Automaticity

Various scientific studies have shown that somewhere between 40-50% of what we do everyday are products of habits we’ve cultivated over time. While this percentage might appear on the high side, take some time to consider how many things you do everyday on autopilot. From brushing your teeth while scrolling through your phone at predictable intervals to dressing up in a particular order, lacing-up your shoes, driving the same route to work, navigating the aisles of your favourite supermarket, the list goes on. This is of course essential to how we navigate everyday life, you can imagine how exhausting it’ll be to have to logically think about every single action you take. However, if the aforementioned statistic is anything to go by, it infers that half of our lives is lived in autopilot, a terminology scientists refer to as “automaticity”.

Small simple steps done repetitiously lead to habits and our habits are at the core of who we are. Without ‘habit loops’, our brains will be inundated with every infinitesimal detail of daily life. James Clear, author of the book ‘Atomic Habits’ says, “The habits you repeat (or don’t repeat) everyday largely determine your health, wealth, and happiness. Knowing how habits are formed and how to change them gives us an agentic shift (the switch between the autonomaticity and agentic state) on how to confidently own and manage our life. More importantly, it helps us focus on behaviours that have the highest impact on our lives, and serves as an enabler for reverse-engineering the life we want.

James Clear identifies habit loops as having four components: a cue, a craving, a response, and a reward. He uses an example of tuning on a light whenever you enter a dark room. The cue is - walking into a room and realising it’s dark. The craving is - feeling it will be easier to navigate the room if it were not to be dark. The response is - to flick on the light switch, and the reward is - a room that is lit and easily navigable.

This process is exactly the same for all habits we create - good or bad, and creating habits to automate essential parts of our lives is a fundamental streamlining technique we do largely unconsciously, often to our benefit, but also sometimes to our detriment. Of noteworthiness is the fact that it is much easier to start new habits than it is to end old habits.

As we approach that time of the year when we begin to reflect and analyse how this year has gone, particularly areas we may have underperformed, in an attempt to make new resolutions that’ll propel us forward in the coming year, ‘awareness’ and the ‘knowhow’ to actualise these resolutions is a superpower to have. Use the habit loop to consciously reclaim your agency.

Remember - “you don't eliminate a bad habit, you simply substitute it with a good one” - James Clear

Peace, Love & Light,