Do you feel like you can never, ever, get to the end of your to-do list?
Are you finding it increasingly impossible to balance life and work despite all the great advice your social feeds and podcasts provide? Well, you are not alone.
Nearly one in four Australian workers report feeling overloaded at work due to high job pressure, and over 34% say they are currently experiencing burnout, with family responsibilities a major contributing factor. Among working parents, the strain is even greater: more than four in five (84%) feel the strain of juggling work, parenting, and life responsibilities, and around three-quarters report significant stress or guilt balancing caregiving with work.
Consider just how difficult reaching and engaging Australians has therefore become – even when the message is positive and the benefits of change clearly evident.
A common condition of contemporary life
Cognitive overload occurs when the demands on attention, memory, and decision-making exceed our limited mental capacity.
In modern life, this is increasingly common. Constant notifications, information-dense environments, time pressure, and frequent task switching keep people in a state of ongoing mental strain.
Behavioural science shows that when cognitive resources are depleted, performance declines, stress increases, and people default to automatic rather than reflective thinking.
Cognitive load directly affects cognitive availability; that is, the mental ‘space’ people have to notice, process, and act on new information.
Even if someone has the ability or intention to change, high cognitive load reduces their availability in the moment. Messages can go unnoticed, represent too much effort, or fail to be retained.
As a result, timing and context become just as important as content.
Impact on cognitive bias
Under high cognitive load, people rely more heavily on behavioural biases and mental shortcuts.
Decision fatigue increases avoidance and procrastination, while confirmation bias and anchoring shape how information is interpreted. Status quo bias and loss aversion make change feel riskier, and present bias drives preference for immediate comfort over long-term benefit.
These biases are not flaws; rather, they are adaptive responses to limited cognitive capacity.
So, how can we address cognitive overload for behaviour change?
Nudging and choice architecture can help
Nudging and choice architecture work by aligning decisions with human cognitive limits.
Simplifying choices, setting beneficial defaults, reducing friction, and highlighting salient information all help to lower cognitive effort.
Timely prompts, social proof, and immediate feedback help cut through overload and support action.
By designing for high cognitive load, nudges increase the likelihood that messages are noticed, understood, and acted upon, even when mental bandwidth is scarce.
If you want to reach someone with a prompt to do something different – via a campaign, a report, or perhaps a brochure – consider their cognitive availability and load. The ask might seem simple, but – to an overloaded mind – it can feel immense.
The job of behaviour change design and communication is to reduce pressure and guide decision-making by presenting information at the time and place it is most likely to be received. And, to not ask too much (at least initially) of the target audience. Give them steps and time to take them.
