Hacking Your Head - Managing Information Overload (45 mix)

Jo Pearce
@jdpearce jopearce.co.uk
Non-binary (they/them), developer and science womble.
Hacking Your Head
Managing Information Overload

Hacking Your Head : Managing Information Overload
“Making good use of the things that we ﬁnd,
Things that the everyday folk leave behind” 🎶🎶

All the electronics around you poisoning the airwaves.
Information overload!
But we still have all this shit, because
we can't live without it…
Technological
f***ing civilisation!

“Surviving the collision with tomorrow…”

“…there are discoverable limits to the amount of
change that the human organism can absorb”
“…without ﬁrst determining these limits we may
submit masses of [people] to demands they
simply cannot tolerate.”
Alvin Tofﬂer
(Future Shock, 1970)

Information Overload
Anxiety
Hostility
Senseless Violence
Physical Illness
Depression
Apathy

Orientation Response
&
Adaptive Reaction

Orientation Response
Pupils dilate…
Hearing becomes more acute…
Muscles tense…
Blood rushes to the head…
Breathing and heart rate alter…

Adaptive Reaction
Increased metabolism
Raised blood pressure
Energy reserves are run down

Stress!

A soldier falls asleep “while a storm of machine gun bullets
splattered around him” not due to physical tiredness, but a
“sense of overpowering apathy”.
Soldiers became hypersensitive and would “hit the dirt” at the
slightest stimuli, increasingly showing anxiety and anger at the
slightest inconvenience.
The effects of overload in WWII

The overwhelming ofﬁce?

“…the [orientation response] occurs not
merely in response to simple sensory
inputs.
It happens when we come across novel
ideas or information as well…”
Alvin Tofﬂer
(Future Shock, 1970)

20 million words of new technical
information are recorded each day.
Jackson, W. (2001). Information overload and managerial roles: A naturalistic study of engineers.
At 1000 words/minute, 8 hours/day this is six weeks of reading.

After reading the information for that one day
you would have fallen behind by 5.5 years!
Jackson, W. (2001). Information overload and managerial roles: A naturalistic study of engineers.

Information Fatigue Syndrome
Poor Concentration Hurry Sickness
Pervasive Hostility
Stress
Depression
Lowered Immune Response
“Burn out”
Ruff, J. (2002). Information Overload: Causes, Symptoms and Solutions.
Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Learning Innovations Laboratory (LILA)

There is always a lot to learn
Information overload is a learning problem!

How do we learn?

Working Memory Long Term Memory

Working Memory
Processes Information
Active Thinking & Learning
Visual & auditory subcomponents

Long Term Memory
Enormous Capacity
Cannot engage in thinking or learning processes

Results of learning
Knowledge Retrieval

Attention
Elaboration-Rehearsal
Encoding
The Learning Process

Attention is critical to processing information.
“In 1972 an Eastern Airlines ﬂight crashed…as a result of cockpit distractions.
The crew became so preoccupied with a malfunction that no one noticed the
altimeter reading or warnings until it was too late…”

We can help focus attention with cues and signals.
e.g.
“It is important to note that…”
Bullet points!
Paragraphs and Headings
Visual indicators
Signalling language -

Attention & The Modality Effect
👁
#🔊
+

Elaboration-Rehearsal helps promote Automaticity.
Writing
Reading
Speaking
Skills that become automatic require little or no
processing in the working memory. Such as :

Chunks and Recoding
0820987908
0123456789
Numbers

Chunks and Recoding
ATCJEPWMFP
PUZZLEMENT
Characters

Chunks and Recoding
0820987908 0123456789
ATCJEPWMFP PUZZLEMENT

Chunks and Recoding
Compression algorithms for your memory!

Schemas
Multiple Elements Single Schema

Novice Learner Schemas

Experienced Learner Schemas

De Groot (1965)
Chess players were presented with brief presentations of boards
from actual games. After removing the board, they were asked to
reconstruct the positions.
Chess masters recalled the positions with 91% accuracy
compared to the 43% accuracy of less expert players.

Understanding Our Limitations

The Magical Number 7 ± 2
(George A. Miller, 1956)

Working Memory
Information In

Overloaded Working Memory
Information In

The Magical (but ﬁnite) Number X?

George A. Miller
“…the point was that 7 was a limit for the discrimination of
unidimensional stimuli (pitches, loudness, brightness, etc.) and also a
limit for immediate recall, neither of which has anything to do with a
person's capacity to comprehend printed text.”

Schema=
Novice Experienced

How do we work with our
limitations?

Cognitive Science 12 (2), June 1988John Sweller
“Cognitive load during problem solving:
Effects on learning”.

Cognitive Load Theory

Defines cognitive load as the total amount of mental
effort being used in the working memory

Describes a universal set of evidence-based principles for
managing cognitive load that lead to efficient learning.
What is Cognitive Load Theory?

Total cognitive load is comprised of three types:
Intrinsic Load
Extraneous (Irrelevant) Load
Germane (Relevant) Load

Imposed by the inherent complexity of the task being performed.
e.g.
Learning to juggle 10 balls is inherently more
complex than learning to juggle 3.
Intrinsic Load

Imposed by the inherent complexity of the task being performed.
Manage by breaking large tasks into smaller ones!
Intrinsic Load

Leverage the concept of chunking.
Intrinsic Load

⁉
⁉
Intrinsic Load
Beware Dunning-Kruger syndrome…

Intrinsic Load
Epic
User Story User StoryUser Story
TaskTaskTask TaskTaskTaskTaskTaskTask
Agile hierarchy

General relativity can be used in orbital
mechanics…
Intrinsic Load
Simpler Models
…but generally, even NASA uses Newton’s
laws of motion because they are easier to
work with!

Intrinsic Load
Analogical Problem Solving
Gick & Holyoak (1980)
A patient with a malignant stomach tumour can only be saved by a
special kind of ray.
However, a ray strong enough to destroy the tumour will also destroy
healthy tissue, whereas a ray that does not harm healthy tissue will be
too weak to destroy the tumour.

Intrinsic Load
Gick & Holyoak (1980)
A general wants to capture a fortress, but the roads to it are mined,
making it too dangerous for the entire army to march along one of
them.
However, the mines are set so that small numbers of troops could
pass over safely. The general had his entire army converge at the
same time on the fortress by walking along several different roads.

Intrinsic Load
Abstractions can reduce intrinsic load and enable insight
Good analogies can aid understanding
Bad analogies may hinder understanding
But don’t take the analogy too far…

Imposed by distractions or tasks which are irrelevant to the goal.
Coping with a loud environment
Unfamiliarity with a development tool
Unreadable code
e.g.

Try working somewhere quieter…
…or wearing headphones?

Reduce the number of tools or libraries to a minimum…

What is a paragraph? Writing of any length requires subdivision into a number of points or
stages, and these stages are expressed in a paragraph. Paragraphs, whether denoted by a
new line and an indentation or a line break, provide a structure for your writing. The end of a
paragraph represents a signiﬁcant pause in the ﬂow of the writing. This pause is a signpost to
the reader, indicating that the writing is about to move on to a different stage. Each paragraph
should deal with one idea or aspect of an idea, and it should be clear to the reader what this
main idea is. How long should a paragraph be? There is no absolute rule: very short or long
paragraphs can work when used by an experienced writer. However, as a guideline,
paragraphs should usually be no less that 2 or 3 sentences long and there should be 2 or 3
paragraphs per page of A4. The length of a paragraph depends on the idea being treated,
but if a paragraph is shorter than 2 or 3 sentences, check to see if it is not really part of the
previous or next paragraph. If your paragraph is longer than half a page, check to see if the
idea would be better explained in two or more paragraphs. When do I start a new paragraph?
Start a new paragraph for each new point or stage in your writing. When you begin a
paragraph you should always be aware of the main idea being expressed in that paragraph.
Be alert to digressions or details that belong either in a different paragraph or need a
paragraph of their own.
Paragraphs of code

What is a paragraph?
Writing of any length requires subdivision into a number of points or stages, and these stages
are expressed in a paragraph. Paragraphs, whether denoted by a new line and an indentation
or a line break, provide a structure for your writing. The end of a paragraph represents a
signiﬁcant pause in the ﬂow of the writing. This pause is a signpost to the reader, indicating
that the writing is about to move on to a different stage. Each paragraph should deal with one
idea or aspect of an idea, and it should be clear to the reader what this main idea is.
How long should a paragraph be?
There is no absolute rule: very short or long paragraphs can work when used by an
experienced writer. However, as a guideline, paragraphs should usually be no less that 2 or 3
sentences long and there should be 2 or 3 paragraphs per page of A4. The length of a
paragraph depends on the idea being treated, but if a paragraph is shorter than 2 or 3
sentences, check to see if it is not really part of the previous or next paragraph. If your
paragraph is longer than half a page, check to see if the idea would be better explained in two
or more paragraphs.
When do I start a new paragraph?
Start a new paragraph for each new point or stage in your writing. When you begin a
paragraph you should always be aware of the main idea being expressed in that paragraph.
Be alert to digressions or details that belong either in a different paragraph or need a
paragraph of their own.
Paragraphs of code

Paragraphs of code

Paragraphs of code
Use appropriate whitespace and line breaks as cues…

“Code tells you how, comments tell you why”.
Jeff Atwood
@codinghorror

Good comments signal that all is not as
straightforward as it might appear…
⁉

Maintain consistency without the load of learning a style-guide…

Reducing irrelevant load focuses attention

Beneﬁcial load imposed by tasks which are relevant to an overall goal.
Repetition and context variation give us the skills to
apply knowledge in a wider variety of situations.
Essential for complex schema creation

Repetition = Practice

Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve (1885)
Leads to spaced repetition…

Context Variation
Tree?

How about a different context?

Goal : Understand existing codebase.
👍

Another context?

Goal : Self-directed Learning
👍

Develop more ﬂexible schemas through pairing…
This can leverage the modality effect…

Elaborate and rehearse existing schemas
Encode new information
Promote automaticity

Information fatigue syndrome is a clear and
present danger in software development.

We constantly need to learn…

Cognitive psychology can tell
us how we learn...

But it also tells us that there are
limits to our ability to learn…

A set of universal, evidence-based principles…

Manage
Intrinsic
Load
Increase
Relevant
Load
+
Reduce
Irrelevant
Load
+
= Efﬁcient Learning & Increased Productivity

Jo Pearce
Non-binary (they/them), developer and science womble.
Thanks!
Any questions?

Bibliography
“Future Shock”
- Alvin Tofﬂer
“Efﬁciency in Learning: Evidence-Based Guidelines to Manage Cognitive Load”
- Ruth Colvin Clark; Frank Nguyen; John Sweller
“Building Expertise: Cognitive Methods for Training and Performance Improvement”
- Ruth Colvin Clark
“Cognitive Psychology”
- Michael Eysenck; Mark T. Keane

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