Spot something new

Nudge yourself out of mindlessness

Routines are often wise. They can make good choices automatic.

Mindless routines, on the other hand, can be the enemy of creativity. We aren’t seeing or noticing. Time passes as if it never happened.

Take the weekday commute. If you drive the same route to work five mornings a week, and drive home the same way in reverse, it is soon possible to drive the whole commute without even thinking. You look up and you’re at your office. People will speak of meaning to get off at a different train stop for a breakfast meeting but being on auto-pilot, and winding up in their office lobbies before they even remember that something was supposed to be different.

So here’s a way to jolt yourself out of this stupor. Aim to notice just one new thing on your travels today, and over the next few days, that you have never noticed before.

The world is a varied place and there are many details in it, and so you can imagine all the new things you might see if you tried. Maybe it’s that a word on a sign by your usual coffee shop is misspelled. Maybe it’s that a house near that intersection where you wait every morning has a bright red door. Maybe it’s a sign pointing out a store on the second floor of a building near your bus stop.

To give yourself a little more encouragement to do this, maybe decide with a friend that you’ll both check in by text about what new thing you saw. Now you’re looking both to see and to let your friend know what you saw. You might be charmed by what she sees too! The morning commute tends to be a low point of many people’s days, so exchanging a text about today’s wonders at 9:05 a.m. could boost your happiness a lot.

In any case, the process of looking will nudge you into a more mindful state. Today’s routine will be different. That, by itself, will make the day a bit more memorable — and less likely to simply disappear into the past.