Patterns, Purpose and the Profiler

I sometimes laugh at how ironic life is, with all its complexities and simplicity mixed into one deliciously confusing package, called the brain.

 One dichotomy in life that tickles me endlessly, is how people are such obvious creatures of habit, and in the same breath, we are not. People may follow routines at times, such as just before going to bed. It may be a case of first locking the outside gates, then the front door, followed by switching off lights, going to the bathroom, tinkling, then brushing teeth, walking to bed, get naked, get in bed, pray and chill. This pattern is then repeated until death.

 You'd think that a repetitive pattern like this would benefit other mental tasks that we do routinely, like decision making. Yet strangely, repetition is not a part of our decision making processes, unless we specifically choose a routine. Dafok!

 Yesterday, Sally followed her natural decision making pattern while deciding which laptop to buy. She made an excellent choice and is very satisfied with her purchase. Unfortunately for Sally, she followed her natural pattern unconsciously, as in, she didn't known that she followed a built-in decision guide.

 Today, Sally is trying to make a decision about her life partner. The only thing is, she is not following her natural pattern and doesnt know it. She will bungle the decision and she will lose the one person that will love her forever. 

Ah, that's sad. What's sadder is that people are unaware just how random their mental process are when left alone. By all means, we should seek to understand our decision making patterns, and get them to work when we need them. When we know which patterns we use best, we can deliberately use them to improve our lives.

 The minds capacity to be random offers us a clue to why we are sometimes successful, and sometimes not. Its clear we shouldn't leave important mental processes to chance. We should identify, label and structure them, training ourselves to use them at will. This is true mental discipline.

 All of this confusing identification is simpler than this article. Anyway, if you're interested, ask me how.