It’s a typical Tuesday morning in Newton, Massachusetts, where Sam and Cris live with their young son Dylan and two cats. Typical because Dylan is adamantly resisting getting dressed for preschool, and typical because Cris knows he’s already running late and will need to stop to get gas in the car because it’s nearly empty.

Already this morning, since they woke up from their cell phones’ alarms, they’ve dealt with the morning flurry of notifications — a weather app says there’s a chance of rain later, and Cris’s sleep tracker tells him his REM sleep last night was shorter than usual. Then there’s the news alerts, which seem to be a never-ending series of things to be concerned or angry about. Sam’s quick scroll through a friend’s social media gives her a fix of cute, sandwiched between barely relevant sponsored content. A quick look at the calendar and a few replies shot off, all before getting dressed. Then it’s down to the kitchen and an Alexa with its reminders to buy more trash bags and that a delivery will arrive today.

Now at the gas station, Cris taps his card to start the pump while trying to ignore the relentless yammer of 10-second content clips and ads coming from the gas pump screen. On the T, Sam studies her phone as she rides, doing her best to avoid the trolley’s distractions while her earbuds give her a loosely strung together sequence of songs punctuated by awkward ad breaks.

Cris, meanwhile, drops Dylan at his daycare, and drives the rest of his 40-minute trip to work. His phone is clipped on the dashboard so Google Maps can help him keep an eye on traffic, but he can’t help but notice the notifications accumulating, one after the next. He resists checking while driving, but he knows they’re lurking, waiting.

So why is there a story about a couple of young parents in Boston in this learning and development (L&D) magazine?

Because this scenario is typical. Specifics will change, but the underlying truth is this: before your learners connect to work or walk in the workplace door, they’ve already been subjected to a barrage of inputs. Each interaction or piece of information is individually small, but each requires their attention, evaluation and processing: Do I need to do something? Is it important? Can I ignore it?

Despite being armed with the same human brain our species has had for many hundreds of years, we exist in a society where the ambient cognitive load has grown immensely. UC San Diego researchers Roger Bohn and James Short found in 2012 that the average person consumes 34 gigabytes of information on a typical day. This includes about 12 hours per person, per day, of information consumed outside of the workplace. That’s more information than a person would have consumed in an entire lifetime a half-millennia ago.

For L&D professionals, it’s important to recognize that starting point as you try to develop a strategy to engage your learners with new information.

The Myth of Multitasking in the Workplace

The challenge is amplified when we consider the on-the-job information processing and attention demands made of the typical worker. Especially in an environment where workers are asked to do more with less or asked to absorb new tasks because of an expectation that new artificial intelligence (AI) tools will help them do more, faster. The reality is the L&D professional is truly fighting an uphill battle for learner attention.

Multitasking, once a prized workplace ability, is now increasingly understood to be a misnomer. Every task someone begins is done in a specific context: What is the goal, what are the rules, what has been done and what needs to be done? When switching between tasks, there is an additional effort required to switch from one task to another. A review of research led by researchers at the University of Michigan suggests there are measurable “switch costs” when moving between tasks.

In another study of performance in the high-consequence environment of a hospital emergency department, researchers found increasing task switching in the workplace created an even larger proportional decrease in productivity. In other words, performance is slowed and errors increase, because the same task requires more mental effort.

This mental load is a factor alongside what psychologists understand to be the brain’s ability to keep multiple items in the mind at once. This type of memory is called “working memory” and has been the subject of extensive research in the past seven decades. It tells us most people can meaningfully hold about four things in their working memory at a time, though some estimates are as high as seven. Whatever the number, the dynamic is straightforward: At the limit of your working memory, when you try to remember a new item, you risk forgetting one of the others.

3 Ways L&D Can Compete With a Cluttered Mind

We’ve spent some time exploring the challenge. Let’s turn now to what you can do.

1. Set Expectations With Learners and Colleagues

Firstly, L&D must be aware of the problem and be an active counselor of our colleagues. For many years, there have been discussions between line managers and training leads, balancing the need for a training session against the direct and indirect cost (learners’ time away from their job, for example). Given what we now understand about task switching, cognitive load and working memory, the conversation can and should shift to understanding the information demands experienced by the learner and making proactive decisions to make cognitive space for learning.

This can be as simple as setting expectations (such as helping ensure learners don’t feel they must juggle other obligations during a training session) or making structural changes (even if temporary) to enable learning, like building in a set-aside time for learning activities into a department’s calendar every quarter.

The reality is that many managers won’t make the extra time for learning unless they understand how and why what you’re suggesting is an important enabler of success. Advocating and educating about cognition becomes an important task for you as the expert L&D advisor.

2. Design Training With Cognitive Load Theory in Mind

Secondly, consider how your learning assets and experiences contribute to your learners’ cognitive load. Cognitive Load Theory, as coined by educational psychologist John Sweller, outlines three categories of mental load: intrinsic load (the inherent difficulty of the task), extraneous load (unnecessary or competing demands in the learner’s environment), and germane load (the learner’s effort devoted to learning and understanding).

In many cases, L&D professionals focus our efforts on presenting material clearly, in a structured way, which addresses the learner’s intrinsic load. We also have expectations (and may develop external reward structures) to support the learner’s “engagement,” which often is equated with their germane load — their effort. Many in L&D have seen how effective microlearning assets can be, and this is completely aligned with this model, as short, coherent segments with a clear, singular learning objective are one concrete step that can reduce the learner’s extraneous load.

In practice, this facet of Cognitive Load Theory can be applied to create learning experiences that anticipate the inherent limitations of working memory, improving experiences and outcomes.

3. Upskill in Judgment and Decision Making

Thirdly, L&D can build on the understanding that task switching is a choice and a learnable skill. Research led by Laura Broeker at the German Sport University in Cologne suggests managing multiple tasks through the lens of active “judgment and decision making” (JDM) may present a path to reduce the disruption when switching tasks — a human skill that can be developed with the support of L&D.

If we develop support for workers’ active prioritization of tasks and help develop a workplace culture in which individuals are empowered to make decisions to prioritize, we can help equip workers to take an active role managing their information intake and tailoring their focus.

Enable Learning in a Distracted World

The information demands our learners face are unlikely to be reduced. The task before us is to advocate for and help create the space and structure necessary to enable learning and the resulting and desired behavior change. With this, the impetus falls to us to help our colleagues understand these cognitive frameworks and why we are doing what we are doing. It’s a path that can empower us as a stronger, more strident ally in favor of performance outcomes.