Building a people-first culture
At The Adaptavist Group we recognise that the world our people live in doesn’t stop at the office door. Leaders can’t control the news cycle, but they can shape the environment their teams work in.
Emma Weston
Published on 3 March 2026
Managing cognitive load and protecting team wellbeing in negative news cycles
Distressing, 24-hour news can impact mental bandwidth and people's performance at work. Read our strategies to handle cognitive overload to support your team's wellbeing and psychological safety.
The hidden cost of the media cycle
The 24-hour news cycle helps us to keep up with what's happening around the globe, but how does it impact teams when the media is so saturated with distressing news? Bad news gets more clicks than good news, and drawn-out wars, state-sanctioned violence, and shocking legal cases currently adorn the top of our news websites daily. So how can we stay informed and connected while protecting our mental health? How do we help team members who are feeling the weight of the news most heavily?
The ambient anxiety of clickbait headlines, breaking news notifications, and the spread of false or misrepresented information impacts a significant number of us: 62% of adults in the United States said societal division is a key source of stress in their lives. Anyone managing a team right now should be mindful of the limits of the emotional bandwidth of workforces across the globe.
Cognitive capacity is finite and cannot be boosted with the click of a button. Let's look at how cognitive capacity gets depleted by heavy news.
The science of overload: understanding cognitive load theory
In 1988, educational psychologist John Sweller introduced cognitive load theory (CLT). CLT states that learning is hindered when the brain's working memory, which has a limited capacity, is overloaded. He identified three types of cognitive load:
- Intrinsic load: the inherent complexity of a task, which is often broken down into smaller steps
- Extraneous load: the mental cost created by distractions, poorly presented information, or irrelevant information
- Germane load: the productive cognitive effort needed to learn, process information, and make deep connections
In a team of knowledge workers, minimising extraneous load becomes critical to the functioning of that team. We know that a team’s brainpower is finite. When it’s full, performance drops. In times of turbulence, it becomes very difficult to prevent extraneous load from accumulating. Cognitive overload has repercussions for well-being that extend well beyond the workplace, so how can leaders help their teams navigate difficult times and avoid cognitive overload?
What cognitive load theory looks like in a team
This is how Sweller's CLT can present itself inside the daily experience of the knowledge worker:
- Intrinsic load: Planning projects, tracking tasks, interdepartmental collaboration, managing nuanced relationships and processes with many different stakeholders, and making strategic decisions with incomplete data are all complex tasks. These tasks require substantial working memory to be divided into smaller jobs.
- Extraneous load: In a "normal" day this may be IMs from colleagues, impromptu meetings, or trying to understand a poorly-worded memo.
- Germane load: This covers learning new processes, skills and insights, plus the strategic, reflective work of making connections between workstreams.
When compromised by excessive extraneous load, people may reactively firefight, flipping from task to task instead of taking a more considered approach.
The impact of heavy news
The media landscape piles high in the category of extraneous load. In addition to the usual Zoom meetings and Slack meetings, teams are now navigating 24/7 newsfeeds and commentary, incessant mobile notifications, the need to determine whether imagery shared online is fake, or another colleague's hot take on the latest distressing news bulletin. Working memory can quickly be exhausted. Even brief exposure to distressing news (e.g. 15 minutes of viewing) can immediately raise the viewer's anxiety and sadness.
What happens when your brain can't reset?
If you think of working memory as a battery that can be drained, it must recharge to be operational again. Without recharging, exhaustion and burnout can begin to show up, affecting both your professional and personal life.
This is how extraneous load from an unrelenting negative news cycle can leave us unable to do even simple tasks.
Cognitive overload can lead to:
- Difficulty regulating emotions: the prefrontal cortex of the brain helps us regulate emotions and practice empathy, and relies heavily on free cognitive capacity. When that capacity is drained, people are more likely to lose patience with themselves and those around them.
- Decision fatigue: after a day of grim news, even deciding what to cook for dinner can feel like scaling Mount Everest. Seemingly small daily decisions can feel impossible.
- Healthy choices becoming harder to make: making healthy choices—such as cooking, exercising, or even reading a book—requires germane load (active cognitive effort). When cognitive load has zeroed mental bandwidth, the brain follows the path of least resistance: ordering takeaways, skipping workouts, and doomscrolling.
- Difficulty resting: a chronically overloaded working memory can lead to a scattered, restless mental state with a low attention span and an inability to focus on a single thought or task. Overstimulation means people can't switch off, relax, or get restful sleep. And sleep–you guessed it–is vital for avoiding cognitive overload.
However, you can’t simply will away the impact of distressing news before a morning Zoom call — yet for many, disengaging from it isn't an option either. So, what can we do?
Practical strategies to protect you and your team's bandwidth
1. Managing team emotional load and wellbeing
- Acknowledge, don't amplify: when a major distressing event occurs, address it briefly ("I know today is a heavy news day, and I want to acknowledge that") without launching into a lengthy diatribe that drains the team's energy and morale.
- Be mindful of individual idiosyncrasies and circumstances: not all of your team members will experience these events the same way. Some people will have lower bandwidths for negative news due to other concerns in their lives. Others may have direct, deeply personal stakes that make it more challenging for them to concentrate.
- Signpost available support: if your organisation has an employee assistance programme (EAP) with services and support available, remind people to use it. If your organisation doesn't have an EAP: are there charities or other organisations local to your staff that can help?
- Foster psychological safety at work: ensure that your team feels safe taking a mental health afternoon or logging off early without having to perform wellness or mask their anxiety and normalise capacity planning discussions.
- Adjust expectations: recognise when your team's emotional bandwidth is approaching capacity. If extraneous load is universally high due to a global event, explore measures to give the team back space: see section 3 below.
- Build micro-recoveries: cognitive load accumulates. Encourage the team to schedule 10-minute buffers between meetings to look away from screens, reset, and even practice some mindfulness exercises.
2. Manage information flow
- Manage and set media boundaries: this may require some practice, but limit your news consumption to specific brief time periods, e.g. 20 minutes in the morning or evening. Avoid doing this just before bed or an important task to prevent chaotic news from encroaching on situations and decisions which require focus. Let your team know they can do the same and reach out if they're struggling.
- Tame the tech: teach your team how to turn off non-essential notifications, mute their phones, and use "do not disturb" features on their devices at key times of the day to defend themselves against interruptions.
- Filter the noise: identify the "noise" and separate it from essential information. Consolidate communications into fewer channels (e.g. use structured recaps instead of checking every Slack ping) to reduce context-switching and distractions.
3. Protect your cognitive capacity
- Defend deep work: block out additional, uninterrupted focus time in your calendar, and encourage your team to do the same. Germane load can thrive in these sessions, helping to mitigate the impact of extraneous load.
- Meeting hygiene: carry out a meeting audit to shorten or remove meetings that aren't critical right now. Are update meetings necessary during turbulent and busy periods, or could they be switched to asynchronous updates and substituted for emotional check-ins with team members instead?
- The "settling moment": if high-stakes meetings still have to happen, encourage the room to take a 60-second breathing or settling period to help people transition their mindset from the outside world to the task at hand. This promotes calmness and helps everyone feel more grounded.
4. Create your own helpful habits as a manager
- Self-audit: notice when you're operating from a depleted mindset. If you spent your lunch hour consuming difficult news, delay making complex strategic decisions until your cognitive capacity recovers.
- Seek support: utilise EAPs or peer manager support groups so you aren't silently absorbing your team's anxieties.
Team bandwidth as a protected asset
Working memory is a finite resource. The cognitive load imposed by a relentless media cycle and digital overstimulation cannot be overcome by sheer willpower. You can't force your way through cognitive overload; the brain's biological architecture doesn't allow it.
Leaders who expect their teams to cope harder or develop greater resilience against difficult circumstances may unintentionally see higher levels of stress, sickness, and resignations.
The most effective leaders will actively engineer a calmer, lower-load environment for their teams, acknowledging that we cannot control the weight of global events, but we can give ourselves space to be humans simply trying to navigate them together.