otherwise engaged.” Both common sense and scientific evidence agree:
repetition is a form of change.
Each time you repeat an action, you are activating a particular neural
circuit associated with that habit. This means that simply putting in your
reps is one of the most critical steps you can take to encoding a new habit. It
is why the students who took tons of photos improved their skills while
those who merely theorized about perfect photos did not. One group
engaged in active practice, the other in passive learning. One in action, the
other in motion.
All habits follow a similar trajectory from effortful practice to automatic
behavior, a process known as
automaticity. Automaticity is the ability to
perform a behavior without thinking about each step, which occurs when
the nonconscious mind takes over.
It looks something like this:
