An automatic setting is a decision made by someone whose preferences may differ from yours.

Every default was chosen by a person, usually for an average user who does not exist, and often with something other than your comfort in mind. Because it arrives already in place, it does not feel like a decision at all, which is exactly what makes it powerful. Most people live inside settings they never picked, in software, in routines, in the shape of their days.

Choose one thing this week that is set the way it came and look at it properly: notification sounds, a subscription, the standing arrangement of your mornings. Change it deliberately, even if you end up choosing what was already there.