Why you’re not as in control of your life as you thought

How much control do we really have over our own lives? It’s a question that’s preoccupied philosophers and theologians for millennia. But whether you’re a firm believer in predeterminism or adhere to the school of thought that humans forge their own destinies in a world ruled by chaos, one thing is certain: much of your day is spent engaged in activities that you did not consciously decide to do.

You could call these actions habits: non-conscious processes usually triggered by environment and context. For example, you wake up, go to the bathroom and brush your teeth. It’s not that you have “decided” to do it; it’s just what you always do. And once you’ve started brushing, you’re even less actively engaged. You’re not thinking about how to brush your teeth, piloting pioneering new techniques to better scrub the back molars. You just do it, unthinkingly, while your mind wanders off elsewhere.

Experts in behavioural science have long known that swathes of our days are spent engaged in routine, but new research has claimed that even more of our actions than previously thought may be habitual rather than intentional. A study from the University of Surrey, University of South Carolina, and Central Queensland University, published in Psychology & Health, found that two-thirds of our daily behaviours are initiated “on autopilot”, or out of habit. The international research team surveyed 105 participants from the UK and Australia, sending six random prompts to their phones each day for a week that asked them to describe what they were doing, and whether it was triggered out of habit or done with intention. They found that 65 per cent of daily behaviours were habitually initiated, meaning people were prompted to do them out of routine rather than making a conscious decision.

The reason that habit is such a pervasive force in our lives is because so much of our daily routines are, by necessity, repetitive. “We consistently need to do the same things,” says Benjamin Gardner, professor in psychology at the University of Surrey and co-author of the study. “Every morning you wake up, you need to eat breakfast, you need to get to work, and so on. Forming a habit essentially means locking a behaviour into your routine and making sure that it can be done automatically.”

And that ability to do things automatically is actually a very efficient manoeuvre on the part of our brains. “We have limited processing power, limited mental resources,” he adds. “By making one behaviour automatic, it means that we can devote those resources to thinking about other things at the same time.”

Habits and acting on autopilot aren’t necessarily bad things. Far from it. As much as being “intentional” often garners high praise, it comes at a cost. “If we stopped and thought deeply about each action we take, we’d simply never get anything done,” says Sekoul Krastev, a decision scientist and co-founder of behavioural science consultancy The Decision Lab. Our smart wiring when it comes to daily micro-decisions is essentially our mind’s way of saving energy by creating shortcuts, freeing up our limited attention for bigger tasks that require greater cognitive capacity. As Daniel Kahneman, the founding father of behavioural economics, famously once put it: “Thinking is to humans as swimming is to cats; they can do it but they’d prefer not to.”

The question, really, is whether our habits are serving us; they are often so ingrained, and exert so much power over our behaviour, that we need to be careful about what routines we allow to form. “One analogy is shopping for large packs of food — if you’re forced to buy 100 of something, you better make sure it’s something you’re going to want to eat 100 times,” says Krastev. “Except with habits, the decisions we make around forming them can often extend years or decades forward.”

Here is where intention comes in — even if our actions themselves are not always intentional, the initial habits we form should be. Dr Heather McKee, a behaviour change expert who specialises in developing healthier habits, describes an example that is so close to home that I wonder whether she’s been camping out in my back garden and spying on me. “Habits are formed where there’s a cue or a trigger, there’s a certain behaviour, and you get a certain reward,” she says. “If you hit a stumbling block on writing an article, you get bored, you pull out your phone. The cue is getting bored at work, the routine is pulling out your phone, and the reward is getting that temporary relief from that feeling of frustration or stuckness.” The more I repeat this in the same context, the more my brain will “shortcut” that behaviour. This is where habits can become negative. My brain might think it’s being “helpful”, but spending 15 minutes mindlessly scrolling when I’m on deadline is anything but.

The good news is, we can hack our brain’s preference for habitual activity to shape our behaviour for the better, piggybacking on an automatic system that’s already in play.

The first step is to gain awareness of the habits that aren’t so helpful. McKee calls it being “a habit detective”; Gardner advises keeping a habit diary. “The crucial thing to do is try and work out what situation you’re doing it in,” he says. “Track when you did this thing that you didn’t want to do, and just beforehand, what were you exposed to? Who were you with? What were you thinking? What were you feeling? Where were you? If you do that for a few days, you start to see a pattern.”

It might be that you eat an unhealthy snack every afternoon with your coffee without thinking, or doomscroll whenever you get into bed at night. Recognising the context that triggers the behaviour, both physical and emotional, is the first step in changing the pattern. It’s easier to replace an unhelpful habit with a healthier alternative than to rely on your willpower and whiteknuckle your way to change

Dr Heather McKeeFrom there, reshaping rather than breaking the habit is the name of the game. “Behavioural science shows that it’s easier to replace an unhelpful habit with a healthier alternative than to rely on your willpower and whiteknuckle your way to change,” says McKee. Take the afternoon coffee and cake habit — you can reshape it by consciously combining the act of making a coffee with going for a walk or chatting to a colleague. “It mixes up the trigger or the cue and reshapes the routine but still provides that same reward,” she adds.

David Hall, co-founder and executive director of social enterprise Behaviour Change, says it’s all about making the better choice as frictionless as possible. His not-for-profit specialises on how to help people form more environmentally sustainable habits. “There’s an interaction in behaviour between how easy something is and how much you want to do it,” he explains. “If something’s really easy and you really want to do it, you’re going to do it, even if you already have a different habit. But if something is hard and you’re not that bothered, chances are you’re not going to take it up. Behavioural strategies are about making certain behaviours easier. Can you remove barriers? Can you simplify?”