In my humblest of opinions, you are probably spot on about the autopilot vs. actually experiencing things.

As a concrete example, someone in this thread mentioned their older relative spending a lot of time with puzzles daily. I too watched my grandpa doing sudokus and crosswords, but in the end if there’s nothing much else, those too will quickly become uninspiring routine.

I really believe truly experiencing life does require some introspection so that you have agency.