You're determined to work, with a pile of documents to process and reports to write, and yet... you end up scrolling tirelessly on your phone. But how come? Why am I distracted all the time, and why can't I resist? It's not your fault - well, not really.

The human brain is a complex and, above all, imperfect organ. In this article, we explain why you're constantly falling victim to your phone and how to FINALLY get the upper hand.

"COS" or Cognitive Overflow Syndrome

Cognitive Overflow Syndrome is the feeling of having too many demands, no time, a ton of things to do, and the feeling of not being able to find your way around. Well, you're not alone! In reality, what's happening is that in this kind of situation, we're simply "navigating" through cognitive attractors.

"On a desk, for example, we have several well-known cognitive attractors: the computer, the stack of paper, the telephone, etc. All these elements are stimuli for carrying out certain tasks. The trouble with all this is that our brain can't really sort and prioritize these elements; for it, ALL are important, and every activity that can be performed by each attractor equally so. Our brains will then see all these elements as a "Gestalt of activity" - an organized whole, but perceived as a sum.

How a Cognitive Attractor Works

The problem with cognitive attractors is that they are very difficult to resist. And for a good reason, the strength of an attractor is the combination of three factors:

• Its prominence: its capacity to impose itself on the individual's attention.

• Its cost: The amount of effort the individual expects to make.

• Its value: The gain or loss the individual expects to obtain.

Having trouble understanding? Here's a simple example: You're sitting at your desk, working on an important document. The deadline is imminent; you need to process this document. Your phone vibrates, a notification of a new message appears. The most important thing is no longer the document; it's the phone, it's even that message. What does it contain? Who is it from? What does he want? Is it urgent? Should I answer? Well, the best way to find out is to look at it, and then it's just a little message... It's not much. You look at this message. And before you know it, you'll come across another message, then an e-mail, and now that you've got the phone in your hand, why don't you check out Instagram? And one thing leading to another, you've drifted, and all these cognitive attractors have led you to a chain of actions that weren't really your initial intention.

The Problem With All This

The trouble with all this is that you think you can just go back to what you were doing. Well, sorry to disappoint you, but no. Our brains aren't capable of processing 30 different pieces of information simultaneously - you thought they were? You're wrong; it's a bias. Yes, it's a cognitive bias that makes you think you can do everything, but you can't.

Scientifically speaking, our brains can't handle that much information. What happens is that it simply "overwrites" past information with new information. So when you were working on your file, it was 100% focused on that. And the phone, arriving spontaneously, took up that memory space and overwrote his information with new elements - which surely had nothing to do. Which leads us to the mythical phrase "Where was I?"

And this phenomenon has a name: the precrastination, the art of "Precrastination, a tendency to work on tasks at the first opportunity, even if it means more work or additional costs" - Doctor David Rosenbaum.