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Hey, what's up everyone? Andrew Limbong here in For Mario Sigerra.
There's a certain type of character I love in any book or TV show or movie, and that is
the person whose life looks pretty good on paper, and yet they're not happy.
There's a certain glum, grain is a blanus to their life. I'm thinking about the couple in
Richard Yeats' revolutionary road, or the main character in Otessa Moshvegs, my year of rest and
relaxation. I mean, this feeling is a staple of the great Gen X movies, you know, from reality
bites to fight club to office space. What's up, G? Want to go to a Tatch case? Get some coffee?
Italy, I gotta get out of here, I think I'm gonna lose it. Uh oh. Sounds like somebody's got a
case of the Mundo's. Because we can all relate, right? You get a new job, a new place, a new
relationship, whatever, and everything is sparkly and new and exciting until it just isn't anymore.
We all get a case of the Mondays sometimes. I talked to a Tally Sherrett about this. She's a
cognitive neuroscientist at University College London and MIT, and she says this feeling,
when the shine of something wears off, is something called habituation. So habituation is
artundantly to respond less and less to things that are repeated, um, or are constant.
Let's say you walk into a room and it's full of cigarette smoke. At first, you might immediately
notice it, but study show that within 20 minutes, you're not able to detect that smell at all.
Or maybe you jump into a pool and it's chilly at first and you go like,
and flail around for a bit or whatever, but it slowly becomes bearable. This tendency to habituate
is something we see in every species studied and even some plants and single cell organisms.
Eightes or dogs or bees, um, every single animal on earth habituates. And you know, when you see
something that is so general that you see it in all species, there's usually a good reason for it.
If we can adapt to average surroundings and filter out some of the noise, our brain can be on
high alert for a new threat and act fast. But the thing is, we don't just habituate to our environment.
So it turns out that just as you, um, get used and habituate to smell or to temperature,
you also get used to more complex things in your life and in society.
It's a phenomenon that really affects all aspects of our life.
So how do we and our modern surroundings bring back some of that joy and find some pleasure in
our work, our relationships, our everyday lives? How do we dishabituate? Tali, along with the legal
scholar, Cassar Sunstein wrote a book about exactly how to do just that. It's called Look Again,
the Power of Noticing, What was Always There. In this episode of Life Get, she shares some tips
from their book on how to disrupt your routine and get out of your rut and revitalize your life.
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In the first chapter of the book, you referenced an old episode of The Twilight Zone.
And in it, there's a good for nothing crocus killed during a robbery. And long story short,
in the afterlife, he's given infinite money, infinite clothes, infinite like cars,
a bunch of women. He's very happy for the first half the episode.
But then eventually, he isn't happy leading this, I guess let's call it like a frictionless
life, right? And then you find out a spoiler alert for people who don't see this comics,
a price-a-prize, you find out that he's in hell. What lessons do you think we can glean from this?
The major takeaway here is that even great things in your life, if they're always there,
they don't excite you as much. They don't bring you as much joy. And in fact, we have data to
support that. So one interesting piece of data came about when I was working with a tourism
company and they wanted to know when are people happiest on vacation. And so we went on different
resorts and we asked people, we surveyed them to see how happy they were and what made them happy.
And we found two interesting things. The first interesting thing was that the happiest day
of vacation was 43 hours in. So 43 hours in, give them some time to unpack and start focusing
on the fun stuff. But after 43 hours, happiness started to go down slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly.
Now they were still happy on day 5, 6, 7, 8. But not as happy as they were on day 2.
That's a situation kicking in. They get used to the great things around them. And you know,
that's what happened in that episode of the Twilight Zone. Yeah. He had everything that he thought
he would want, champagne and fast cars and ladies. And it wasn't as good as on day 5, 6, 7, 8,
9, 10 as it was on day one. And you usually, you know, at that point, you're looking for something
else. Is this not an argument for just like constantly being unsettled?
Yes. So alongside with the great benefits of habituation, there are these downsides, right,
which we're always wanting more. And there's definitely have individual differences in how fast
people habituate. And you might kind of think about people who tend to be more of explores.
Right. They like to explore different things, go to different restaurants, go to different places
for vacation, work on different projects. Right. We speculate that probably these people tend to
habituate faster. And then you have what's known as exploiters. They're not exploiting anything.
What they're exploiting is a good stuff in life, right. So they like a restaurant, they like to go
to the same one again and again and again. There's a vacation. They might decide to have a staycation,
right. Stay at home. So those are exploiters. And really being on any side of this extreme scale
is not great. The solution often is somewhere in the middle. You don't want to always do the same,
because it might be that what you are in is what we call a local maxima, meaning like it's great,
but you're only seeing the small little hill, right, that you're on, maybe just next to you is a
great mountain. So you can get up more and you have to explore to find that mountain. On the other
hand, you don't want to always explore. You want to take advantage of the good stuff. You want to
take advantage of that top of the hill as well. So what can we do about it, right? Can we hold to
those good things in life, but also try to do what we call dishabituation, right? What is dishabituation?
Dishabituation means that we can make a change that will allow us to feel that joy again
from the same things that are around us. Yeah. So let's get into some sort of like practical advice.
Like what sort of steps do you take if if someone is feeling like they're in a sort of
colorless gray rut? Yeah. So there's two main ways it's break and diversify. So let's start with breaks.
When you habituate to something, if you remove yourself from that environment, from that situation,
for a certain amount of time, and then you come back, then you'll be better able to notice those
things that are great, but you didn't notice them after a while because they were always there.
So just a small example, imagine you go on a little business trip for a weekend or even a week.
People who do that would often find that when they come back, they suddenly appreciate those
great things in their life again, whether it's your comfortable home, the view from your window,
or your loved ones. And so you could take an actual break, you know, go away for a weekend,
come back. You could also take this break in your mind. So if you close your eyes and really
imagine not having your house, not having your family, whatever good thing you have, not having
your job, and really try to imagine it with vividness and detail. When you open your eyes again,
right? Again, there's at least some sort of dishabituation and this kind of feeling again,
of gratefulness. Take way one, if you are feeling stuck, experiment with a break from your daily
routine. And yeah, that could be a vacation or a weekend trip, or it could just be a walk around
the block, or just a few minutes of internal reflection on what you do have. In describing that,
I feel like there is a lot of parallels to like religious practices, right? I think about
growing up and like praying before every meal and it's like, oh, you know, think of like the hungry
who don't have this and that it is, or it's like, I know my friends who whenever they do like
Ramadan and fast, you know, for that period of time, they sort of recontextualize their
relationship with like their body and with food and all of that to sort of then, you know, once
once it's time to eat, like, yeah, it's the best meal I've ever had. Were there, were there
things in writing this book that you looked back and realized that you had already been doing
your own life that was dishabituating already, you know, you just didn't have that term for it?
Yeah, so definitely the breaks. The other thing that I do do a lot in my life is the other kind of
way to disobey, which is inducing variety in your life. When you ask people what is the most
important thing in life or what they want from life, the first answer they usually give you is
happiness, right? People want to be happy, they want to be joyful, they don't want to be sad,
it makes sense. The second answer they usually give you is they want a life of purpose, a life that
has meaning and that also makes perfect sense. Now the problem is that often things that elicit
happiness and meaning they tend to do so less and less over time. But there's this other
third ingredients of a good life that people often overlook and they're not aware of, which is
variety. And it turns out when you ask people what do you regret in life? Usually they regret
something that they didn't do that would have induced variety in their life. And the thing about
variety is it causes you to dishabituate, right? And it causes you to have to be in a state of
learning again. Whatever variety it is that you're inducing, it could be something big like I'm moving
to live in a different place for a while or I'm taking a new job, but it could be smaller things.
I'm trying to interact with different kind of people, right? I am taking on a new skill and you
course in any one of those situations what you're doing is you're putting yourself in a state of
learning. You need to learn about something new. And it turns out that learning is one of the things
that really induces the most joy in people. And to be clear, the change you're talking about here
is experiential and more like you can't buy your way out of this. You can't be like, oh let's do
some spending and then change it up to my lifestyle, you know? Let's level up money wise, you know?
Yeah, the thing with material things is that we do habituate to them faster, right? So you buy
a new car and you're really happy about it. You can habituate it over time or you're buying a new
outfit or whatever it is, a phone, a new phone. So you do tend to habituate to material things
quite fast when it comes to experiences. For example, you're going to a concert, you're going to
listen to a lecture, you're going on a night out. These things are actually short in time, right?
They don't last long, even if it's a holiday, it's only a few days. So you don't really have as
much time to habituate to them. But what's interesting is that if the experience is good, you tend
to retrieve it in your mind every so often. And so it still has quite a high amount of joy
associated with it. And so that's, we think, one of the reasons why there's a lot of findings
showing that experiences give you more joy than material things. Take way to introduce more variety
into your life. Yeah, maybe that means a new city or a new job, but it could also just be a new
haircut, a new hobby or class, a different route to work. Just prioritize a variety of experiences
over a variety of material possessions. I'm interested in talking about changing up our environment.
There's running away from your problems, right? Which you shouldn't do because you're not
you're probably not. But there is something to be said about just like changing the scenery and how
and how that sort of like shapes your mind to think about things in a different way, right?
Yes, this is where we talk a little bit about the idea of habituation of thoughts. That when things
are as they are, we kind of don't notice them as much, right? We're not necessarily thinking about,
oh, is that the way it should be? Could we do something else? Right? But interestingly,
there's studies showing that people who are more creative tend to habituate slower. Another way
to think about it is you dishabituate more. And so this suggests that what you want is to
dishabituate. And how can you dishabituate from your environment? The easiest way is to change your
environment. So there's two interesting studies on this. One is it has been shown that when people
move from one country to the next, after they move for that short duration, after they move,
they're better at problem solving. It says if they moved into a different environment, now everything
is new. It could be the languages new, definitely the way things look, the people, everything. And so
their brain is kind of on in a different mode, a mode of taking in information and maybe thinking
about things differently. And so they become better at problem solving. The other interesting study
has shown that if you change your environment in a very simple way, you don't have to move countries.
You just get out of your office and go work in the kitchen, go work in a coffee shop, go for a walk.
What that has shown is that you become more creative. Now, the creativity boosts that you get
from simply changing your environment only lasts for about six minutes. However, those six minutes
could be quite important. That can be the big, big, eerie, come moment. And so it's definitely
something that I think is recommended doing any work day. Don't just sit in the same place all
the time, try to change your environment somewhat. Take three, this habituation can also boost creativity.
Tally suggests changing your scenery, working in new environments or leaving your workspace for a bit
to look at a problem with fresh eyes. Can you talk a little bit about the impact social media has
on habituation? Yeah, sure. So when regards to social media, most people have a sense that probably
it has somewhat of a negative effect on them. Right? For most people, maybe you sense that it might
cause you a little bit of anxiety, a little bit of stress. But it's really hard to know the extent
of the impact of social media on your mental health because it's always there. You are not going
to know the impact unless you turn it off for a while. And there are studies showing that a break
from social media does have a positive effect on mental health and well-being. So a one great study
that was conducted by the behavioral economist, Hans Alcott, had people, he had two groups of people,
100 people in each group, and he gave them some of money to go off Facebook. This was kind of an
old study. So it was specifically on Facebook for a month. And then the other group, he paid them to
just stay on do whatever they're doing. And then he came back at the end of the month and he assessed
their well-being. And he found that on every single dimension that he measured, people who went
off from Facebook for a month were better. They were happier, they had less depression symptoms,
they had more in-life real interaction. They were surprised by the impact. By how large the
impact was. People didn't expect it. Yeah. We've been talking a lot about sort of like
little changes, right? Like changing your environment, like maybe like taking breaks from social media
or just like taking breaks and the good things or whatever. Is there a point at which one might think
I think I need a big change? Absolutely. They are studies showing that if you think you need to change,
more likely than not, a change will induce a positive impact on well-being. And this study
doesn't necessarily look only on big change. It's big and small. So this is by Stephen Levyt,
where he asked people to go online and to write down something that they were considering to change.
And it could be small. It could be just a haircut. Or it could be big. It could be entering or exiting
a relationship, starting a new job, leaving a job. And then he came back to them two weeks later,
six months later. He found that on average, there's thousands of individuals in the study. On average,
those people who went along and did the change were happier. They were happier two weeks later,
and they were happier six months later. So this suggests that all else being equal,
a change will do you good. It doesn't say what the change has to be, but it says change in and
of itself can do you good. If you're thinking of a change, there's probably something you need to
change. If everything's perfect in a certain domain of your life, you would not be thinking of
changing. The conclusion from that study and other studies as well is that on average, we are on the
wrong side of the balance in the sense that for most people, they're not making enough change.
Because change is scary. Despite the fact that on average a change can do you good, people don't
make enough changes. Take way four is it can be scary, but Tali says air on the side of more change,
rather than less change. Change helps you to subituate, have more variety in your life, and often
leaves you happier. When you're making these changes, and I think this question applies to
about big changes, as like moving to a different country or even a new haircut,
are there sort of transitional pains right after you make that change? I think I went too short on the
sides. Can you talk a little bit about that feeling? That goes back to a few things. First of all,
it's the scariness of it all. Actually, you see that a lot when people start a new job or when they
move to a different country. At the very beginning, they tend to not be happy many times with that change,
because you kind of noticed the size are too short. You notice the negative things,
whether you started a new job and you're like, well, now I don't know, where am I going to get my
lunch? It's not my, where's my favorite sandwich? Well, this admin is not nice to me. I don't have
the view in my office is not as nice. You focus on these things, which it turns out, you tend to
just get used to them over time, relatively quickly. You habituate to those things. When you do go
ahead and make a change, it is important to let it sit for a while to just examine what are the things
that we just get used to? I habituate and don't matter that much. What are the things that
you know, I will actually continue to feel negatively about? Take away five after eight big
change. You might have transition pains. It's normal to feel regret, but give yourself some time
to habituate just a little bit and see what you're still unhappy with a few months down the line.
The latter half of the book talks about the harms of habituation at a sort of societal level.
You know, you sort of get used to racism. You get used to climate change. You get used to
misinformation and all of these things swirling about you. I think you do in the book make the
analogy to the frog boiling in the water slowly that doesn't realize that it's boiling.
On the other hand, when I was reading the last half of the book, I kept thinking about that
Twilight Zone episode, but sort of like coming out from the reverse end. If you're always
on alert for all these different things happening, if you're always changing the side of the road
that you're driving on, right, that's sort of a hell of its own making. And so how do you sort of like
dial it in in a way that's healthy to you? On some hand, we know ourselves best. On the other hand,
we have this huge bias blind spot where you know, we don't always realize what it is that we're doing
that is not best for us. For most people, it is still the case that we are not changing enough.
For most of us, habituation does lead us to not see the great things in our lives,
over time, and not see the bad things that we can't change them. And that's true in most cases.
And again, there's individual differences. And one thing that we think may matter is your age.
So there is a well-known U-shape of happiness where happiness is relatively high in teenagers and
kids and it goes down, down, down, reaches rock bottom on average in your midlife and that starts
going up again. And so there's a question of why do we have this low point in midlife? And there's
many reasons, but I think one of the reason is that we have a lot of sameness. Right, midlife is a
time where for most of us, we've been in the same situation, perhaps living in the same place for
a long time, perhaps in the same job, perhaps with the same partner. And all things could be good,
the partner, the job, the house. But it means that even if you have a really great job, even if you
have the position that you've been thinking about since you were young and it's like the top of
your field, if you stay in that position for a long time and you're not progressing upwards,
people usually tend to think feel a little bit down because what people like to do is they really
want to see themselves progressing. And so I think this is one of the reasons why midlife crisis
emerges. Right, there's a lot of sameness, not enough change. Well, as someone careening towards
40, I think it's a time for me to make a change. Just kidding me. Give me a lot to think about it.
Hey, it doesn't have to be these huge, huge things. Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, but maybe, why not? We'll
see. Tally shared. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. This was fun.
All right, time for the recap. One, if you are feeling restless, try taking a break from your
team. This doesn't necessarily need to be a physical break. You might only need just like a quick
moment of reflection. Take away two, you can also try adding more variety like a new hobby, for example.
Or take away three, change up your scenery, work in different places, take a new route to the office.
Take away four is when in doubt air on the side of more change rather than less. And five,
lastly, transition pains after any change are normal. Give yourself some time to adjust.
For more life kit, check out our other episodes. We've got one on starting a new hobby and another
on how to make a hard decision. You can find those at mpr.org slash life kit. And if you love
life kit and want more, subscribe to our newsletter at mpr.org slash life kit newsletter.
Also, we would love to hear from you. If you have episode ideas or feedback you want to share,
email us at life kit at mpr.org. This episode of life kit was produced by Margaret Serrino.
It was edited by our supervising editor Megan Cain. Our visuals editor is Ben Carlin. Our digital
editor is Malika Garib. Bethanavan is the executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy
Tagle, clamoration writer and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Maggie Luther.
I'm Angelin Bong. Thanks for listening.
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