“I did it without realizing it”, “it was a bad habit that I got into”. The experiences of our personal or professional life have gradually changed our behaviors. Over time, habits are settling, and sometimes we don't understand how they got there.

However, this ability to be able to understand how and why habits have taken hold is a fundamental advantagel in our daily lives! It can help us better readap/update our behaviors if our environment changes or become aware that some habits can become harmful for us. But how can we better detect them? What does cognitive science tell us about these automatic behaviors that guide our actions?

Our habits are behaviors that have happened deeply entrenched within us and who become, over time, completely Automatics. Why? Because our brain circuits are “malleable” and reinforce more or less quickly following our experiences and our lifestyle habits (1). These same “habit reinforcements” allow us to follow the same path to work without even having to think about it! We no longer need to use our conscious reasoning to take this or that path. We are in a sense in “automatic mode”, and that is exactly the term that is used in cognitive neuroscience.

This automation As a result, freeing up our cognitive resources (2). This process is very beneficial for our brain, it allows to optimize our energy and in particular our cognitive resources! We can then think about other things, such as our agenda for the day, or even what we are going to eat for lunch.

But when we've automated certain behaviors, we lose what we call our” cognitive control ”. Our frontal cortex, our control tower, is no longer called upon to do this action, it is more internal brain structures that take care of it (involved precisely in our routines). In other words, we don't have more conscious control on our behaviors and actions, they have become simple reflexes. This is exactly what happens when we continue to take the same path, when we know that our street has been blocked by construction for 1 week or when we continue to talk about the last file we are working on during our lunch breaks when we know that we have to cut off work to decompress. It is our automations that guide our behaviors and no longer a thoughtful and conscious act.

These data show us that our brains are programmed to adapt to our environment and thus automate behaviors as quickly as possible to allow us to multiplying our capacities ! But you have to be vigilant, sometimes they can mislead us without us being aware of it.

So let's use this knowledge in cognitive science to better analyze our behaviors, by becoming aware of our automations ! This will allow us to have more adapted answers to our environment, to avoid going the wrong way and to save time!

This is why we have created new training programs that adapt to your challenges and your environment. Discover more hither or send us a email.

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