Habits

Yes, habits.

Now that does not seem like something that is even worth thinking about.

After all,  habits are part of actions that happens in the background and hardly noticeable at all because that is the nature of habits.

I was at a philosopher's cafe this week about the conscious and the subconscious mind and someone mentioned habits as an example of the unconscious.  I am not exactly sure we mean habits when we think of the unconscious but I did not think habits can be so interesting until then.

We form habits by doing certain motions or actions repeatedly until the outcomes of these actions are so predictable that our mind can push this series of actions and expected responses into the background.  The brain can then concentrate our thinking on something else that requires more attention.

However, that does not mean that our mind has forgotten about these habits.

When we walk down a familiar set of stairs in our own house, our mind is likely preoccupied with something else besides going up or down the stairs.  However, if we think carefully,  we will know that our mind is actually checking every step in the background with our expectations of when our feet will land on that next step.  We automatically know that we are stepping on something even if we are not looking at the steps because our foot touched something before it is expected to.

In contrast,  when we go hiking on an unfamiliar trail,  we are looking at every rock and stone on the rocky trail that we are climbing and know that we are about to step on it.

It is like the main part of our brain is concentrating on all the new tasks that requires learning and analysis but our mind is able to delegate the familiar tasks to some other part of the brain to let it go on autopilot or cruise control.  For computer programmers,  this will be the equivalent of turning some code into a function call or subroutine because it is required repeatedly.

It is all the more interesting that we like habits and familiar things and don't like new and unfamiliar situations.  It is as if the brain is trying to minimize its own work by staying with the familiar that can be dealt with habitually.  Learning must be hard work for the brain,  all that pattern recognition, searching in the past for clues on how to predict the outcome of these new situations and what actions to take.

What about those of us who like excitement of new situations instead of the same old thing all the time?  Maybe there is another aspect of the brain with dopamine reward systems that crave rewards from doing something right instead of just minimizing effort.

Athletes talk of muscle memory.  There is just no time for a tennis player to think about how to return the ball when it is coming from the other side.  Only by training often that the appropriate reaction can happen instantly without thinking.  This to me is a form of habit but used for its fast acting rather than minimizing brain function. Our thinking brain is too slow for this. I don't think that our muscles can handle the complexity of tennis but there must be another part of our brain that can bypass our thinking brain to tell the muscles to act a certain way.

So habits likely bypass the operation of our thinking brain.  Only when the habitual actions don't work will the thinking brain recognize the exception, interrupt what it is thinking, and come in to analyse the situation to learn from it.

What do we get out of all this?

Perhaps be more aware of how habits are being formed without us actually being aware of it.  Maybe the pleasure derived from visiting an old familiar place or performing a familiar ritual is our thinking brain enthralling in being able to use an old routine from the past?

Maybe when we recoil from having to do something different, it is our brain  trying to get out of learning something new or taking risks instead of relying on old habits?

Brain science is fascinating.