When you’re following the same commuter route morning and evening it’s so easy to slip into autopilot. Yesterday morning I was in the middle lane of the motorway cruising at around 65mph in heavy traffic, as I do every morning.
We slowed to 15mph, passing the slip road which always builds up with congestion – it’s the same thing every morning.
I flipped on the radio.
We slowed further to 5mph for a few minutes as people futilely swapped lanes – it’s the same thing every morning.
I flipped through the channels, in no mood for the arguing presenter and politician, the blathering DJ full of ‘news from the jungle’ or the stale slice of 80s pop – it’s the same thing every morning.
We stop-started for a few hundred metres – it’s the same thing every morning…
…Then the tall artic truck next to me in the right-hand lane honks. It’s dark outside still and a silhouetted figure points down into the lane ahead of me. I see the tail lights I’ve been following for five miles. Nothing significant there. My eyes refocus and I peer around. Another truck, high-sided. Infront of that… HEADLIGHTS.
What the hell? The car was spun about 170 degrees the wrong way. Now THAT doesn’t happen every day…
When we do something for the first time its absorbing. Its new, challenging, sometimes its even scary. When we do it a second or third time it still takes a lot of our attention to learn the process. As time goes on the subconscious begins to learn the ins and outs of the process until we can do it without thinking.
My girlfriend’s learning to swim and the way she describes her progress reminds me of learning karate. The first few times its tough to simultaneously think about where one hand is going, where the opposing foot is going AND remember to breathe. I assured her that after a while she won’t really be thinking about any of those things and they’ll seem completely natural, like walking or talking.
And there’s the challenge. Routine journeys like travelling to work or the shops can be so routine that we switch off mentally and our awareness shuts down. Crossing the same road each day, pulling out at the same junction into rush-hour traffic time and time again. These repetitive processes make it very easy to not noticing that cyclist in the wing-mirror, or to ignore the two blokes who are loitering on the pavement just up ahead...
