The Cost of Living Life on Autopilot
Eric Jenkins is a San Diego-based photographer and creative director with an MBA and about ten years of experience in branding, design, digital marketing, and creative strategy. He brings together visual storytelling, leadership, business, and the human side of creativity.
There are probably hundreds of things you see every day that you don't actually see anymore. The building you pass on the way to work, the same person walking their dog in the morning, the coffee shop you have been going to for years, the street you've driven down so many times that you barely think about where you are. You know they are there. But if someone asked you to describe them, could you?
I've often caught myself doing this more than once. I'll go somewhere familiar and realize that I have almost no memory of how I got there, the road I took, or the lights I stopped at. But my mind was somewhere else. Thinking about work. Thinking about something that happened yesterday. Thinking about what I needed to do when I got there. The road was right in front of me the entire time. I just wasn't really looking at it. That got me thinking about how easily we can move through our own lives without actually experiencing much of them.
When routine becomes invisible
Routine isn't the problem. We need routine. It saves time. It makes certain parts of the day easier. There are things I don't want to have to think about every morning.
But there is a point where familiarity starts working against us. We take the same route and stop looking at it. We sit in the same chair and stop noticing the room. We have the same conversations and stop really listening. We know what comes next, so we don't pay much attention to what is happening now.
Nothing dramatic has happened. That's part of what makes it easy to miss. Life can feel repetitive without actually being the same. The light is different. The weather is different. The people around us are different. We are different. But if we move through everything assuming we've already seen it, we miss those changes.
Familiar places can become invisible
One of the things photography has taught me is that a familiar place can change simply because you look at it from a different perspective. I've walked through the same streets more times than I can count and still find something I had never noticed. A reflection in a window. A shadow falling across a wall. Someone sitting alone on a bench. The way light hits a building for only a few minutes.
The interesting part is that most of those things were probably there before. I just didn't see them. That has made me question how often we confuse recognizing something with actually seeing it. We recognize a street. We recognize a face. We recognize a place. Our brain already knows what it is, so we move on. There is no reason to look closer. Except there might be.
We are often somewhere else
Sometimes autopilot has less to do with where we are and more to do with where our attention has gone. You can sit across from someone and think about your phone. You can eat dinner while watching something. You can walk through a beautiful place while thinking about tomorrow. You can drive through a neighborhood without noticing anything outside the windshield.
Physically, you are there. Mentally, you are somewhere else. I've done it. Most people probably have. There are always things competing for our attention. Messages. Work. Notifications. News. Responsibilities. Whatever is happening inside our own heads. The problem isn't that any one of these things exists. The problem is when they take up so much of our attention that moments in front of us become background noise.
The ordinary moments don't announce themselves
We are usually pretty good at recognizing the big moments. A trip, a birthday, a wedding, a new job, a major change. We know those moments matter, so we tend to pay attention to them.
But most of life isn't made up of those moments. Most of it is ordinary. A conversation in the kitchen. A quiet drive. A few minutes sitting outside. Someone making you laugh unexpectedly. A song you haven't heard in years. The smell of coffee. The light coming through a window at the end of the day.
Nobody tells you that these moments are important while they are happening. There isn't a sign that says, "Remember this."
You usually understand that later. Sometimes much later. That makes me wonder how many moments we have already missed simply because we weren't paying attention when they happened.
The cost isn't just lost time
When most people talk about wasting time, they usually mean procrastinating. Not getting enough done. Spending too much time on a phone. Watching too much television. Putting things off. Those things can matter. But another cost is harder to measure and often goes unnoticed.
We can lose our sense of the ordinary. The small details that give a place its character. The little changes in people we know. The feeling of a particular morning. The way a neighborhood sounds at a certain hour. The things that make one Tuesday different from another Tuesday.
When everything becomes part of the routine, those details can disappear. Not because they aren't there, but because we stopped looking for them. This is where I think we sometimes get things backward.
Look again
When life starts feeling repetitive, the first instinct can be to change something. Take a trip, move somewhere new, find a new job, or start something completely different.
Sometimes that is exactly what we need. But sometimes life itself isn't the problem. Maybe we've simply stopped paying attention.
You can walk down the same street and see something completely different. You can sit in the same coffee shop and notice the people around you. You can take the same drive and actually look out the window. You can have a conversation without thinking about what you are going to say next.
You don't necessarily need a new life to experience something new. Sometimes you need to look at the life you already have.
I don't think the answer is to become hyperaware of every second. That sounds exhausting. Not every moment needs to be meaningful. Not every sunset needs to become a lesson. Not every cup of coffee needs to be photographed. Sometimes a walk is just a walk, and that's totally fine.
But every so often, it might be worth interrupting the routine. Try taking a different street. Leave the phone in your pocket. Notice the people you normally ignore. Look at a building you have passed a hundred times. Pay attention to the weather. Not because you are trying to turn the moment into something profound, but just because you are there.
The world is still there
Maybe that's the weird thing about living on autopilot. The world doesn't disappear. We keep having experiences. We keep going places and talking to people.
We just become less aware of them. Days still pass. Weeks still pass. Months still pass. Eventually we look back and wonder where the time went. Maybe some of it went exactly where we thought it did. Maybe we just weren't looking closely enough while it was happening.
I don't think we need to escape our routines. I think we need to step outside them occasionally, long enough to notice what they have been hiding.
The street is still there. The person is still there. The light is still changing. The ordinary moments are still happening. Look again. You might find that life wasn't as repetitive as you thought.
Read more from Eric Jenkins
Eric Jenkins, Photographer & Creative Director
Eric Jenkins is a Photographer and Creative Director known for his work in visual storytelling, branding, and creative strategy. He holds an MBA and has more than ten years of professional experience in branding, design, digital marketing, and creative direction.
