09-18-2026IMPACT COUNCIL

How to lead through cognitive overload

The importance of high-touch leadership in a high-tech world

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The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of top leaders and experts who pay dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership, and more.

Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, observed in a May 2026 New York Times podcast that the rate of change we’re living through is unlike anything humans evolved to process. And the data backs him up.

In 2010, Eric Schmidt, Google’s former CEO, noted that humanity was generating as much information every two days as we had from the dawn of civilization through 2003. Based on IDC’s 2018 forecast that the global datasphere would reach 175 zettabytes by 2025, the world now generates roughly that same five-exabyte volume of data in about 15 minutes.

While the data volume has grown, the human brain hasn’t upgraded to keep pace. The brain holds roughly four things in working memory at any given time. Four, against a civilization’s worth of information every 15 minutes.

This is what researchers call cognitive overload: the point where the volume and complexity of........

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