When psychologists asked people to log what they were doing hour by hour, roughly 43 percent of daily behaviour turned out to be habit — done in the same place while the mind was somewhere else entirely

In the late 1990s, psychologist Wendy Wood paged undergraduates every hour and asked them to log what they were doing. About 43 percent of their behaviour turned out to be habit — performed in the same place while their minds wandered somewhere else.