9 Things We Do Every Day Without Thinking
9 Things We Do Every Day Without Thinking
We know you could find examples of automatic behavior and reflexive habits in your own life. In the meantime, we've come up with nine that we believe apply semi-universally in 21st century America (and in other locations, to be sure), and we suspect if Mr. Holmes were here today he would notice and comment on all of them.
We're introducing them as if we can all relate. But if some of these don’t apply to you, then in the words of Miss Emily Litella: “Never mind.”
We know you could find examples of automatic behavior and reflexive habits in your own life. In the meantime, we've come up with nine that we believe apply semi-universally in 21st century America (and in other locations, to be sure), and we suspect if Mr. Holmes were here today he would notice and comment on all of them.
We're introducing them as if we can all relate. But if some of these don’t apply to you, then in the words of Miss Emily Litella: “Never mind.”
We waste an extraordinary amount of water.
Did you know the average American uses between 80 and 100 gallons of water every day? If that sounds excessive it’s because it is—and there is a price to pay for using so much water, as our friends out in California could no doubt tell you. Indiscriminate toilet flushing, faucets left to run incessantly while someone shaves/brushes teeth/washes the dishes, excessive lawn watering, failure to install low-volume showerheads, potentially re-usable supplies dumped or left to run away … it’s not a pretty picture, and with a little thought and planning, a good portion of this waste could be eliminated.
We fart a lot.
The average person passes gas 15-20 times a day, expelling up to a liter-and-a-half of fermentation product from his or her intestinal tract. You probably don’t think you fart nearly that often, and you might be a bit horrified by the thought. But if you didn’t let loose on a regular basis, you’d slowly inflate and eventually float off into the stratosphere, with the dulcet background tones of the Fifth Dimension wishing you a fond farewell (okay, that’s not strictly true but it does evoke a memorable image, doesn’t it?).
Posture-wise we’re in a lifelong slump.
Chances are, the only time you become aware of your posture—and how bad it frequently is—is when someone mentions it. Or when you run across an article on the subject, or meet someone whose posture is so good you can’t help but notice. Did you know that slumping or slouching while sitting or standing can induce anxiety, worsen depression, cut off your blood flow, give you a back or neck ache, cause constipation, make you look fatter and even shorten your lifespan? Well, research proves that it can. So straighten up and fly right!
We see or hear up to 5,000 advertisements each and every day.
It has become background noise to most of us. But that’s how advertising works, by accessing our subconscious and bypassing our conscious capacity to resist its appeal. Advertising supposedly influences your brand preferences, but more than anything your constant exposure to all of this enticing imagery is training you to be a willing and ready consumer of anything and everything. The important point is that you’re noticing all of it and it is influencing you, even if you think you’re tuning it out.
We waste countless hours in aimless Internet pursuits.
The Internet is a cool destination. It gives us access to a bottomless well of interesting facts, activities and discussions. But too often that well turns into a bottomless pit, pulling us down, down, down as it sucks our energy and steals our precious time. Mindless wandering through the desolation of simulated reality is too often the rule rather than the exception. We have a very bad habit of allowing our technology to hold us prisoner, and we end up serving it instead of allowing it to serve us.
We waste countless hours sitting behind the wheels of our cars.
If aliens arrived in a space ship and hovered above the earth for a while observing everything taking place below, they might conclude automobiles were the rulers of the planet and that human beings were indentured servants assigned to chauffer them about. How else could you explain the design of our cities—or our settlement patterns in general—which require people to drive just about everywhere? We’ve gotten so used to our dependence on automobiles that we take this arrangement for granted, tolerating the humungous amounts of time we waste stranded in traffic and never bothering to ask ourselves if this is really the most efficient way to live.
When we drive, we don’t always pay attention.
Human beings have a tendency to “zone out”—or shift into automatic, to use an auto-related metaphor—when they are performing routine tasks. Unfortunately we spend so much time driving that this frequently happens when we are behind the wheel, putting ourselves and others in danger. There are plenty of statistics that prove the dangers of drunk driving or texting while driving, but no one is sure how many car accidents are caused by inattentive driving, which all of us are guilty of from time to time, whether we realize it or not.
We routinely squander chances to greet, smile at or otherwise socially engage our neighbors and other members of the community.
Go into any public place these days or walk down any street, and at least half the people you encounter won’t even know you’re there. They won’t see you because their eyes will be cast downward, staring at tiny electronic screens as they check their emails, send out texts, play games, post on social media sites or otherwise interact with “the un-present” on their smart phones or iPads. Meanwhile, opportunities to make brief but meaningful connections with other human beings are being lost forever, and the divide that separates us grows just a little bit wider each time that happens. Civility and a sense of community are gradually eroded when we ignore each other like this, even if it is done without malice or intention. So shut off your phones and smile. You just might make someone’s day!
When we drive, insects die—in massive numbers.
Using a formula developed by a Dutch biologist, researchers estimate that American drivers annihilate somewhere in the neighborhood of 32.5 trillion insects each and every year. That averages out to about 1.625 million insects per moving automobile. We all know our driving habits make a negative impact on the environment, but this is one aspect of the destruction that we remain largely unaware of, despite scraping bug guts off our hoods and windshields on a daily basis.
BONUS: We jiggle our legs or wiggle our feet.
Most people are fidgeters to a certain extent, and setting the ol’ leg a-jiggling when we are sitting is one of the most common ways to fidget. Some people, of course, live with restless leg syndrome, and these people experience real discomfort in their legs that is eased by bouncing or jiggling. But leg jiggling appears in many more people than the estimated 10 percent of the population who suffer from RLS. One hypothesis is that bouncing the leg creates a control pattern that helps us to soothe or distract ourselves from anxiety. Fortunately, everyone seems to bounce at their own particular rate of speed, so the odds of a group of fidgeters collectively finding the resonant frequency of a structure and causing an earthquake are probably small.