How novelty positively impacts your brain

Sticking to your routine can help you get more things done. It also means the brain doesn’t have to work as hard, reinventing the wheel every time you get ready for work in the morning or schedule your day. Sticking to a “same-old, same-old” approach, however, can turn into a fast track to boredom and discontent.

Instead, it’s important to introduce some novelty to your life, says Dr. Lorraine Besser, author of The Art of the Interesting: What We Miss in Our Pursuit of the Good Life and How to Cultivate It and professor of philosophy at Middlebury College.

“Our mind likes to stay safe and play with routines,” she says. “When something new happens, it forces the brain out of its routine thought patterns. It challenges it to have a new thought. Anytime you have a new thought, it’ll lead to other new thoughts. Novelty and sources of newness stimulate your mind to think.”

3 Ways to Train Your Brain to Look for Novelty

Novelty is anything that you experience as new, explains Besser. Fortunately, it exists all around you—if you’re open to it. The key is to train your mind to get out of your routines.

Besser recommends intentionally finding points during the day for newness. For example, take a lunch break away from your desk, stepping outside of your routine to notice something new in the world. “Give your mind the opportunity to wander,” she says. “Be intentional, pausing and giving yourself some space to have this kind of experience.”

Next, make sure you aren’t overly focused on goals. When you strive for something, you only see things through the lens of how it impacts your plans and what you want, says Besser.

“When you look at the world like that, you narrow your focus,” she says. “If you can give your mind space to step outside of your evaluating, pursuing mode and give it space to have a new cognitive experience, it will take off.”

Finally, avoid the temptation to check out and go on autopilot during monotonous tasks. “When you’re on autopilot, you’re not really experiencing anything of value,” says Besser. “You’re just going through the motions. If you can better engage with what you’re doing, you will enhance your workplace experience.”

Pay attention and respond to the details, suggests Besser. You can also tap your senses, using them to deliver stimulation and connection with what you’re doing.

Why Novelty is Important

While novelty doesn’t necessarily enhance happiness, Besser says it contributes to psychological richness. “Research shows that this is an important part of people’s lives overall,” she says. “It’s an experience in the mind where you are engaging in new frames of thinking, stimulating interest and arousing and engaging your thoughts.”

Novelty can also combat boredom. “We know that boredom in the workplace inhibits productivity and lowers employee satisfaction,” says Besser. “One of the things that resolves boredom is to engage more with what you’re doing.”

Novel experiences also enhance small moments in your day-to-day life. Since you’re more likely to remember them, Besser says they can shape and improve how you experience other events, helping to change your perspective, potentially generating more interesting ideas.

Novelty can affect self-expansion, too. “Psychologically rich experiences lead towards a greater sense of self,” says Besser. “My gut tells me that this is happening because we are tapping into different kinds of cognitive reactions and emotions. These are the kinds of things that can get squeezed away when you’re too focused on your plans or agendas. When you allow your brain to operate fully and engage in interesting experiences, you expand your very notion of yourself, seeing yourself as more robust and tapping into a greater sense of identity through it.”

A life without challenge also shrinks your potential and what you may be capable of experiencing. “Interesting experiences offer a distinctive and unique aspect of this dimension of the ‘good life,’” explains Besser. “It’s simply engaging in what we’re doing in a different way.”

While clinging to your routines may feel safe and productive, a life without novelty can be boring and impoverished, says Besser. “If you don’t seek out something new, you get stuck in cycles of comfort and stability,” she says. “Comfort and stability are important—and there are times in our lives where that’s what we need—but if you stay within your circles of comfort and safety, you’re going to live a very one-dimensional life.”