Everyone knows that going on "autopilot" is very normal and part of being human. Although it is enticing to believe that people can always think consciously about what they do, it is not possible. The reason is that going on "autopilot" is part of our underlying evolutionary biology. In ancestral times when resources were a lot scarcer, we did many things in "autopilot" to save energy. It is a lower energy operating mode for the brain. This ability helped us survive and was p

Have you ever gone into your driveway and thought “what road did I take to get here?” Most of us have at some point. Driving is one of the riskiest things we do, yet we seem destined to do it in “autopilot”. Neuroscientists have estimated that more than 95% of what we do is subconscious. But what does that mean? Well, it means that most of what we do is “back of mind” rather than “front of mind”. A way to think about this is to consider what we think about when we drive, walk