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Are you overwhelmed at work but can’t pinpoint why?
Discover how “thought load”—not just workload—may be sabotaging productivity, innovation, and well-being in the tech-driven workplace. Kate O’Neill sits down with Liane Davey—the brilliant mind behind the new book Thought Load—to unpack why work isn’t working for so many of us.
Topics covered:
- The concept of thought load and its core components
- Differences between workload, cognitive load, and thought load
- How technology and AI impact cognitive and emotional burdens
- The productivity trap and measuring outcomes vs. outputs
- Effects of constant digital interruptions on attention and energy
- The role of feedback and judgment in corporate settings
- Emotional and cognitive impacts of always-on workplace culture
- Energy reserves as an operational constraint
- Organizational interventions to reduce thought load
- The outcome of conflict debt in high thought load environments
- Designing safer, more productive workplace conflict
- Tech tools as both solution and source of mental drain
- Hope for more innovative and present organizations
Connect with Liane Davey
Website
Instagram
LinkedIn
Episode Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction and background
00:43 – What is “thought load”?
02:15 – Equation: Cognitive and emotional demands over energy reserves
03:38 – The neuroscience of “treacherous triad”
04:05 – Why workload and thought load are not the same
05:22 – AI’s surprising effects on thought load
06:27 – Rethinking productivity: The activity-output-outcome framework
09:08 – Technology’s role in multiplying and draining cognitive demand
10:30 – Why managers reward “responsiveness”—and why that’s a trap
13:14 – When tech reduces vs. increases cognitive demands
15:57 – Tech as an emotional burden amplifier
17:02 – The misunderstanding of feedback vs. judgment
18:54 – Social pain and at-scale judgment in digital workplaces
23:20 – The operational significance of energy reserves
28:06 – High-leverage interventions for organizational energy
33:36 – Conflict debt as an outcome of high thought load
35:20 – Making conflict safer and more productive
40:15 – What a tech humanist organization could look like
42:19 – Closing thoughts and hope for the future
43:26 – Book release and where to connect
