Specifically simple physical actions, like walking down a long flight of stairs?
In: Biology
As we learn physical complex actions, we begin to “chunk” them, that is, group them together into what the brain considers a single action. A novice thinks in terms of placing each finger on a piano key, and expert thinks in musical keys and intervals and chord progressions, and other advanced musical things I have no idea about.
Once an action is chunked, the brain loses visibility to the individual details. An expert pianist can play the second inversion of an F minor seventh as a single action without being specifically aware they were playing C Eb F Ab. If that pianist knew there was a thumbtack on Eb, they would have a hard time avoiding it. They would have to start thinking in terms of individual notes, could no longer chunk things together, and their playing would suffer greatly.
A similar thing happens when you are performing repetitive chunked actions. We get a little bored, pay attention to the action, then start thinking inside the chunks, which breaks them. Even worse, we are aware this can happen, so we are actively thinking about not thinking about something, which of course tends to make us think about it more.
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