Why Do We Know What to Do and Still Not Do It?
We hosted Imran in our community recently, and I had been looking forward to it for weeks. He is a medical doctor who left clinical practice, has written six books, and now leads health innovation at a health tech company where I have the pleasure of working alongside him. His book Feelability had been sitting on my desk, half read and heavily underlined, because so much of it echoes what we talk about in this space.
What I did not expect was for a doctor to open by telling us that most of what he was taught as a doctor does not actually change anyone's behaviour. You can watch our full conversation below. If you would rather read, here is what stayed with me.
You can watch our full conversation below. If you would rather read, here is what stayed with me.
▶ Watch the full conversation with Imran
Why do we know what to do and still not do it?
Because knowing and doing are two entirely different systems, and only one of them is running your day. This was Imran's most honest professional admission, and it landed hard coming from a doctor.
"One of the biggest issues we have in healthcare all over the globe is not the lack of knowledge. People know what's good for them. It's the ability to act upon that knowledge."
He described the moment it hit him. He would give a patient a diagnosis and a treatment plan, ask if they understood, and they would nod. Then they would go home to the same habits that brought them to him in the first place. Doctors, he said, are trained in knowledge, not in behaviour. Nobody teaches them how a person actually changes.
If you have ever wondered why you can read the book, take the course, understand the science perfectly, and still not do the thing, this is your answer. The gap is not in your understanding. It never was.
What actually drives our behaviour, if not knowledge?
Emotion. And once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
"Emotion. And once you see it, you cannot unsee it."
Imran's view of what a human being actually is may be the most useful reframe in the whole conversation. We like to think of ourselves as rational, tolerant, conscious creatures who occasionally slip. He flips it. We are emotional, habit driven, impulse driven creatures who occasionally succeed in thinking.
That is not a criticism. It is a design spec. Once you accept it, you stop trying to force yourself through things with willpower and logic, and start asking a much better question: how do I make this feel good enough that I will actually do it?
His example was cleaning. It is boring, it drains you, and no amount of knowing it needs doing gets it done. So you sugarcoat it. Put music on. Invite a friend. Make the thing feel like something other than a chore. Simple to the point of feeling silly, and far more effective than another lecture to yourself about discipline.
If you keep knowing exactly what you should be doing and still not doing it, that gap is precisely the work I do with leaders. Book a conversation with us whenever you are ready
Is there a difference between thinking about who you are and feeling who you are?
Yes, and Imran believes most of our unhappiness lives in the gap between them. When he signed my copy of his book, he wrote something I have thought about ever since: the thoughts about yourself and the feeling of being you are different. What do you focus on?
The thought of who you are is an endless audit. Am I good enough. Am I earning enough. Do people rate me. How many likes, how many sales, how many seats filled. There is no ceiling on that, and no finish line either.
The feeling of being you is far simpler. Right now, in this room, are you comfortable? Is this a space you chose? Are you with people you find interesting? Those questions have actual answers.
"If you live your life on how it feels, then you don't have to make so many choices."
He asked everyone on the call to close their eyes and think about what mattered most for ten seconds. Nobody thought about their phone. Nobody thought about their inbox or the thing they are saving up for. Everyone thought about people. Which raises his uncomfortable question: if we know that with our eyes closed, why do we spend so much of our waking life doing the opposite?
How do you actually change a habit?
You stop relying on choice, and you change the conditions around the behaviour instead.
"Most of our lives is driven by reactions, habits, impulses, up to maybe 90, 95 percent"
That number is worth sitting with. If almost everything you do runs on autopilot, then the occasional heroic decision is not where your life gets decided. Imran's framing is that the real work is programming your autopilot, using your rare moments of genuine reflection to set up habits, spaces, and relationships that then carry your intentions when you are not paying attention.
He also mentioned a study on physical environments that stuck with me. People who spent time in a cluttered space afterwards made less generous and less healthy choices than people who spent the same time in an orderly one. The world around you shapes the world inside you. Which means tidying your desk is not a trivial act of housekeeping. It is a quiet intervention on your own behaviour.
What is deep living?
It is the idea behind Imran's next book, and it is a direct challenge to the productivity culture most of us have absorbed. We have all heard of deep work, focusing hard to get the most out of our working hours. His question is simple. Work is not life. Why are we only optimising the part we do for money?
Deep living optimises for two things instead: making life easier to live, and better to live. Easier means reducing the cognitive load, the endless choices and information that leave us exhausted. Better means increasing the emotional reward, more time with people and activities that actually fill us up.
Rather than New Year resolutions, which he says almost nobody keeps, he suggests working in seasons. Every three months, you get a fresh start, and you deliberately look at:
• Spaces — do the rooms you spend most of your time in actually make you feel good
• Rituals — your morning, your movement, your sleep
• Processes — the commute, the shopping, the routines that fill your week
• Relationships — the people you keep meaning to call and never do
• Reformation — what you are carrying into the new season and what you are leaving behind
• Restitution — genuinely enough rest, especially in winter
• Reflection — protecting the capacity to think clearly, rather than only reacting
"You'll basically just drift through your life, carried by the processes that lead you, instead of you taking charge and living your life based on choices."
What did he say about work that does not feel like work?
He has three conditions, and I have not stopped thinking about them since. His work has to be challenging enough that he grows. It has to be important enough that he cannot stop doing it. And it has to involve people he can learn from.
"The moment work starts feeling too much as work, we're doing something wrong."
When it starts to feel heavy, his diagnosis is usually one of four things: the enjoyment has been taken out, the mutual dependency has gone, the demands have gone up without the meaning going up with them, or nobody has provided enough clarity. That is a genuinely useful checklist for anyone leading a team.
How to put this into practice this week
Pick one thing you keep not doing. Do not add more information about why it matters. Change how it feels instead: music, company, a nicer setting, anything
Look at the space you spend the most time in. Clear one surface. Notice whether your choices shift over the following days.
Call one person you have been meaning to call. Imran's view is that our closest relationships do more for us than we give them credit for.
Ask the three questions about your own work: is it challenging enough, important enough, and am I doing it with people I learn from. Notice which one is missing.
Where this might not hold
Imran shared several studies in conversation, and I have kept them here as he told them, but a few, particularly the ones about relationship hierarchies and cell renewal, are worth verifying before treating them as settled science. He would be the first to say he is a curious human rather than the final word. And while a great deal of low mood and exhaustion responds well to sleep, environment, and connection, some does not. If what you are carrying feels heavier than that, please speak to a professional. This is a conversation about everyday wellbeing, not a substitute for clinical care.
A few questions I hear often
What is the knowing-doing gap?
It is the well-documented distance between understanding what would be good for you and actually doing it. It is not a knowledge problem or a willpower failing. Behaviour is driven largely by habit and emotion, so information alone rarely moves it.
Why does more information not help?
Because you were never short of information. Imran's experience as a doctor was that patients understood their diagnosis perfectly and still went home to the same habits. Adding another article or another course adds to the pile without touching the mechanism that actually drives behaviour.
Should I tell people about my goals?
Imran described research suggesting the opposite of what most of us assume. Announcing a goal publicly earns you praise immediately, and that reward can quietly reduce the pressure to actually follow through. Accountability with someone who will hold you to it is different from applause.
How do I make myself do something I dislike?
Change how it feels rather than reasoning with yourself about why it matters. Add music, company, a better environment, or connect it to a purpose beyond yourself. Imran worked night shifts as a doctor by focusing on the person who needed him at 3am rather than on the shift itself.
Is it realistic to only do what feels good?
No, and that is not the suggestion. Some things simply have to be done. The idea is that for every demand, you look for something that makes it lighter, and that across your life as a whole you prioritise what genuinely fills you rather than only what looks important on paper.
Programming the autopilot
If there is one thread through everything Imran shared, it is that we have been trying to change our lives with the wrong tool. We keep reaching for more knowledge when the thing actually running our days is emotion and habit.
The good news in that is how ordinary the fix is. Better spaces. Enough sleep. The people you keep meaning to call. Work that asks something real of you. None of it is dramatic, and all of it is available this week.
This is close to the heart of what we do at The Simplified Model, with founders, executives, and investors who want their success to include themselves. If that speaks to you Book a mindset conversation whenever you feel ready.
This piece draws on our full community conversation with Imran. Watch it in full above.
