Why do we fall into habits?

If I must say then habit is something human evolution has given to us, by definition it means doing something repeatedly (on a daily basis). But why is that we do something’s again and again when most of the times we’re not consciously aware about it? The answer too lies in the evolution of our species, while we were becoming less of monkeys and more of humans something happened; our brains started to develop and hence resulted in a more efficient much smarter cerebral cortex (some got not so smarter or efficient), which in turn would help us do a lot more of the cognitive functions and because of this in my humble opinion came in the cognitive efficiency which is using less of your conscious attention over trivial day to day things and saving up for the things that actually matter. For example if you have to think for every single thing you have to do then you’ll the most tired and frustrated person.

So to save us from this frustration what our brain does is; it tries to from habits of the simpler things we have to do on a daily basis and tries to make itself so efficient that they do require as less conscious attention as possible some of the examples for this would be; How you tie your shoe lace (you’re making the same knot since 10 years or long without giving any thought) Or checking location of your phone in the morning or perfectly hitting the snooze button of your alarm clock, I thought of adding up making your morning coffee as one of things you can do without occupying much of your consciousness but I would not like to offend the people who take it as a spiritual experience.

Now we know why habits are formed but are they good or bad? That my friend is totally dependent on the things around which your habits are formed and I would not dwell on that but what I would stress upon would be are they helpful (the good ones) in tackling your daily life hassels? I would say indeed they are helpful; imagine yourself getting up in the morning making your cup of coffee and then trying to think that what clothes you’re going to wear at the office today then you’d find the clothes if possible iron them and then rush towards your office knowing that your vehicle is short on fuel because of which you find yourself at the gas station and at last you reach your office just before half time (now a lot of people do manage to be in time, I admire those savages). This daily activity or rather mess can be sorted if you’d be in the habit of deciding the clothes the night before or developing a simple rule of not letting your bike run on reserve fuel for more than an hour.

But if habits are just mind making us fool and doing cognitive efficiency then why are they so hard to get rid off ?

It is so because in the process of making a habit something else is also developed and that is muscle memory and muscle memory does not fade very easy you’d feel certain level of uneasiness the moment you try to something which is contradicting to your muscle memory you don’t believe me try tying your shoelaces differently; you’ll find that whenever in hurry you’d go back to that method only (that which you have a habit of).

This being said that our mind does play tricks on us but still habits and simple rules do make our life a little easier.