When you move often enough, you realize how much routines and habits save you.
They save time.
They save mental capacity.
They save your presence for the moments that matter.
Your brain can only think about a limited number of things on any given day.
I often tell my clients:"Cognitive capacity refers to
the total amount of mental resources, including attention, memory, and processing speed, available for storing, manipulating, and applying information at any given time. It acts as a finite, often trainable, "engine" for thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making. When overloaded, cognitive capacity diminishes, affecting performance and mental energy.Factors Affecting Cognitive Capacity
- Fatigue: Tiredness can significantly reduce mental resources.
- Information Overload: Too much data can overwhelm cognitive capacity.
- Training/Experience: As skills become more automatic (e.g., driving), they require less capacity, effectively increasing the available, free capacity.
- Stress: High stress levels can reduce the available capacity for complex tasks."
“You have one battery for everything you want to do in life — family, work, fitness, hobbies, self-development. If you spend most of it in one place, everything else will get less of you.”
The same is true for your cognitive capacity.
You have one brain to deal with:
Your food.
Your wardrobe.
Your commute.
Your family responsibilities.
Your health and fitness.
Your work routines.
Your studies.
Your relationships.
Your hobbies.
...
Something always has to give.
That’s why leaders like Barack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs and many before, after and around them simplified parts of their lives. Same clothes. Fewer trivial decisions. Not caring about many things.
The less you have to think about one thing, the more you can think about other things.
Solve complex problems.
Create.
Learn.
Notice subtleties in relationships.
Have better insights at work.
If everything is a decision, nothing gets depth.
With time, hopefully, you become more intentional about what gives and what gets the best of you.
THE MAGIC OF HABITS
Why does your brain love habits so much?
Because they save energy.
Research suggests 40–60% of what we do every day is habitual. That’s not laziness. That’s efficiency.
Habits are the brain’s way of conserving fuel.
And that fuel can be redirected towards meeting demands of your days.
Habits aren’t just great for nutrition, fitness, or reading.
They are cognitive leverage.
That’s why I constantly ask myself:
Where can I habituate more?
Same meals.
Same cooking flow.
Predefined gym outfit.
Pre-decided work wardrobe.
Moving from place to place, with all its novelty, disrupts all of this.
Suddenly you have to think about where things are, how you move through the house, how you cook, where you placed your keys. Tiny decisions multiply. Energy drains.
Now zoom out to work.
If you want people to adopt new behaviors, whether using tech tools, running meetings differently, or giving feedback better - don’t tell directives.
Give them an algorithm.
Step 1.
Step 2.
Step 3.
Make it simple.
Make it repeatable.
Make it cognitively cheap.
Otherwise, you’re asking them to reinvent the wheel dozens of times a day. (Like they already don't have to deal with a lot)
In networking, they recommend having a script for how you start conversations. Not to sound robotic but to lower the entry barrier so you can talk to more people.
Life and work work the same way.
The more scripts you have for the right behaviors, the more often you’ll execute them. And the more of your brain remains available for life as it unfolds. SO you don't react but respond with intention.
Over to you, dear reader,
Where are you wasting precious cognitive battery on things that could be automated?
And what could you script — at home, at work, in your health — so that more of the right things happen by default and more of your mind is available and present for life?
