Living on autopilot

There are some things we do so often that we barely think about them. We take the same route to work, make the same coffee, get ready in the same order. We know what comes next, so our attention doesn't need to be there for every part of it. Sometimes that's useful. It leaves us free to think about other things while our body gets on with what it knows.

I’m curious about what happens when this starts to include more of our day than we realise.

When familiar becomes automatic

You can drive somewhere you've been many times before and suddenly realise you've arrived without really noticing the journey. The same thing can happen with ordinary parts of the day. We shower, eat, walk, tidy up, check our messages and move on to the next thing. We are doing it, but our attention may already be somewhere else. Thinking about what happened earlier. Planning what comes next. Following a thought that has nothing to do with what we are doing.

The routine carries on.

What autopilot gives us

There is nothing necessarily wrong with this. We couldn't give our full attention to every small thing we do, all day long. Familiar routines make life easier. They help us get things done without having to make hundreds of little decisions. Yet there are moments when I wonder what we might notice if we were a little more aware of where our attention has gone.

A familiar walk might look different. We might notice the weather, hear something we usually miss or actually listen to the person beside us.

Coming back to what we're doing

We don't have to stop living on autopilot. Some things are better left familiar. Noticing can change something. We might realise we've been driving without really seeing the road, eating without noticing the food, or talking to someone while thinking about something else.

That moment of noticing is enough.

We can simply come back to what we are doing, if that's where we want our attention to be. Perhaps caring for our attention begins with noticing how often we are here, and how often we are somewhere else.

I wonder what you might notice the next time you realise you've been doing something without really noticing it.