45 People Whose Brain.exe Stopped Working Share The Weirdest And Funniest Things They've Done

Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, the author of multiple best-selling books including Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams (Intentional Insights, 2021), The Blindspots Between Us: How to Overcome Unconscious Cognitive Bias and Build Better Relationships (New Harbinger, 2020), and many more, told us that living on autopilot is necessary much of the time. “That's because otherwise, we would become overwhelmed with thinking through every little thing that we do,” he added.

Having said that, Dr. Tsipursky argues that our autopilot system also makes systematic errors that can get us into a lot of trouble. “These errors are called cognitive biases and they are remnants from our evolutionary background. They served our ancestors well in the ancient savanna, but harm us in the modern world.”

“That's why we tend to do things like eating way more than we intend at social events (restraint bias), buying high and selling low in the stock market (loss aversion bias), and sticking with a relationship long past the time when it should end (sunken costs bias),” Dr. Tsipursky explained.

Fortunately, we can learn about these cognitive biases and retrain our brains to overcome them, Dr. Tsipursky claims. According to him, it will lead us to have much better relationships, professional careers, and personal habits and routines.

“To retrain our brains requires us, first of all, to understand the dangers of living on autopilot: in other words, learn about each of these biases and how they impact us. After learning about these biases, we can take practical and proactive steps to address them in our minds.”

Moreover, “we can retrain our autopilot system to make better decisions in the moment and overcome those dangerous mental blind spots stemming from our evolutionary background,” Dr. Tsipursky concluded.