Humans are exceptionally good at recognising patterns. This skill has been integral to our survival and the development of our senses. The ability to recognise and remember audible patterns led to the development of language. Pattern recognition is even a key foundation of modern AI advances.

There are two limitations in our pattern recognition which concatenate into missed opportunities for all of us and into real problems for some.

The first relates to perspectives of time and scale. We generally only recognise patterns over short periods or across a scale that we can observe over a short period. Humans have only recognised patterns that extend over larger scales where they have had a very direct impact on the lives of a larger group or we have seen or created records of the patterns which we can subsequently study.

The second set of patterns that we struggle to identify are human behaviours. We can identify direct responses to stimuli very well and we can also recognise a range of behaviour patterns in others better than we can in ourselves, but even then generally not consistently.

When these two areas of weakness combine we can be blind to some significant patterns of behaviour in ourselves that could be holding us back or even creating a serious problem for us. Parents sometimes see patterns of behaviour in their children, and those in relationships sometimes in their partners. Occasionally others will try and highlight or disrupt the patterns to benefit the individual or themselves.

It is far more useful for us to see our own patterns of behaviour. If we understand the routines and reactions that we have developed we can be more considered and take control with more purposeful behaviour. It can be hard to do and there can be a very great number of factors that influence us. We can do it with practice and there are some exercises we can undertake to get us started.

Keeping a journal and writing down your daily thoughts and feelings, together with key interactions, can be useful. But subsequent review can be difficult. However, the link between specific well established factors can be a good place to start.

In a book, or on a spreadsheet if you have access to one, record the following each day:

1. Number of hours sleep
2. Quality of sleep (1-10)*
3. Energy on waking (1-10)*
4. Mood on waking *
5. Minutes of high intensity exercise
6. Minutes of low intensity exercise
7. Litres of water drunk in the day
8. Performance (at work/sports)
9. Quality of nutrition (1-10)*
10. Screen time (laptop/tv/phone)
11. Time spent outdoors
12. Mood at the end of the day*

The items marked * are essentially requiring a personal assessment. Accuracy isn’t as important as the assessment being your honest opinion.

Reviewing the data after just one month should provide some interesting (if unsurprising) insights into areas that are linked. The purpose of the exercise is twofold. Firstly, it may reinforce some of the relationships between these factors that we often choose to ignore. Secondly, it demonstrates a simple approach of how you can use pattern recognition to understand more about yourself. It is possible to use the same technique in a large number of areas. Hopefully this exercise will push you to consider other aspects of your own life that you wish to understand more about.

The best way to disrupt a pattern is to create an overriding habit. A large number of books are available on how to establish positive habits (and break the ones that work against us). We will come back to habits in a future post.