Your Morning Routine Toolkit142to walk while texting on their toy phones or reading the New
York Times. They just focus on walking.
Why? Everything new requires significantly more atten-
tion from our bodies and brains.
God made our brains to be automation machines. Whenever
we learn something new, there’s a little middle manager guy in
our brain saying, “Hey! Can we automate this? How can we
automate this? How about now? Can we automate it now?”
He’s just itching to make a habit out of everything we do
because God made our brains to pursue efficiency.
When we learn something new, a part of our brain called
the cerebrum is on full alert. It’s working overtime to process
the new information, understand patterns, and master the skill.
But as we repeat it over and over, all that processing power
moves to the area of our brain called the basal ganglia— this
is where our more subconscious activities are managed: things
such as breathing, blinking, walking, and brushing our teeth.^3
We don’t think about how to do these things. They are auto-
mated. They’re habits.
Habits allow our conscious brains to free up space by
transferring the command center for that activity to the sub-
conscious part of the brain, allowing us to then master new
tasks while still performing the old ones.
Think about how hard it was for you to drive to the gro-
cery store the first time you moved to a new town. Do I turn
here? Or here? Was it on the left or right? Did I just pass it?
Now you probably think about a million other things on
the way to the grocery store. You don’t consciously remind
yourself how to get there, so your brain is free to solve new
problems.