Is Your Brain Lazier Than You?

The Human Brain. All the amazing things people say about it. 30 times more powerful than the best supercomputer, it is often said to be the most powerful weapon of man. One would think that mine would live up to at least the human average, but alas, the world isn't perfect. It is as lazy as a toad at the bottom of a well. 

But it isn't just mine that is lazy. Everyone's is. The brains of Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jeonghee Lee, you name them. All lazybones. Not the people of course, but their brains. 

Seems absurd, isn't it? Let's go one step further. The brains of the most efficient people across the world, are the laziest, to state a fact. Let's see how. 

The frontal lobe of the brain is the one that primarily handles thinking. As everyone knows, thinking is hard work, even more so for people, many of whom are inherently idiots. Your brain needs to allocate time and energy to more useful activities, like finding food, shelter, and other important needs. And that is the reason, most of the work of the brain is unplanned, and unconscious, because if it were, the world would be full of overworked people, starting from newborn babies. 

You do not will your hair to grow; you do not consciously make your heart beat; you do not consciously process every sound that your auditory nerves detect. All those activities are automatic, designed so that your brain can think of better stuff to do, which unfortunately for most, (me included) means binging on Netflix. 

The thing that seems totally unrelated to all of this is the word 'habits'. How many of us have heard elders tell us to "develop good habits" and "stop bad habits"?? Has anyone ever thought that habits could be the brain's way of making things more automatic, easier? 

When we have a problem in life, exams, work, or pretty much anywhere, our brain thinks of all the possible ways and methods to solve it. Neurological activity is very high in this period. Your brain is taking in tons of new info, trying to analyse it, put it together, try out

many strategies, and solve it. In most cases, you eventually solve the problem and get what you were seeking, be it an answer to a math problem, a way to deal with the stress of office, school, college, etc, etc, etc. Your brain then analyses it again. Wait a sec, that felt good....what did I do before it?? 

Over time, your brain figures what gave it the desired reward, and cracked the problem it was facing. It begins forming a habit, which is basically automating most of the task that you did to get the reward. It begins to cut down all the strategies that you tried and picks the easiest path to the reward. As habits are created, your brain activity actually decreases. Your brain learns to tune in only to the cues that predict a satisfactory reward, and tunes out everything else. Picking up the game controller as soon as you come home after a stressful day; having the insane itch to eat when stressed; all of it feels easy because you do not consciously think about it. 

In a case study conducted by Edward Thorndike, a psychologist, a group of cats were locked in 'puzzle' boxes and had to do some really simple tasks, like pressing a lever, or pulling a cord, or stepping on a platform, to open the door, which led to open space, that had a bowl containing food. The cats fumbled, of course. They tried to do a variety of things, like banging their head, trying to push through the wall, etc, etc. But eventually, they figured out how to press the lever, and open the door to food. The thing is, the next time they were in the same situation, locked in the same box, all the test subjects, ie, the cats, took lesser time to press the lever. They did fewer tasks before they stumbled on the correct one. Soon, they cut out the other 'few' tasks too. They went straight for the food, pressed the lever with precision, in a way that almost seemed automatic. Their brains, like ours, had learned what to do in order to receive food and cut out all the unnecessary tasks, finally automating the easiest route, and making it a habit. 

The average time(in seconds) taken by one of the cats to press the lever and get to the food was documented thus: 

160,30, 90, 60, 15, 28, 20, 30, 22, 11, 15, 20, 12, 10, 14, 10, 8,8, 5, 10, 8, 6, 6, 7. So a cat that took over 3 minutes at first to do a task, took an average of 6 seconds to do the same task in the end. 

This lead to Thorndike issuing a statement, "Behaviours followed by satisfying consequences tend to be repeated, and those that produce unpleasant consequences are less likely to be repeated" 

Well this it people. The reason why our brain creates habits. Why are habits so difficult to set though? Is our brain REFUSING TO BE LAZY??? Gods, that is first-rate irony...