Here it is halfway through August, and Iāve only been able to produce one resource email this month because Iāve been busy managing myĀ mental load. If youāve never heard the term, you can certainly guess the meaning. Our mental load can get heavy at times ā especially now that summer is ending, new school years are beginning, work initiatives are heating up, and unforeseen events continue to insert themselves into our daily lives.
Mental loads are those ongoing cognitive and emotional efforts required to manage tasks, relationships, and coordination at work and at home. Itās theĀ thinkingĀ work we do daily, routinely, maybe even unconsciously. āInvisible tasksā like getting kids to school, buying groceries, answering emails and tracking project next steps may not seem like a lot of effort ā until there is an accumulation ofĀ extra stuffĀ going on at work and at home.
Additionally, mental load is driven by āinvisible emotional efforts’ that involve shaping and managing the feelings and experiences of ourselves and others, especially when managing a family, employees, aging parents, a medical condition, or all of the above. When the load between work and home gets too heavy, it can affect relationships, physical health and mental well-being.
Most leaders measure workload the way most of us measure our ownāby hours, deadlines, and output. But research from the Harvard Business Review notes the result of a heavy mental load isn’t just busyness. It’s fragmented attention, slower decisions, and a quiet slide toward burnout. Ongoing or increasing mental load can also lead to added stress, anxiety and sleep deprivation. Over time, those health issues increase the risk of developing chronic disease.
Five Ways to Lighten the Mental Load For You and Your TeamĀ
1. š You can’t manage what no one can name. Build a moment into check-ins or retrospectives where people can actually articulate what’s filling their mental bandwidth, not just their task list. Once it’s named, it can be addressed.
2. š Encourage a written list or system for everything. Personal and professional, master a way to create a master list. Write it down, type it out, dictate it, visualize it. And then, create a short list for what truly needs attention today. The goal isn’t just organization. Itās also a way to free-up the mental space that gets used just holding it all in memory.
3. š¤ Delegate, discard, let go. Delegating isn’t just handing off a task. It’s also letting go of exactly how it gets done. And letting go of things that donāt really need to get done or done by you. At the team level, this means genuinely redesigning who owns what and taking away things that donāt add real value.
4. š š¼āā Set boundaries and hold them. Flexible work policies mean nothing if the unspoken expectation is round-the-clock responsiveness, or too much work to allow for flexibility for personal tasks. Leaders can define core work hours and encourage staff to stick-to real offline time. By incorporating the other 3 steps, they can lighten the mental load for themselves and their staff, especially during high-pressure stretches when invisible task can accumulate and collide.
5. āļø Model mental load balancing. People won’t believe they’re allowed to rest if their leaders never do. Take care of yourself. Hold the boundaries. Say no in front of your team sometimes. What you visibly do will always outweigh what any policy says.
Here are some additional resources lighten the mental load:Ā
š Read: The Invisible Work Draining Your Best Employees – A research-backed article from Harvard Business Review to help leaders manage mental load
š Review: Mental Load: What It Is and How to Manage It – Quick tips for how to lighten your mental load
š¤ Learn: Lighten Labās 8 Different Types of Mental Load – Take the free mental load assessment to help your team find the language for what they’re carrying
The mental load will never disappear completely for you and your team. But it can be seen, named, and shared more evenly. That shift alone changes everything.
Bringing your best self forward,
Loretta
P. S. We have spots available in our Self-Aware Leader Accelerator 3- and 6-month coaching programs AND weāve enhanced the platform with new development resources and action plan templates. If mental load is showing up as burnout, disengagement, or turnover risk on your team, let’s talk about how engagement in this high-touch, low cost coaching program can help.