I’ve occasionally referred to the two parts of the brain as Smart Hamster and Strong Hamster. Unfortunately, Smart Hamster can sometimes be thick as a brick. But Strong Hamster is always strong. Strong Hamster (the unconscious) wants to maintain the status quo.
To be as clear as possible, Strong Hamster doesn’t care what the status quo is…it has no investment in the particulars…it isn’t trying to thwart us or sabotage us or keep us down by resisting the changes we want to make. It just wants to lay in a course and stick to it.
When I first began researching the two parts of the brain eight years ago, I came across information that claimed roughly 40% of our behavior was automatic (unconscious). Then I found subsequent research doubling that to 80%. The current view is that 95% of our behavior is directed by—you guessed it—Strong Hamster.
Some things to know about Strong Hamster:
- It isn’t directly accessible.
- It thinks associatively rather than logically (jumps to conclusions).
- It is unlimited.
- It is fast, vast, and always on.
- It tends to be gullible rather than skeptical.
- It is prone to cognitive biases.
- It focuses exclusively on short-term predictions and responses.
Strong Hamster is formidable. When it notices we have ventured off course, it “corrects” us back to our original path. That’s why changing a habit or routine is so difficult.
Habits and the conditioned responses that compose them are processed in the brain in milliseconds, thousands of times faster than conscious decisions. —Steven Stosny, Ph.D.
Smart Hamster is unrelentingly enthralled by its belief that thinking and understanding are more important than acting. Smart Hamster is continually surprised to discover that Strong Hamster is not at all swayed by Smart Hamster’s perception of the merits or benefits of changing course. The only thing Strong Hamster responds to is action.
Disruption = a Window of Opportunity
Sometimes in life, like it or not, we are yanked off course by circumstances or situations outside our control. Sometimes we simply aren’t able to maintain the course we were on: the status quo is no longer status quo. What’s a Strong Hamster to do when that happens?
Habits and routines are energy saving devices for the brain. That’s why Strong Hamster is so keen to create and sustain them. When they’re disrupted, Strong Hamster gets busy attempting to create a new status quo. The period in between the disruption of old habits and routines and Strong Hamster’s replacement of them with new habits and routines is a window of opportunity for behavior change.
Unfortunately, such periods of disruption rarely lead to the increased self-awareness and self-reflection that intentional change requires. That’s because disruption already demands that we call on Smart Hamster more than we are used to doing. And Smart Hamster is not always up to the job.
Some things to know about Smart Hamster are:
- As well as being logical, it is a good critical thinker.
- It is also good at long-range/strategic planning.
- It is limited (processing 40 bits of information at a time compared to Strong Hamster’s 11 million bits of information).
- It is effortful.
- It is slow and deliberate.
- It is easily depleted.
- It tends to go along with the suggestions of Strong Hamster.
Given that habits are initiated and operated by Strong Hamster (the unconscious), they can be difficult to isolate. We don’t identify with Strong Hamster even though a solid argument could be made that it contributes much more to our sense of self than Smart Hamster does. And just as we don’t identify with Strong Hamster, we don’t identify with our habitual behavior. But that habitual (automatic) behavior makes up 95% of what we do and think and feel! So it might be time to give it a little more attention.
Any Port in a Storm?
Right now, many of us are experiencing varying levels of upheaval and uncertainty. For some, there are very real worries and concerns to be dealt with. But one factor contributing to our unease and anxiety is the disruption of our habits and routines.
Strong Hamster is focused on reinstating a new status quo as quickly as possible. That will definitely make us feel more at ease and less anxious. But Strong Hamster is a short-term thinker. Do we really want it to be making choices we’ll have to live with going forward? If we don’t participate in the process of determining what some of our new habits and routines will be—or maintaining the ones we want to keep—we’ll cede control of our future selves to Strong Hamster. That doesn’t seem very smart.
Charles Duhigg explains the process of changing habits you don’t want and creating new habits you do want in his Guide to Changing Habits.