Most of us go through the day forming intentions and making choices by default rather than through deliberate decision-making.
Instead, our choices are made through habits, social contagion, and unexamined assumptions.
In his recent book, Intentional, productivity expert Chris Bailey reveals that researchers have found that most of our actions run on neural autopilot. This is the mental mode that we deploy whenever we simply respond automatically to what comes our way.
Much of the time, we’re like corks floating in the ocean, responding to whatever wave hits us and moving this way and that without intentional thought. Socrates, however, is said to have stated, “The unexamined life is not worth living,” during his trial in ancient Athens.
Intentional living is only possible where there is self-reflection.
Chris Bailey calls our ability to interpret that default mode our “self-reflective capacity” and argues it’s the engine of intentional living. Without it, we’re not really choosing our lives; we’re just executing them.
Thinking About Your Thinking
The word metacognition sounds academic, but the concept is simple: it is thinking about your thinking. It’s the practice of stepping back to observe your own mental processes, assumptions, emotional reactions, and the patterns in how you move through your day.
To do this kind of thinking, you have to become aware of what you’re thinking and feeling so you know how to move forward.
As Chris Bailey wrote in Intentional,
“If you want to work on autopilot less, become more intentional, and reflect on your future and plan for your goals more often, you need to activate your self-reflective capacity.”
How I Found What I Was Really Thinking
There are several ways we can train ourselves to better observe our feelings and thoughts.
Journaling is one that works especially well for me. It puts my thoughts and feelings into a visible form where I can actually examine them and ask questions about them.
Journaling is primarily for me a form of self-discovery and self-therapy. When I’m dictating into my journaling app Day One, I often discover what I’m thinking that lies beneath my conscious thoughts. It helps me to think through problems and possibilities.
Catching Your Mind in the Act
Mindfulness meditation is the practice of noticing when and where your mind wanders. The practice isn’t about emptying the mind. It’s about catching the mind in the act of thinking and feeling.
As Chris Bailey writes in Intentional,
“Meditation is a powerful way to connect with and develop your self-reflective capacity.”
In a blog post that I wrote recently, I stated the real value of mindfulness meditation is that it’s a technique that helps me to get out of being caught up in myself and lets me observe myself from a more neutral perspective.
That’s exactly what’s needed to become less on autopilot and more intentional in how I live my life.
The Daily Ritual That Makes Intentional Living Possible
Bailey’s practical suggestion is to establish a daily intention-setting ritual, either in the morning or at the end of the day, to decide what you’re working on and why.
This can take many forms. For instance, I do a “daily shutdown” where (with the help of Claude Cowork) I review the past day, reflect on what I did well and where I could improve, and then preview the coming day’s calendar and task list. I then choose the three tasks I consider the most important and list them on the next day’s daily note in NotePlan.
Even a brief pause to ask “What am I doing?” and “Does it align with what I actually care about?” can make a huge difference in our lives.
How Much of Your Day Do You Actually Choose?
Here’s the question worth sitting with: How much of your day do you actually choose — and how much just happens?
Most people never stop long enough to ask. That’s not a criticism; it’s just how autopilot works.
But once you start building a regular practice of self-reflection — whether through journaling, meditation, a daily intention check, or something else — the gap between what you’re doing and what you actually want starts to shrink.
That’s the whole game. And it turns out, it’s a game you can get better at.
Note: I wrote this blog post myself using my own words and thoughts for the initial draft. I used AI only to suggest headlines, section headings, images and text improvements.
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