Autopilot mode

it's obscuring our choices

Blind Musicians, Bundit Padungvichian, 1967

We’re all conditioned to certain states of ‘default’. And in these states, we often forget we have choices.

We’re able to do things on autopilot because we can learn how to assume an automatic behavior — a behavior which, in some contexts, is actually super helpful. We can get more stuff done in autopilot mode, because we’re not cognitively burdened by the tasks at hand. For example, when you’re brushing your teeth, driving, or picking up a call from your mother, it’s likely that not much of your attention is engaging in the activity at hand. You’re probably in your autopilot mode, and your brain is freed up to think about other things, like how your hair looks in the mirror, what the vibe at your destination is going to be like, or what’s on your to-do list for tomorrow.

Autopilot mode is very present in the exterior world of physical actions. Tying your shoelaces, walking, typing, picking your nose — these are all physical actions that were new to us at some point in our development, but have since become defaults. ‘Like riding a bike,’ as the saying goes.

Autopilot mode doesn’t just show up in external physical actions; it also has a role to play in the interior world of emotions, narratives, and meaning making. Just like we learn automatic patterns of how to move our bodies to do tasks so that we don’t need to apply too much cognition, we also learn patterns of how to automatically process, feel, and make meaning of what happens around us.

For example, when your roommate (or spouse, or kid) leaves the dishes in the sink again, even after the fourth conversation you’ve had on keeping a common standard of cleanliness (yours), you may feel a pattern of irritation arise. Maybe this starts to come up whenever you see your roommate, even when they’re not around the dishes. When you’re working with a particularly critical or discerning client or boss, you may feel a pattern of anxiety start to arise, along with thoughts like ‘I feel like they don’t like me,’ or ‘I feel like they think I’m incompetent.’ Perhaps these feelings start to arise when the person is not present, but you receive an email from them, or something makes you think about them. This is autopilot mode at play — you’ve ended up in a pattern of defaulting to a behavior with regards to your roommate or tricky client or boss. And critically, this pattern is possibly not serving you in progressing these relationships to a greater state of well-being.

While autopilot mode is useful in some contexts, in other contexts it can obscure us to the choices we have. We fall into a pattern without realizing that there is another avenue present; another possibility for how we might feel, or how we might make meaning of what has occurred. In obscuring the choice, we limit ourselves to new ways of being, relating, and feeling, instead returning to the learned patterns of ‘same old’.

This is a choice. It’s not an intentional one, but it is an act of choosing. And it means that when the default patterns we (unintentionally) choose to engage in lead to outcomes we don’t like — feeling irritated, feeling anxious, feeling sad — it’s of our own doing. We’re choosing to default into patterns that create the worlds we don’t want to live in. Yikes!

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Recently, I’ve become aware of an autopilot mode I’ve been honing my patterns around several times a day — my relationship to my phone. I’d reach for that thing in any moment of transition or pause. I’d reach for it when my attention wandered from the thing I was supposed to be focusing on. I’d reach for it and then fall into a spiral of apps, scrolling one, going to another, scrolling there, then going to another. And then 30 minutes would go by and I’d end up feeling extremely blah, having lost a precious half hour of my one life.

Yes, this need I have to reach for my phone and get sucked into it has been engineered by some incredibly sharp thinkers of our time. But, it’s also a choice I’m autopiloting into, because I’ve conditioned myself to a default of reaching for my phone at any glimmer of dissatisfaction. And this pattern made me feel like a sad little automaton.

A couple of weeks ago, over a long weekend, I went on a phone detox. I put my phone into a box for four days and didn’t look at it. The number of times I instinctively reached for it was incredible — I had it bad. But each time, there was more space to consider a different choice — to reach for a book, or stretch, or look outside and find a little robin flitting between the branches of a tree. The spaciousness turned into a delicious ocean of discovery — not the quick hit of unhealthy snack I was getting from my phone, but something more deeply nourishing and satisfying.

Now that I’m back to real life, I’m trying to hold on to this choice. I’ve got some new systems: one of them is a box by my desk that the phone goes into when I sit down. It adds another layer of choice — I need to choose to physically open the box in order to get to the phone — so when I get the urge to reach for it, I have a way to separate myself from that urge, look at it from a distance, and consider whether that’s something I actually want to act on.

And surprisingly, it’s working! It’s helped make the default choice more visible to me, and opened up new avenues for what else might be possible. It’s also got me thinking — how might I illuminate some of my other obscured choices?