The 1956 paper The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two is the most widely cited paper in the 126 year history of the journal Psychological Review. The author George A. Miller is considered one of the founders in the field of cognitive science. His historic claim is that you can only juggle between 5 and 9 things in your brain at any one time. To my knowledge, despite some controversy over the years, this 7 2 figure has withstood the ongoing reproducibility crisis and it appears to capture a deep truth about how our brains actually function. Many people are skeptical of the claim because seven sounds like an absurdly small number, surely if you are doing something complex like writing software, or planning a wedding for that matter, you are juggling dozens to hundreds of things?