Cognitive Overload has Tangible Performance Impacts
Drawing on earlier laboratory studies, Roy F. Baumeister, Kathleen D. Vohs and Dianne M. Tice argued in Current Directions in Psychological Science that self-control functions like a muscle— using it on one task temporarily makes it harder to exercise control on the next. They applied this theory to all the micro-decisions a worker might have to make in a day, suggesting that the avoidable ones consume mental effort and could reduce performance on later tasks. While they do acknowledge that motivation can temporarily counteract this effect, for an organization any known drain on a leader’s performance should be considered unwelcome.
In other words: The more effort people expend on micro decisions they could offload to someone else, the less attention they may have left for their core competencies. Consequently, more successful organizations are those that alleviate unnecessary cognitive loads for their high performers.
