Future Shock

by Alvin Toffler

"Rational behavior ...," writes organization theorist Bertram M. Gross, "always includes an intricate combination of routinization and creativity. Routine is essential ... [because it] frees creative energies for dealing with the more baffling array of new problems for which routinization is an irrational approach." When we are unable to program much of our lives, we suffer. "There is no more miserable person," wrote William James, "than one ... for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup ... the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of deliberation." For unless we can extensively program our behavior, we waste tremendous amounts of information-processing capacity on trivia. This is why we form habits. Watch a committee break for lunch and then return to the same room: almost invariably its members seek out the same seats they occupied earlier. Some anthropologists drag in the theory of "territoriality" to explain this behavior—the notion that man is forever trying to carve out for himself a sacrosanct "turf." A simpler explanation lies in the fact that programming conserves information-processing capacity. Choosing the same seat spares us the need to survey and evaluate other possibilities.

Routine and TerriToriality