Bestseller Mindset: A Guide to Thoughtless Efficiency

“Welcome to the ultimate guide that shows you how to make your life easier by leaving the thinking to your subconscious. Don’t want to constantly think about everything? Perfect! Read on and discover how your mental shortcuts and automatic behavior programs control your life – and how to make the most of them.”

Very convincing, right? Or maybe not? Maybe we think that we fully consciously and self-directedly think our thoughts, but the opposite is the reality – and that’s mostly a good thing. If we didn’t have shortcuts for behavioral programs in the subconscious, our brain would be permanently overloaded, and we would have a hard time forming even the simplest thoughts, let alone performing physical activities.

Shortcuts – The Sacred Collection in the Subconscious

The human brain has a clever trick up its sleeve: it uses a variety of mental shortcuts to make quick and “effective” decisions. These heuristics help us process complex information and stay capable of acting in chaotic situations – without needing the luxury of conscious thought. Daniel Kahneman, the master of thoughtless thinking and author of “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” describes these processes as part of our fast, intuitive thinking. Great, isn’t it?

Think about how often you use the availability heuristic: you estimate the likelihood of events based on your memories of similar events. You recently heard about a plane crash? Sure, now flying seems much riskier. And all this without consciously thinking about it! Your mental shortcuts are deeply rooted in your subconscious and influence your daily decisions and behaviors – effortlessly.

The principle of shortcuts that define our mindset has a genius and a creepy side. All our complex motor skills, like driving a car, playing tennis, or playing the piano, depend on more or less perfectly learned program sequences that we have practiced repeatedly until we can perform them automatically, almost like in our sleep. When we want to perform the activity, it requires only a few control elements once the respective shortcuts run with the program sequences.

The creepy part is when thought processes are learned and repeated over and over, just like a physical movement, and then stored as an automatic program sequence with a matching shortcut reference. And this often happens unconsciously and, above all, externally controlled, through perception with our senses. It starts with simple things like learning language as a small child by repeatedly hearing the same phrases and simultaneously associating them with corresponding perceptions. Of course, this doesn’t end at adulthood – this process continues throughout our entire lives.

Whenever these specific thought patterns emerge, the shortcuts are called upon, and the automatic behavior patterns are executed, and we think in the same ingrained thought patterns with the corresponding consequences.

Many of these ingrained and hardly dynamic thought patterns form our mindset. The perfectly remote-controlled flesh sack of a human. A found feast for those aware of such automated shortcuts in the clouded human mind and who exploit these automatisms to their advantage. Advertisers, politicians, and the media, in general, are the main beneficiaries here.

The tricky part is not the automatisms per se but how they are shaped.

Manifestations of Mental Systems

The mindset is formed by various mental systems that work together in harmonious chaos. Our perception systems filter and interpret sensory information, while the memory systems store and retrieve relevant experiences – all so you don’t have to burden yourself with details. Emotional systems influence the assessment of risks and rewards, while cognitive systems process information and initiate decisions.

Each of these systems contributes to the formation of mental shortcuts. How nice that our emotions play a leading role here! Antonio Damasio, the guru of emotional decision-making, has shown that without emotional feedback, even the simplest decisions become torture. So, should we let our emotions do the work and sit back?

In principle, we hardly have a choice; otherwise, we don’t function properly. What we can do, however, is allocate as much energy as possible to our critical mind to oversee the execution of automated program sequences – whether physical or psychological – and change or remove faulty or useless automatisms from our consciousness.

Situational Automatism

Our behaviors are a true masterpiece of automation. These programs, which run in response to specific stimuli or situations, are the result of years of careful conditioning. Do you always react the same way in stressful situations? Perfect! That’s your subconscious saving you from the effort of thinking.

Robert Cialdini, the pope of persuasion, describes in “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” various principles that act as automatisms, such as reciprocity, consistency, and social proof. These principles show how deeply rooted behavior patterns govern your actions, often without you noticing. These automatic reactions allow you to act quickly and efficiently – without conscious effort. Who wants to think all the time?

Influence of Context and Environment

The mindset is also shaped by the context of a matter and the environment in which we live. Cultural norms, social structures, and personal experiences shape mental shortcuts and automatic behaviors. How risks and rewards are portrayed in your culture can significantly influence your risk-taking and decision-making – all without your conscious input.

Social influences also play a crucial role. Albert Bandura, the master of social learning theory, emphasizes that we learn many of our behaviors through observation and imitation. If we grow up in an environment that reinforces or sanctions certain behavior patterns, we often unconsciously adopt these patterns. How convenient that you don’t have to think about it! And if we later recognize behavior patterns that are disadvantageous to us, it becomes incredibly difficult to get rid of them. Overworked psychologists can only perform damage control, and psychiatrists will gladly prescribe psychotropic drugs which rarely address the root of the problem.

The Mindset We Have

Are we satisfied with our mindset? Do the shortcuts we have programmed execute the behavior-programs we want? Or have we adopted behaviors we can no longer get rid of, that annoy us and make life difficult? Every good intention is compromised by our mutated behavioral peculiarities, almost as if an alien artificial intelligence were controlling us.

Mindset Variation 'Block Captain'

If we are honest, we don’t really want to change our mindset. It has a special value: our lifetime. All the experiences that have made us who we are. That’s what we always tell ourselves when familiar behavior patterns strike. We are mostly not pleased afterward. We often don’t even recognize it, or only when it’s too late. Or we simulate situations in our imagination and think we already know the outcome. In any case, we will activate all our mindset shortcuts and let them run unrestrained so that the outcome is exactly as predicted. Do we really want that? Yes, we do! We are addicted to quick, cheap dopamine, no matter how much. We take whatever comes, just hurry and give it to us! The behavior programs are rattling…

Self-Responsibility Through Awareness and Reflection

Of course, if you really wanted to, you could consciously reflect on and change your mindset. Through self-reflection and critical thinking, you can recognize and question your automatic reaction patterns. But honestly, who has the time?

Carol Dweck, psychologist and author of “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success” advocates the “growth mindset”: the idea that you can improve your abilities and intelligence through effort and learning. Yes, that sounds great and all, but if you just want to make your life thoughtlessly efficient, let your subconscious continue to do the work. It’s working fine, right?

Only when you recognize the value of greater awareness and are willing to pay the price of increased conscious thinking, you will be able to exert more influence over the already automated processes. The earlier in life you become aware of this, the better, because changing your mindset takes a lot of time!

📜 What the Critical Mind is and how it works is covered in the CyberZadi article CRITICAL MIND – The Neglected Concept.

The Mindset We Want

We imagine having the right morals, the optimal attitude for various topics. At the same time, we hallucinate about how perfectly we have our lives under control – and are especially convinced that we make conscious decisions.

If you look at the behavior of most people, it paints a picture that more closely resembles zombie movies. Fortunately, we are not like all those remote-controlled boneless goo-buckets, right?

But let’s be realistic and assume that we are not significantly different from all other people. Now the good news: the shortcuts of our mindset are changeable if we really want it. It is not easy to implement, but it works.

You need to be aware of some factors before tinkering with your mindset. For example, you need a lot of patience and perseverance, but above all, your critical mind should function well; otherwise, there’s no point in starting, and you’d be better off sticking to your established and beloved habits. But if you want to experience a bit of super-human territory, this article will give you some ideas and perhaps a few tempting incentives.

Let’s give our brain the chance to give up useless, annoying, and destructive behavior patterns and develop new ones from which we benefit more and perhaps even give us new skills that allow us to grow.

How do you maintain the shortcuts of your mindset? Write about it in the comments!

    ✎ Patrick