To stop living on autopilot, start by noticing which parts of your days run without anyone choosing them. Much of autopilot is conditioning: routines and rules picked up long ago, now running so smoothly that you mostly look on. If low mood, exhaustion or a sense of being outside yourself come with it, see a doctor first.
Work shoes on. Staff pass round her neck. Coffee in the steel flask she carries on the Metro, laptop bag on her shoulder, hand on the latch.
That's when Ludmila remembers the office is shut. It's a public holiday, and the building is quiet.
She puts the bag down and sits on the arm of the sofa with her shoes still on. A whole day, and nothing in it yet.
What would she like to do with it?
She waits for an answer. Nothing comes, and that surprises her more than the shoes did.
A few minutes later her laptop is open on her knees, just to check, and she's three emails in before she notices she's started.
What does it mean to live on autopilot?
Living on autopilot means your days run on settings you didn't choose today: routines, reactions and rules learned long ago, carried out smoothly while you look on. Much of that's useful. It turns into a problem once those settings run the bigger choices too, and a free morning arrives with no answer of your own for it.
Stopping autopilot is never a reason to drop treatment, medication or support. Any medication, appointments or routines a doctor has given you: let those run exactly as they do now, and change nothing about your care except with your doctor. People in recovery keep their programme and every person who's part of it; this page stands in for none of them.
Most people run on autopilot for part of every day, and that's ordinary. Some versions of it need a doctor, though. See one, or a mental health professional, if you feel cut off from yourself most days, as though you were watching your own actions from somewhere outside, or the world around you seems unreal. The same goes if it arrives alongside low mood that hasn't lifted in weeks, less pleasure in things that used to matter to you, or tiredness that rest doesn't touch. Flatness or distance that lingers, or that worries you even a little, is worth telling a doctor about, however small it seems. If you have thoughts of harming yourself, or you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services. This article sits outside therapy and medical care. Anyone already in treatment should keep working with their doctor or therapist.
Why does a day run itself?
Because repetition does its work well. Anything done often enough stops asking for a decision: the shoes, the flask, the hand on the latch. Ludmila's morning ran without asking her. It had run every working day for years, and on a holiday it ran again.
Much of that's a gift. Nobody wants to decide afresh, every morning, how to hold a toothbrush.
The same smoothness reaches further, though. Some of what runs a day is older than any routine: how quickly you say yes, how full you keep the diary, what you reach for when there's a gap, whose comfort gets checked first. Nobody chose those at breakfast. Many were picked up long ago, in the places you grew up and the rooms you learned in, and some by a younger you who had good reasons at the time. That's conditioning. Because it runs so well, it doesn't feel like anything in particular. It feels like Tuesday.
So the day goes by with you in it, the way an actor is in a play on its four hundredth night. It's what people mean by going through the motions: every line in the right place, and nobody quite choosing them.
Some of those settings were learned for a place or a time you've since left behind, and when one of them reasserts itself after a change, why is change so hard is the piece to read.
You are not broken. You are buried. The settings came later, one layer at a time.
If reading this has left you feeling low or far from yourself, tell your GP or someone you trust before you go on; in a crisis, contact your local emergency services. Otherwise, the quiz Who Did You Become to Survive? asks which earlier self of yours took over the day-to-day. Or read on.
Why can a free day feel so strange?
Because a free day is where the settings run out.
A working day comes with its instructions built in: when to leave, where to sit, what to answer first. A holiday or an empty Saturday comes with very few. So the nearest setting tends to step in: the inbox, the tidying, the scroll, the errand that could easily have waited. Ludmila's laptop was open within minutes, and not because anything needed her.
Plenty of people feel unsettled on a day with no plan in it, and reach for anything that has a shape. If that sounds like you, it isn't a failing. Mostly it shows how long the settings have been making the choices, and perhaps how seldom anyone thought to ask what you'd like instead.
If an empty day often brings dread, low mood or thoughts that frighten you, take that to a doctor, as above. That isn't an autopilot question.
Something similar can happen after time away, when the first ordinary week brings the usual routines straight back; what to do after a retreat is about that stretch.
Can you call the next ten minutes before they happen?
Try this on any ordinary day you choose. Treat it as everyday noticing, not as therapy or medical care. Leave drinking, drugs, self-harm and any relationship that hurts you out of it: take those to your GP or a helpline instead, and in a crisis, call your local emergency services. If the health note near the top fits you, talk to your doctor before trying it. You won't be asked to watch yourself while you do something else, so none of it happens behind the wheel, at the stove, or anywhere half your attention would be a risk.
If picturing even the next few minutes feels heavy, skip the exercise and call your GP or the person you'd usually turn to; that comes first.
No pen is needed: just a minute before an ordinary stretch of your day, and a minute after it.
- Pick a stretch that's about to begin. Ten ordinary minutes at your desk, say, or the start of a quiet morning at home. Choose one you're not dreading.
- Say the next three things you'll do, quietly or in your head. Keep them plain: open the laptop, read the first message, refill your water.
- Then carry on as usual. Keep no watch on yourself as you go, and don't try to prove the forecast wrong.
- When the stretch is over, recall the three. Notice which went just as you said, and which went another way.
- Another day, leave one of the three open. Make it a choice that's harmless either way, such as which mug you'll use or what you'll read on your break, and decide it once you're there and sitting down, with nothing else on your hands.
However many came true, that only shows how well you know your days. Plenty of good days run exactly as forecast.
Is now a good time for the Survive quiz?
What I'd suggest next is a quiz called Who Did You Become to Survive? It's worth taking now if three things hold.
- Nothing in the health note near the top fits you today. If something does, start with your doctor instead.
- You can answer without weighing every word. For the close calls, the quiz gives you a rule: "If you're torn between Yes and Partly, lean Partly."
- Leaving contact details is fine with you. Your result comes after a short form that asks for a first name, an email address and a phone number.
If a question cuts close, leave the rest unanswered and call your doctor, or someone who'll listen, today; in a crisis, contact your local emergency services.
I don't use autopilot as an insult.
Anne, in her Amazon write-up of my book: "This book is so much more than a read."
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.
P.S. The quiz asks about the oldest settings, the ones in place long before this year's routines. If anything here has been hard to read, see your GP or someone you trust before you begin it. Show me who I became