Cognitive Load Quotes

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.

I think we are definitely suffering from an information overload, but I believe that there is going to be better and better ways of organizing that information and processing it so that it will enhance your daily life. I just think that technology and information, it's overwhelming at the moment, but it's really going to make life better.

As a general rule, moderate levels of arousal facilitate deployment of skills, whereas high arousal disrupts it. This is especially true of complex activities requiring intricate organization of behavior

I think people who multitask pay a huge price. They think they're being extra productive, and I think when you multitask so much you don't have time to think about anything deeply, you are giving the world an advantage you shouldn't do, and practically everybody is drifting into that mistake.

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.

If we should remember everything we would be as worse off as if we remembered nothing.

Learn it all, then forget it all.

When information is cheap, attention becomes expensive.

The typical American reports making about 70 [choices] in a typical day.

Attention is a limited resource, so pay attention to where you pay attention.

When you're thinking about something that you don't understand, you have a terrible, uncomfortable feeling called confusion... Now, is the confusion's because we're all some kind of apes that are kind of stupid working against this, trying to figure out [how] to put the two sticks together to reach the banana and we can't quite make it... So I always feel stupid. Once in a while, though, the sticks go together on me and I reach the banana.

People's minds are overloaded with information.

It's hard to get people to focus on one idea.

I think you spend 50 percent of your mental energy trying to defeat ad systems.

The actual writing time is a lot shorter than the thinking time.

The cure to information overload is more information.

There's not much point in getting any heavier... there's too many things to read and look at.

The eyes see not what is before them when the mind is intent on other matters.

I knew that I would know more dead people. The bodies pile up. Could there be a space in my memory for each of them, or would I forget a little of Alaska every day for the rest of my life?

So, baseball is probably more physical of the two mentally.

Complexity is not a cause of confusion. It is a result of it.

There is always more information than attention

Thinking is hard work, which is why you don't see many people doing it.

A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within ten seconds.