Preventing brain auto-pilot?
May 21, 2009 12:58 PM   Subscribe

How can I stop my brain switching to auto-pilot?

Occasionally throughout my life I will notice that I am not really engaging my brain very much any more, and that I am running almost fully on auto pilot. By this I mean that I am functioning almost completely without thinking and am simply giving the correct response to, well, anything actually, based on past responses.

Then "a thing" happens which requires more brain power, and I'm back again, for a few months or longer.

These auto-pilot episodes are not anything that other people notice, except perhaps that i am not as quick as usual or think as deeply as usual, but it's something I'd prefer to avoid.

Does anyone else experience this? How do you prevent your brain switching to auto-pilot? I'm 30.
posted by anonymous to Science & Nature (12 answers total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
Meditate by sitting still for at least a half hour and focusing on your breathing. When something happens with your body or your mind, take note of it but don't try to stop it.
posted by Pants! at 1:25 PM on May 21, 2009


Are you getting enough sleep?
posted by jennyb at 1:26 PM on May 21, 2009 [1 favorite]


Google deliberate practice.
posted by TorontoSandy at 1:39 PM on May 21, 2009


When this happens to me, I tend to seek out more engaging people and situations.
posted by stubby phillips at 1:39 PM on May 21, 2009


My mother does this All The Time, and it drives me nuts, so I'm guessing people around you notice. Example: I commented to her that the movie Brokeback Mountain was a classic story of forbidden love, and she said, "Oh, I hadn't thought of that. Is that a common story line?" Um, yeah, like Romeo and Juliet for example? Anyway, sorry to go off on that tangent. (She's almost 70, so it's bound to be crazier with her than with you.)

To answer your question ... I call my mother on this whenever she does it, and although she resists me a lot, she does kind of snap out of it for a while. So, if you have friends, a partner, whatever, who could be called on to notice this habit of yours and call you on it, since you're more receptive to change than my mother is, perhaps you would benefit from this. You certainly don't want this to get worse as you age, to settle in to this kind of pattern.

And yes, Stubby Phillips is absolutely right -- seeking out more engaging people and situations will help. (Personally, I can't imagine how meditating will help, and would guess it would make things worse, but I've never been able to meditate well. I'm way too caffeinated for that.)
posted by Capri at 1:54 PM on May 21, 2009


There's a simple solution to this if you're willing to do it. Engage in activities that require mental work. Do this every day. Your brain's on/off switch will eventually settle into its on position, because it will know it needs to be ready for its daily workout.

Possible activities include doing math problems, reading (and making sure you understand) Shakespeare, learning a foreign language, programming computers, learning a musical instrument, playing a complex game or sport (one that requires strategy), taking an improv class, etc.

You can't possibly do any of these activities and not think.
posted by grumblebee at 2:48 PM on May 21, 2009


Wow, I had no idea people could do this. What's going on in your head while you're doing this? Doesn't it get...kind of boring, or are you literally half asleep?

I would imagine that you could avoid the habit by simply trying to find something challenging in everything you do and experience. Even tedious tasks can be made more interesting if you liven them up with some kind of challenge within it. Try to do whatever you're doing better than the last time you did it.
posted by Hildegarde at 3:03 PM on May 21, 2009


Preventing this problem - the auto-pilot problem - is the entire point of mindfulness meditation. Seriously. The goal is to be 100% present with whatever is happening, no matter how boring, pleasant or unpleasant the moment is. You can absolutely learn to do this. It's not easy and it takes constant daily practice but is unimaginably helpful in allowing you to be there for you life instead of "sleeping" through it. You don't have to join any belief system or accept any sort of dogma. If you want to learn in a really INTENSE way, go on a vipassana retreat. You don't have to be Buddhist to attend those - really. They usually are around a week long and consist of 10 or more hours of mindfulness meditation each day. The retreats are held in silence (but the teachers speak) and in a quiet, undistracting environment so you have a chance to see what your mind is DOING all that time that you're distracted from your life. The retreats are supposed to be quite intense and they invariably are, but they are the most useful things I've ever done. (And you don't need to be experienced to do one.)

In case you, like me, are leery of spiritual pursuits, I can tell you that my experience with the world of meditation/vipassana/mindfulness and the Buddhist tradition has been the most refreshingly un-dogmatic thing I've ever done. This is not because I've been involved in other, more dogmatic religions - I haven't - but because there's this no-fooling attitude of "let's see what is actually true, what is actually here, let's wake up" that seems way more real than most things I encounter in the world.

The VERY uncomfortable feeling of realizing that I'd missed some of my life while I wasn't paying attention really drove me crazy, and I had (and still have) a lot of serious/difficult questions that went along with that discomfort. Having that discomfort acknowledged as a really painful thing was really important for me, and furthermore, being taught by people who really know how to be more awake and compassionate has been incredibly useful.
posted by Cygnet at 3:58 PM on May 21, 2009 [5 favorites]


Oh, and let me distinguish between using your brain - which you do, every single second, to walk and eat and talk and even sleep - and being aware of what you're doing, which is a totally different matter. As far as I understand you are asking about being more aware. While I'm all for creative endeavors and math and learning and so on (being the geek that I am), I think the two pursuits are different. One asks you to engage your brain on an intellectual level, and the other asks you to kind of have a light on in the background so you don't go on auto-pilot.
posted by Cygnet at 4:00 PM on May 21, 2009


Maybe you need to manage your life more actively, even when nothing major is going on. Try setting some goals, and tracking your progress.
posted by Theloupgarou at 7:02 PM on May 21, 2009


Agreed you could probably use some more stimulation or challenge in your life. Personally, I read constantly- that way I always have something interesting to think about.
posted by tachikoma_robot at 11:49 PM on May 21, 2009


What's going on in your head while you're doing this?

For me, there's a book that pretty much sums it all up: Dreaming of Babylon.
posted by stubby phillips at 1:30 PM on May 25, 2009


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