🧠 Brain Science Tuesday: Cognitive Load vs. Intelligence

Jessica Cosci

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3d • 🧠Mindset & Wellness

Have you ever been learning something new in AI and suddenly thought...

“Maybe I’m just not good at this.”

You have ChatGPT open.

There’s a tutorial playing.

You're jumping around from one community to another trying to watch all the lessons.

There are words like APIs, tokens, context windows, agents, automations and MCPs flying around.

And eventually your brain just says...

NOPE. We’re done here. 🤣

I hope you realize that 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 isn’t telling you anything about your intelligence.

It's actually more likely cognitive overload.

🧠 Your working memory can only hold and process a limited amount of information at one time.

When you're trying to learn a new AI tool, understand unfamiliar terminology, remember where buttons are AND figure out what prompt to write at the same time, your working memory can get overloaded.

And once that happens, even relatively simple instructions can feel confusing.

🧪So Here's Your Brain Science Experiment

The next time AI starts feeling like too much, reduce what’s sitting on your mental "plate".

Pick 𝗢𝗡𝗘 thing you want AI to help you do...literally set all the other stuff aside, close the computer or shut down the extra open windows, and give yourself permission to learn only that one thing.

👉🏻 What tends to overload YOUR mental plate when you're learning AI?

Too many tools? New terminology? Long tutorials? Not knowing where to start? Something else?

I wouldn't be surprised if we see a lot of similar responses in the comments 😊

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🧠 Brain Science Tuesday: Cognitive Load vs. Intelligence