We are defined by our routines.
The things we do on a day-to-day basis shape who we are.
They determine what we experience.
They define the results we create & the circumstances we ultimately find ourselves in.
(This is as true for individuals as it is for organisations.)
We like to imagine that we’re consciously navigating through life. That when we find ourselves at a fork in the road and debate whether we should go left or right, we’re exercising best judgment in order to pick the correct path.
But this isn’t what usually happens.
Beyond a few critical branches in our journey, where we’re switched on and capable of moving in a new direction…
More often than not, we’re operating on autopilot.
Our minds are elsewhere: focused on the past or worried about the future.
We get so wrapped up in what was (or what could be) that we neglect the here & now.
This is fine when we can trust our automatic responses to guide us forward.
If our focus wanders on a familiar drive home, we trust ourselves to find the way – just as we have countless times before.
But when the stakes are high, or we haven’t taken the time to examine our routines… this is risky.
Because the kind of decisions you make on autopilot aren’t informed by deliberate choice. They’re determined by conditioning.
Environmental factors, past experiences, inherent biases, simple cues that the subconscious mind reads too far into: factors that you’d pay no deliberate attention to can dominate when you’re operating automatically.
No one can tell us how what the future will look like. But there’s one sure-fire way to get a glimpse of where we’re going…
And that’s to look at the path laid before us by our routines.
We need to ask ourselves:
Progressed to its logical conclusion, where do we end up?
And if we don’t like where our personal habits or collective culture is taking us, there’s a simple solution…
Change course.
Consciously examine the choices laid before us, correct for our biases, and step forward in a new direction.
Culture – the driver of behaviour – is defined by history. Until it’s not.
One decision, cascading and compounding over time, is all that’s required to forge a new path.
Forget predicting the future. It doesn’t just happen.
It’s created by our choices: actions which can be shaped & reshaped at will.