This started as an experiment of mine a few months ago. With 2024 around the corner, I felt it was right to set some “goals” and things I wanted to do but, for some reason, hadn’t yet.
So it began. I managed to write them down and be concise and clear about what I wanted to achieve or improve. It ranged from a variety of things: hobbies, family, work-oriented results, and even some inner, difficult-to-measure stuff.
That felt great. It had been a long time since I’d set a definite goal or timeline for something with this kind of structure.
I love freedom and don’t like being told what to do. That’s one reason I remain unemployed. It was always very counterintuitive to feel trapped again by a structured, self-imposed routine.
That’s the main reason I did some things for my benefit, such as sleeping 8+ hours, exercising, and maintaining good nutrition. But never in a deeply structured way where every day feels the same. I don’t really like that.
What is autopilot mode?
In daily life, autopilot mode is what I call the series of habits and choices you make almost without consciousness—basically, in autopilot.
It reminds me of the saying, “You have habits whether you know it or not.”
Everyone has a different set of habits and choices we make every day.
“ People do not decide their futures; they decide their habits, and their habits decide their futures.”
—Frederick Matthias Alexander
The concerning thing here, as psychology has pointed out, is status quo bias—the tendency to keep doing what we have been doing. Change is indeed very hard.
That’s why “autopilot mode” can run our lives for weeks, months, or years!
It’s awful if we are in autopilot mode with a bad diet, in a job we don’t love, scrolling our phones for 4 hours a day, not learning anything new, not starting our dream company, or in a relationship where we don’t feel good.
Hacking the system to my favor
Knowing what I know about autopilot, I figured I don’t want to just turn it off forever. NO.
Au contraire! I want to use it to my own benefit! I want to install new programs to run on autopilot! But those programs need to direct me toward the life I love.
So, as Charlie Munger would say, invert, invert, always invert.
The first part of this process needs to start at the end.
I saw my “Future self” and asked what he would be thinking, doing, what his accomplishments are, and how he feels on a daily basis.
For instance, if I know the following statements would be true for my future self:
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Exercises early in the morning
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Plays piano at a decent level
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Meditates at least one hour a day
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Owns a successful business
Then I would be able to easily break down the habits that person—aka “Future me”—does on a daily basis.
Then, of course, we could design a system to follow through with the new habits of “Future me.” After a while, the new system would be running on autopilot again, which, as we know, would be very difficult to change.
The difference is that now autopilot is operating in my favor. The “autopilot mode” is now guiding me to become the future me that I consciously decided! That is the key difference.
The devil is in the details
Ok, this again is from my personal experience, so don’t think I’m just throwing out some good and positive words here from theory.
After doing all of the above and having more clarity over where I want to “go,” I still fell short pretty badly after a couple of months. The good thing, however, is that I take it all as an experiment, and I’m the scientist, so I take notes and iterate.
Here’s what happened: I didn’t manage to stay as consistent as I wanted in most of my activities. That really left me confused. I thought I did everything correctly, managed to regain focus, and aligned myself with my future self. So, what happened?
I believe the answer lies in detailed systems. I understood I needed to go “X” but didn’t really specify when or how. That left too much room for randomness and entropy, so my “desired” activities only showed up at random.
To fight that back, I needed to design systems that operate in place without my conscious decision-making.
“Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.”
—Alfred North Whitehead
For instance, I saw the new system design as something that couldn’t be overruled by my conscious decision or mood at any moment.
For example, I know a heavy dinner is awful for my sleep, so to avoid bad sleep that dampens performance in all areas of life, the new rule, part of the system, was “No food after 7:30 pm.” That is not open for discussion or change. (Compare that with the “loose goal” of “I want to sleep better.”)
To be consistent with my exercise, a little “nudge” to do it at a certain time was buying classes with a scheduled program so I can’t decide at what time to go and then push it forever. (Compare that with the “loose goal” of “I want to exercise earlier.”)
First thing in the morning is meditation, no matter if I want coffee, read, grab my phone, or schedule a meeting. (Compared with the “loose goal” of “I want to meditate daily.”)
It probably doesn’t sound like much of a change, but again, I’m just a scientist experimenting, and it has shown at least a 100% improvement in the past couple of weeks since making the changes. I hope this helps someone out there. I’m just trying things out.
I encourage you to do the same for yourself and experiment!
Much love,
Zifush!