8 Ways to Reduce Mental Load as a Project Manager

Lonnie Pacelli is an Accenture/Microsoft veteran with four decades of learnings under his belt. He frequently writes and speaks on leadership, project management, work/life balance, and disability inclusion. Reach him at [email protected] and see more at ProjectManagementAdvisor.com.

  Career Development  

One day, my wife Patty and I were eating lunch when she said, “I’ve been seeing some social media posts about mental load; have you ever heard of it?”

“No,” I answered, wondering if I’ve been missing out.

She then told me more about what she’s seen and its impact on people. Intrigued by the term and her explanation, I decided to do a bit more research on mental load. Here’s a little of what I learned from healthline.com:

• Mental load (aka cognitive labor) refers to invisible, non-tangible tasks involved in running a household. An example is remembering to schedule bill payments. Even if there is a division of labor between partners, it creates more mental load when one partner has to remind the other to do things.
• Some use mental load and emotional labor interchangeably. Emotional labor is how people regulate emotional expressions in the workplace. An example of emotional labor is a flight attendant keeping a friendly disposition in the face of demanding (and sometimes demeaning) passengers.
• When unchecked, mental load can lead to frustration, distress and burnout.

As I thought about the healthline.com article and my experience as a project manager, a few thoughts came to mind:

1. Though I just learned the term “mental load,” I’ve been battling it for decades.
2. Mental load is not exclusive…

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