Returning home from the office, I found myself sitting on the train in a state of stupor, as one is wont to be while commuting home at 6:53pm in full dark. Unlike Sherlock Holmes, I did not consider injecting cocaine to be a good solution, so was just staring off into middle-distance, instead. As ever¹, I had music playing on my headphones — and yet I could not, for the life of me, tell you what was playing. It was some medley of same-y tracks that Spotify had decided I should listen to that day, all mushing together with no intentionality or progression.

Earlier that day I had started playing some playlist promoted on the Spotify landing page — probably "Indie Vibe Themes For Post-Modern Teens"² — based on a cursory glance at the light-on description. "Oh, I know those artists", and done.
And that works... I got music, but it did not get me music that I wanted, and — worse — it set my day off to a tempo set by someone else (an algorithm, at that).

Here, we find the crux of the problem — in deferring my decision, I also paid the cost of giving away my agency. Nothing has to go wrong to drift in the wrong direction. I hadn't made a poor music selection as much as I had chosen not to choose.

Sitting on the train, I pulled my phone out and browsed³ my saved albums until I found something that actually sparked joy⁴, and started it playing instead. Immediately, my mood lifted, thanks to three things.

1. I had made a 'real' decision instead of accepting a presented default
2. I received an immediate mental reward of getting something I wanted instead of being fed something asking for my attention
3. This then helps form a positive-feedback loop⁵, producing an environment that matched my needs

This then got me thinking: what was going on that this was even a scenario I was dealing with?

There's a lot of racket in the software sector currently about the rise of cognitive debt due to the raw unchecked speed of LLMs, but what I want to look at today is a closely related phenomenon I'd like to call 'Cognitive Deferral'. I would define this as the habit of letting tools, defaults, or algorithms make choices for us in areas where the act of choosing is part of how we maintain agency, attention, or identity.

To solve (any) problem, one must first recognise it. Cognitive deferral does not arrive wearing a little 'V for villain' cape, it presents itself as a convenience. As one fewer thing to think about. As a sensible optimisation. After all, our brain takes the path of least resistance, and when it has the opportunity to not have to make decisions, oh boy, does it like to take it.

Once you notice this rift in one aspect of life, and start paying attention and looking out for it elsewhere, it becomes obvious that this is not the only area of life where this happens. Consider also:

• Relying on calendar (or Facebook!) notifications to remind you of people's birthdays — this is possibly the worst time to try and sync up with people if you want deep relationships. Maintain your friendships outside of special events, people!
• Using LLM summaries to 'read' articles for you, especially opinion or non-fact-based pages — this throws all interpretation in favour of the model's biases, let alone forming a meaningful understanding of the topic.
• Essentially any modern form of social media for the obvious reasons — you sacrifice essentially all ownership of your attention, both what you think about, and how you should feel about it.
• Using smart replies, or munging your writing through an LLM editor — you have a personal voice, even in writing. Be proud and protective of it.

You almost certainly have others that spring to mind, based on your life and circumstances⁶⁷

Of course, it is more nuanced than 'eliminate all outsourcing of decision making.' In some cases, cognitive deferral can be a worthwhile trade-off. For example, the availability of GPS navigation is an excellent tool. We no longer have to pull out a Melways (or other local map of choice) and work through routes to determine the best way to get to your aunt's BBQ. However, this atrophies our spatial navigation skills and ability to concisely describe directions or locations. This can be ~fine most of the time, but if you need your GPS to navigate you between your home and regular workplace⁸, something has probably gone wrong.

You can also defer to your past self (if you trust your past self!). Zuckerberg, Obama, and Jobs all had 'iconic' fits because they had chosen to form a complete wardrobe of a single 'design' to eliminate the cognitive load of having to make the trivial⁹ decision of what do I wear? on a daily basis.
The same can easily be said for other front-loading deciders like meal-prepping lunches, or even picking a pre-built PC over building it yourself from parts¹⁰. Delegating to yourself can still be your own agency, just shifted earlier in time.

Where does that leave us, then? I would summarise this as:

• Retain control of the decisions that affect your environment, mood, or wellbeing.
• Outsource those that don't make a meaningful change to the above, or where the cost-benefit tradeoff seems worthwhile.
• Prefer systems set up by your past self for future optimisation over defaults provided by someone else.

Reclaiming agency isn't rocket science. Sometimes all it takes is to choose an album yourself.

Footnotes#