You've heard the saying a million times: If you want something done, give it to a busy person. There's a certain logic to it. Productive people tend to manage time better. But you know who coined that bit of wisdom? Ben Franklin. Our relationship to productivity has changed since the 1700s. Tasks that once took several hours can now be completed in seconds.


We find ourselves in a situation where every technological development demands an update to our own biological operating systems just so we can keep pace. This means our brains are constantly jumping from one task to another, splintering our neural resources in ways we weren't necessarily built for. All these inputs can actually drive productivity down. It can lead to information overload.


Here's cognitive psychologist Daniel Levitin:
"Most of us don't cope very well with information overload in the workplace because, in the middle of it, we're not really aware that it's happening. And we feel as though if we take five minutes off, we're going to fall seven minutes behind."


Here's how it starts: Your boss sends an email asking if you can join a department head meeting this afternoon. "Can you put together a short PowerPoint with some data analytics?" No problem. You fire up the program and start sifting through hundreds of presentation layouts and color schemes. Then you see a note from the project lead: "Hey, what's up with those files from yesterday? Can you send out a link?" Then your work BFF rolls her chair over to tell you what's just happened to her: "It'll just take a second." Just as she's wrapping up the story, you get a phone call from a team member: "Did you see the latest email from marketing?"


Phew. I'm stressed just thinking about all of that. Or, said another way, I think I'm feeling the effects of cortisol.


Cortisol is the stress hormone. It's part of the fight or flight system. It's toxic in large doses. It shuts down your immune system, your digestive system, and cellular repair that's normally going on. Cellular housekeeping. The problem is that with information, that has become an onslaught for us. Information overload is defined as us being presented with or bombarded with more information than our brains can handle.


According to experts, there comes a point when our brain stops seeing a list of tasks to simply check off. Instead, it sees a threat, possibly several. Maybe the threat is scarcity—not enough time, not enough energy—or it's the threat of failing or of disappointing others. These threats can feel overwhelming, and when we're overwhelmed, we freeze up. This type of workplace paralysis may feel like a condition of our modern world, and in many ways, it is. But it's also a variation on the ancient human dilemma. That dilemma is the burden of choice. The anxiety of knowing our decisions matter and that our life is in our hands.


Understanding this anxiety was the holy grail for early 1900s French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. He noticed that for all the obvious benefits that came with more freedoms, happiness wasn't always one of them. Instead of relishing the opportunity for more choice and responsibility, people had a tendency to avoid making important decisions because they were scared of making the wrong one. Then they would pretend like they never had a real choice in the first place, a habit he called "mauvaise foi," or bad faith.


This observation led Sartre to suggest, "People often prefer a very limited, punishing regime rather than face the anxiety of freedom." It's not just post-Enlightenment philosophers who grappled with this paradox. You can find discussions of these very themes as far back as biblical stories, which is just to say we've been contending with the psychological underpinnings of workload paralysis for a very long time. The fact is choosing where to direct our attention is hard. That's "the anxiety of freedom," and it's even harder in an age of split-second decisions and daunting to-do lists.


Luckily, there are a few things we can do to guard against information overload. Take a walk, look at some art, and if you can, stop some of the flow of all that information.


The other thing we can do is impose some productivity time. Most things that we care about require concentration. Multitasking is a myth. You aren't really doing all these things at once because the brain doesn't work that way. You're rapidly shifting between them, and each of those shifts comes with a metabolic cost and burns up glucose. So, I put a sign on my door. I put my computer in do-not-disturb mode or focus mode for two hours at a stretch. And everybody knows you can't reach me during those times.


And here's a trick you might not know. If you're feeling paralyzed by the tasks ahead, take a very quick nap.


Naps are a way of hitting the reset button in your brain. And a 20-minute nap, even a 10- or 15-minute nap, if you can take a short nap, is equivalent to an extra 90 minutes of sleep the night before. It really does help reset.


In a way, the paralysis that comes with so much choice is a sign of progress. It's a good problem to have. You'd rather have too many choices than none at all. But managing them to stay productive requires more tools in our mental toolbox than generations before us needed in theirs.


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I think I'm feeling the effects of cortisol. 


(Crew member: Cortisol.)


Cortisol. Cortisol.


That's okay, you can just start...