We know from behavioural and neuro-science that our brains struggle with information overload. Timothy Wilson, a Professor of Psychology, estimates our brains receive over 11 million inputs – any of the data or stimuli we receive through our five senses - per second, when they can only consciously process 40. Moreover, when we multi-task, this falls even lower.
The Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman points out that our brains evolved so that most of our decision-making is an automatic, unreflected process reliant upon shortcuts and biases. This is useful if you’re in the wilderness, instinctively running away as a rustling leaf or moving shadow hint at a predator, but less so in the modern workplace.