Cognitive Load Theory: How Less Thinking Helps You Think Better

“Our brains aren’t bad at thinking — they’re just bad at thinking about too many things at once.”

What Is Cognitive Load Theory (CLT)?

Imagine you’re trying to fix a bug in a React app while context-switching between Teams messages, Jira tickets, and CI build failures. That’s not productivity. That’s your brain slowly melting.

Cognitive Load Theory explains why this happens.

CLT is about how your brain processes new information using working memory — the mental workspace where all the magic happens. But here’s the twist: it’s small. Like, thimble-sized small. Only a few things can fit at a time.

Developed by psychologist John Sweller in the late ’80s, CLT tells us why some dev tasks feel like a flow state, and others feel like trying to deploy to production during a standup.

The Three Kinds of Load

Not all mental effort is bad — but not all of it is helpful either. CLT breaks it down into three types:

1. Intrinsic Load

This is the essential difficulty of what you’re learning. Debugging a failed regression test? Learning Kubernetes? Naturally tough, but necessary. You can’t eliminate intrinsic load — but you can break it into smaller, more manageable chunks.

2. Extraneous Load

This is the unnecessary strain — the clutter, distractions, and poor learning environments. Think unclear documentation, confusing variable names, or switching between five tabs. It adds no value — it just drains bandwidth.

3. Germane Load

This is the productive effort — the mental energy used to make sense of concepts, link ideas, and form long-term understanding. Like drawing system diagrams, or refactoring a gnarly function to improve clarity. You want this kind of load.

Bottom line?

• Keep intrinsic load digestible
• Minimize extraneous load
• Maximize germane load

That’s the recipe for effective learning.

When Too Much Is Just… Too Much

You’re onboarding to a new codebase. You’ve got:

• 10 microservices
• 3 different tools
• An incomplete Confluence doc
• And a colleague on Teams saying “it’s easy once you get it”

Suddenly, you’re not just lost — you’re doubting your career choices.

That’s cognitive overload. Not because the codebase is inherently bad — but because too many cognitive threads are being pulled at once.

What Actually Helps

Cognitive load can’t be avoided — but it can be shaped:

• Segment tasks: One JIRA ticket at a time. One bug at a time. Multitasking isn’t heroic — it’s harmful.
• Reduce noise: Close those unused tabs. Mute that Teams channel. Use tools like Notion or Obsidian to offload mental RAM.
• Chunk knowledge: Learning how HTTP status codes work? Don’t memorize all of them. First, understand their structure: 1xx = Info, 2xx = Success, 3xx = Redirects, etc. Grouping makes memory sticky.
• Draw diagrams: Seriously, pen and paper still win. If you can sketch it, you probably understand it.
• Revisit later: Some concepts feel impossible at first glance. Sleep on them. Return tomorrow. Let germane load do its magic.

You’re not dumb. You’re likely just overloaded.

Closing Curtains

The next time learning feels like swimming in glue, ask yourself: Is this hard because it’s hard — or because I’m carrying too much at once?

Remember: cognitive capacity is finite. Use it wisely. Respect it often.