressure are core drivers of degraded strategic judgment in senior leaders. Not because those leaders are not capable, but because the system is consuming capacity faster than it can be restored.
The scale of this in the UK is significant. The Health and Safety Executive's most recent data shows that around 964,000 workers in Great Britain experienced work-related stress, depression, or anxiety in 2024/25. CIPD research consistently identifies workload pressure and poor management of change as the leading causes of stress-related absence in UK organisations. These are not figures about people who lack resilience. They are figures about systems that are asking too much.
The question leaders rarely ask
A few years ago, I cleared out my loft. Practically speaking, nothing had changed about the space itself. The same walls, the same roof, the same floor. But I had filled it, over time, with things I no longer needed, or things I was keeping "just in case," or things that simply did not have a better home. Once I cleared it, the space felt completely different. More usable. More intentional. The work required to access what I actually needed dropped dramatically.
I was working with a client recently who had inherited a team that was exhausted and disengaged. Theirinstinct was to reduce workload, to take things off people's plates. That helped to some extent. But what helped more was something subtler. They clarified who was responsible for which decisions. They reduced the number of people copied on every email. They replaced three weekly update meetings with a single shared document that people could check when they needed to. The workload barely changed. The cognitive load dropped significantly.
I have also written before about the resistance people feel during organisational change. Often, that resistance is not about the change itself. It is about the accumulating weight of ambiguity, of not knowing what is expected, of having to navigate too many unknowns at once. When people say they cannot cope with change, they are sometimes saying they cannot cope with the cognitive overhead that poorly communicated, poorly designed change creates.
What this might mean in practice
I want to be careful not to turn this into a prescriptive framework. Every organisation is different, and I am more interested in the questions this raises than in offering a checklist.
If your team is under-performing or disengaging, is the issue the volume of work, or is it the mental overhead of operating in an unclear, fragmented environment? If you are consistently exhausted despite not working excessive hours, what is consuming your cognitive bandwidth that is not strictly necessary? If you could remove one layer of ambiguity, one unnecessary escalation, one process that no one has questioned in years, what would it be?
McKinsey's research on workplace health interventions makes a compelling case that the most effective interventions for burnout are not individual coping strategies but changes to the environment itself: job autonomy, workload clarity, and the quality of leadership. Deloitte's 2026 Global Human Capital Trends similarly highlights that organisations navigating rapid change need to actively manage decision complexity and information flows if they want to sustain performance without burning people out.
Simplicity, in this context, is not a soft option. It is a strategic one. And in a world where the pace of change is accelerating, where hybrid working continues to blur boundaries, and where every tool, system, and AI update adds another layer of decision-making, the leaders who understand this will have a meaningful advantage.
The goal is not to think less. It is to make sure the thinking we do is in service of what actually matters.
If this resonates with you or with the challenges facing your organisation, I would be glad to have a conversation. You can find out more about my work at www.mikericeconsulting.com
References
1. Health and Safety Executive, "Work-related stress, depression or anxiety statistics in Great Britain, 2025": https://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/index.htm
2. CIPD, "Health and Wellbeing at Work" (annual survey): https://www.cipd.org/uk/knowledge/reports/health-wellbeing-work/
3. Frontiers in Cognition, "An Integrative Review of Decision Fatigue" (2025): https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/cognition/articles/10.3389/fcogn.2025.1719312/full
4. International Journal for Multidisciplinary Research, "Decision Fatigue in Senior Executive Leaders" (2026): https://www.ijfmr.com/papers/2026/1/67240.pdf
5. Korn Ferry, "6 Ways to Handle Decision Fatigue": https://www.kornferry.com/insights/this-week-in-leadership/6-ways-to-handle-decision-fatigue
6. McKinsey Health Institute, "Workplace health interventions: From potential to practical": https://www.mckinsey.com/mhi/our-insights/from-potential-to-practical-fueling-performance-with-proven-workplace-health-interventions
7. Deloitte, "Global Human Capital Trends 2026": https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/talent/human-capital-trends.html