10 minutes
Fatigue, and the shape of an interaction Understand cognitive fatigue and change the length, timing and order of your interactions to account for it.
What you’ll be able to do Explain how cognitive fatigue works after brain injury and restructure an interaction so the important content lands before the person's capacity runs out. Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: What is the most useful change? Document a next step for Fatigue, and the shape of an interaction: Restructure your next meeting: most important thing first, one topic, under thirty minutes, written summary afterwards. Not tired; depleted Cognitive fatigue after brain injury is often described as tiredness, and it is not the same thing. Tiredness responds to effort; a tired person can push through. Depletion does not. After brain injury, the capacity to process information is a finite resource that is spent by concentration, by noise, by travel, by social demand, and by any prior task, and once it is gone, nothing further goes in. The person may continue to nod, to answer, to appear engaged, because social routines are automatic. The content is not landing.
This is why the structure of an interaction matters more than its content. A ninety-minute meeting with the important decision at the end is a meeting in which the decision is made by everyone except the person it concerns. The same decision, placed first in a thirty-minute meeting in the morning, is made with them.
Two structures for the same meeting Built without fatigue in mind Built for fatigue What changed
Afternoon. At the office after travel. Ninety minutes. Six items, updates first, decision fifth. Several people talking. No summary afterwards. The person leaves having agreed to things they will not remember and having missed the one that mattered.
Morning. At home or by phone. Thirty minutes. One topic: the decision. One or two voices. Pauses. A written summary the same day, in short sentences, with the decision and the next step at the top. A follow-up call two days later to check it landed.
Timing, location, length, order, number of voices, and the existence of a record the person can read when they have capacity again. None of it cost money. All of it moved the decision to the person.
Past the fatigue threshold, a person can keep nodding and stop taking anything in. The structure of the meeting decides whether the important thing arrived before that point.
Put the important thing first What you can change You control the order of an agenda. Putting the most important item first, every time, is the single highest-value change available to anyone who meets with people living with brain injury.
What to watch for Do not save the decision for the end because the updates come first by habit. The end is where the person has nothing left.
Your next step Reorder your next agenda so the decision is the first item, and cut everything that can wait.
Carry this forward Cognitive fatigue after brain injury is not tiredness; it is the depletion of the capacity to process, and past a threshold nothing further is taken in regardless of effort.
The threshold varies by person and by day, is lower in the afternoon, after travel, in noise, and after any prior demand, and is often reached within twenty to forty minutes.
An interaction built for fatigue is short, puts the most important thing first, has one topic, and ends with a written summary the person can read later.
A tabs comparison of two meeting structures, a statement, a scenario decision and a knowledge check.
Restructure your next meeting: most important thing first, one topic, under thirty minutes, written summary afterwards.
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