The steering wheel was burning hot to the touch when I sat down. The bad sun had been burning since before my traitorously absent phone woke me. Nothing more my brain entering routine mode and over-writing the exception. My brain was in the routine and in the routine my phone was in my bag. It didn’t matter that my phone was on the counter, charging silently. I showered, I shaved, the radio forecasted amazing weather, I gave Emily her breakfast and loaded her into the car (she was so adorable that morning, she complained about the ‘bad sun’ in the morning blinding her, saying it stopped her having a little sleep on the way to nursery) and left. But I didn’t stop my brain entering routine mode. My ability to remember my phone being on the counter is only as reliable as my ability to stop my brain entering ‘morning routine mode’ which would dictate that my phone is actually in my bag. If you have a break in your routine, your ability to remember and account for the break is only as good as your ability to stop your brain going into routine mode. Soon, you think about your route to work as much as you do keeping your legs moving when you walk. Your brain keeps doing it, without you thinking about it. Keep doing it and it stops being processed by the thinking bit of the brain and gets relegated to a part of the brain dedicated to dealing with routine. Do something often enough and it becomes routine. Most common journeys blur into one, and recalling any one in particular is scientifically proven to be difficult. What do you actually remember? Probably little, if anything. This is the thing there’s a level of your brain that just deals with routine, so that the rest of the brain can think about other things. I wasn’t thinking about moving my breakfast through my intestines, I was wondering whether I’d finish on time to pick up my daughter Emily from the nursery after work or get stuck with another late fee. ![]() I wasn’t thinking about regulating my breathing, I was thinking whether I should grab a coffee on the drive to work (I did). If you did, the entire world would turn into one massive hilarious QWOP cosplay. Like, when you’re walking somewhere, you think about your destination and avoiding hazards, but you don’t need to think about keeping your legs moving properly. Your brain doesn’t work just on one level, it works on many. ![]() This wasn’t just me being clumsy, as I later researched this is a recognized brain function. Once in the shower, my brain got back into ‘the routine’ it follows every morning and that was it. It was a momentary slip from the routine but that was all it took. So, I put it on to charge while I showered instead of into my bag like normal. It was a new phone and it had this annoying habit of leaving applications running that drain the battery overnight. In my case, my phone’s alarm woke me up as normal but I realized the battery was lower than I expected. Then you did a mental recap of the morning’s events. More likely, you reached for your phone, pawing open your pocket or handbag, and were momentarily confused by it not being there. The realization probably didn’t dawn on you spontaneously. When did you realize you’d forgotten it? I’m guessing you didn’t just smack your forehead and exclaim ‘damn’ apropos of nothing.
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