The Executive and Habitual Minds in Action
For all its remarkable abilities, the executive mind has the limitation of being able to consciously focus on only one thing at a time. The executive mind jealously guards this limited resource by turning over routine matters to the habitual mind, as with an executive handing off assignments to her assistant. If the mind has encountered and satisfactorily handled a situation before, it can write a script to automate the behavioral response in the future. If the mind perceives a situation as novel, the executive mind focuses on the problem.
Using the driving example from before, imagine that you are driving across town to a meeting. You are very familiar with all but the last couple miles of the journey, ...
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