I think we need to take a serious look into the convergence of technology, rapid rate of cognitive processing and heuristics which is techniques we use to solve problems day to day. Our minds create mental shortcuts every day to help us make decisions which causes us to create some type of balance sheet due to our inability to put 100% focus on every single decision that has to be made every day. When our mind need to make an important decision, we slip into heuristic decision making due to the amount of mental load on your mind such as stress, fatigue, or just a need for over ambitious multitasking.
In a blog post by Peter North, he says that when we are overtired, mentally depleted our brain swithches automatically to it's less effortful (heuristic) mode; its just too difficult to crunch a lot of information and sort it intelligently if we literally lack the fuel for thinking.. We also default to our heuristic brain if we are under stress or time pressures or if we are trying to do too many things at one time. And our tendency to make mistakes as we multitask is a good illustration of our limits in doing so."
So, my theory is that if we consider the way we have to juggle the massive amounts of tasks, options, and information that we consume and perform on a daily basis, we need to take a serious look at how we think, focus, and process these decisions in order to be effective and drug-free knowledge workers.
