Compass of the Times 271

To Focus on What Matters Most

Keiko Takahashi

Are You Making Your Own Choices?

Now that October is here, we have been having days in which autumn is really starting to set in.

Autumn is a season of harvest, and it is also a time well-suited for delving deeper into the matters of our lives.

Now that the intense heat has subsided, it is easier to focus, and we are drawn to delve deeper into all aspects of life. However, there is an issue that hinders this deepening and our progress toward a higher dimension.

It is the power of habit, or what we might call the “overwhelming force of inertia,” that everyone possesses. Do you usually notice how much this force of habit is at work in your daily life?

“It probably isn’t that much. I always make my own judgments and try to stay mindful of my actions, so it would be 10% or, at most, around 20%.” “The power of habit certainly exists, but in my daily life, I think for myself and make conscious choices.”

I imagine many of you feel this way.

However, reality is far removed from how you feel.

The Overwhelming Power of Habit

Data suggests that approximately 40 to 65% of people’s daily behaviors are driven by habits. Research in psychology and behavioral science indicates that a large portion of our lives consists of “automatic patterns” based on past experiences.

In a study published last year by an international research team that included the University of Surrey in the UK, participants’ daily behaviors were tracked in real time via a smartphone app. The results of the research were astonishing.

If focused on the triggers of their actions, they found that two-thirds of their actions were triggered not by their own conscious decisions but automatically triggered by their environment or situation.

Furthermore, once a person began a particular action, in the sequence of steps required to carry it out, almost 90% were constituted with automatic actions. Thus much our daily lives are dominated by the overwhelming power of habits.

This perspective was already demonstrated in the 2000s by a study conducted at Duke University by Professor Wendy Wood, a leading expert in research on habitual behavior. The research showed that “approximately 35 to 43% of human daily behaviors are repeated in nearly the same places and situations every day.”

A series of lifestyle choices, such as waking up in the morning, washing one’s face, commuting along a specific route, and sitting at the same desk on a specific floor of the same building, is always closely connected to our theme of conserving energy.

Focusing on What Matters Most

It is easy to understand why the brain strives to conserve energy. If we had to consciously choose every action as we go, our energy would be depleted in no time. Thus, once we have experienced and learned a certain behavior, we make it a “habit,” and we try to use energy-saving modes for anything that can be done to “conserve energy.”

But what do we try to conserve this energy for? What are we trying to achieve by turning our daily lives into a mass of habits? The reason is to maximize brain function at “that very moment” when it truly matters and to pour all its energy into “that one specific point.”

The human brain constantly strives to conserve energy. Although the weight of the brain accounts for about only 2% of body weight, it consumes as much as 20% of the body’s total energy at rest.

Our daily lives, dominated by the powerful force of habit, are actually spent preparing for that one important, once-in-a-lifetime event, which is entirely independent from such repetition. The important thing is that “we never know when that moment will come.”

This is precisely why we must watch our actions every day. We must distinguish between what we should streamline and what we should not. We must carefully examine the things we should and should not make into habits. It is important that we always keep in mind to respond to what truly matters.

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