The Power of Your Autopilot

There’s good news and bad news.

First, a quick clarification. I’m talking about autopilot in the context of mindfulness, not aviation. No flight simulators required.

Now for the nuts and bolts.

In neurological terms, “autopilot” isn’t just a metaphor for being distracted. It’s a sophisticated efficiency hack your brain uses to save energy and processing power. By offloading familiar tasks, it frees up resources for all the important stuff: informed decision-making, observation, evaluation of detail… or doom-scrolling videos of dancing kittens.

When you perform a well-rehearsed task—driving to work, brushing your teeth—your brain shifts the cognitive load from expensive, high-level processing centres to more efficient, hard-wired structures.

The good news: this is brilliant for repeated and sometimes time-sensitive actions and reactions. Think personal safety. Hot surfaces. Avoiding speeding lorries.

The bad news: there are some fairly important downsides.

What Autopilot Gets Wrong

1. It treats thoughts as facts

Random thought: “This will go wrong.”

Brain response: Excellent. Let’s act accordingly.

No evidence required. No cross-examination. Just instinct.

2. It over-relies on past data

Your brain loves patterns.

If something once went badly, it assumes that’s now the permanent forecast.

Helpful for avoiding lions. Less helpful for meetings, races, or presentations.

3. It confuses comfort with safety

Autopilot is obsessed with the familiar.

Not effective. Not optimal. Just… known.

Which is why growth often feels “wrong” even when it’s exactly right.

It’s not doing a bad job. It’s doing exactly what it evolved to do. It’s just that sometimes it’s doing the wrong job.

Autopilot keeps you alive.

Performance, clarity, and progress usually require you to take the controls.

(And yes—this is where mindfulness training and the right mental tools come in.)

So, Can You Turn It Off?

No. And you wouldn’t want to.

What you can do is learn how to step out of it.

In mindfulness, “automatic pilot” refers to moving through life without conscious awareness of the present moment. Unsurprisingly, mindfulness gives us tools to help us visit, return to, and stay in the present. You can to some extent reprogram it buts we leave that for another time.

Shifting Out of Automatic Pilot

In simple terms, mindfulness is the intentional act of coming out of automatic pilot. This is covered in depth on mindfulness training courses, but here’s a practical place to start:

Try noticing when you’ve done something—or reacted in a certain way—on autopilot. Nothing sinister. Nothing unhealthy. Just something you did without conscious thought.

You’ll find this easier if you slow down a little. And yes, slowing down is one of those annoying paradoxes that keeps proving itself useful: when people slow down, they often end up achieving more.

As you get better at spotting automatic actions and reactions, you may reach a point where you can interrupt the ones that aren’t helping you. Less reactive. More deliberate. More in control of your own progress.

And this goes much deeper than driving, tying shoelaces, brushing teeth, typing, or getting dressed without thinking about each step.

The Deeper Layer: Subconscious Bias

At a deeper level, you start to notice subconscious prejudice—built right into autopilot.

Subconscious (or unconscious) prejudice, often called implicit bias, refers to automatic and unintentional attitudes or stereotypes that affect how we understand, act, and make decisions about others. These develop outside conscious awareness through experience, social conditioning, and cultural narratives.

Everyone has them. Most people just never notice.

Why? Because they’re subconscious—and people don’t tend to look for what they don’t realise is there.

You might notice things like:

·         Stereotype activation: Automatically associating characteristics with certain groups, genders, ways of dressing, or speaking.

·         Emotional triggers: Instant feelings of irritation, defensiveness, or unease in response to specific situations or people.

When you spot them, don’t panic.

Take a moment to appreciate that you’ve noticed something most people never do. If it’s not helping you, you’re now in a position to do something about it.

So slow down. Pay attention to what’s actually happening. And congratulate yourself for taking a small step towards being a calmer, clearer, more effective version of you.

And if you want help with that, give me a shout.

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