Hey there, let's be real.

You've got a lot going on.

Juggling work, family, social life, and endless tasks can feel overwhelming.

I'm here as a friendly neighborhood psychologist to give you a bit of tough love with compassion.

Your brain has limits and pushing it constantly isn't the solution.

Cognitive load theory or CLT for short offers a way to work smarter, not harder.

Let's explore how understanding your brand's capacity can transform how you

learn, work, and manage daily life. Welcome back to savvy psychologist. I'm your host,

Dr. Monica Johnson. Every week on this show, I'll help you face life challenges with evidence-based

approaches, a sympathetic

ear, and zero judgment. Cognitive load theory developed by psychologist John Sweller is built

on a simple premise. Your brain's working memory can only hold a few pieces of information at

once, much like having too many tabs open on your

browser. CLT focuses on three types of mental effort. The first is intrinsic load. This is the

natural difficulty of a task. For example, learning a new language is intrinsically

challenging because you need to remember new vocabulary, grammar rules, and pronunciation all at

once. There's also extraneous load. This is unnecessary information that complicates learning. For instance, trying to learn from a

poorly structured website with too many ads and unrelated links, adds extraneous load. And finally,

germane load, the mental effort to build and retain knowledge. An example would be practicing math

problems repeatedly to understand and remember the method for solving them. Imagine learning to

drive. Balancing steering, braking, and observing traffic is intrinsically challenging.

Now add a confusing manual and you're dealing with extraneous load.

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