This is when you do things a lot and it creates “paths” in your brain Like a wheelbarrow going through the forest eventually it creates a path a “rut”
it’s easier to take that path. It looks more attractive It’s hard not to take that path Eventually you end up doing the same thing over and over again
Even if at some point it becomes harmful to you.
Ants and initial bias
This is niche But when I was doing the ACO math research There was the initial bias of the ants and how that was problematic You’d end up with local minimums unideal
Brain is lazy
The truth is your brain is lazy You may think you have a ton of energy to do all sorts of things but eventually the brain will revert to automation
Because it cannot exert energy focus on everything all of the time Pain is Complex and how the brain dumps the management of pain to different parts of the brain
so if you’re focusing very hard on something and pushing yourself in some kind of way. Just remembr that everything else is running on autopilot and the truth is that there’s nothing you can really do about that. It’s just the nature of it and that’s how it’s going to be
Implications
Give yourself time to get out of paths you’ve established
Even if you’re trying to change your behavior the path you’ve set up will be a consistent behavior for a while that’s just the nature of how it is. It’s not something that you can just change in an instant
Use paths to help you make new paths
I feel like I could illustrate this to get the idea like a forking path network kind of illustration
links also to James Clear habit anchoring I think Habit Stacking by James Clear
Where you use existing paths to help you make new paths
So for example. If I wanted to stop drinking But I use drinking to alleviate stress then I just have to find another habit that I do and link my desired behavior to that
Say I want to stop drinking But if I have no beverage I’ll drink
Every time I sit down for dinner I’m going to open a bottle of juice / coke / fizzy water and I’ll drink that
I won’t really be tempted to open a bottle of wine Because I already have an open bottle here.
I could find smaller bottles? I don’t know how effective that would be
Don’t fight Just accept
One thing that needs to happen here is that you need to accept it It’s tempting to think that I’m strong and I’m different and I can force myself to do the things I want to do
But we’re all human. No one is an exception to all the brain science that’s out there It’s just a fact of our biology
(any kind of change over our biology still happens on a biological level if that makes any sense) So it’s really inevitable
Links and Ideas
There’s a lot of neuroscience that supports this also
This has links to addiction and Forming Habits (concept)
This also has links to.. Hysteresis (concept)
Read more at: Path dependence - Wikipedia
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