The Novelty Rule: How To Use My Neuroscience Hack That’s Changing Millions Of Lives

[00:00:00] LM: Hello, friends, and welcome to the Liz Moody Podcast, where every week we’re sharing real science, real stories, and realistic tools that actually level up every part of your life. I’m your host, Liz Moody, and I’m a bestselling author and long time journalist. Let’s dive in. One super quick note, I know that 50 percent of you listening to this episode do not follow the podcast.

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[00:00:41] Alright, let’s get right into the episode. I’ve been using something called the novelty rule, and it makes life feel so much longer and so much more satisfying. It’s the key to eliminating that feeling of, where did the last year go? How did I just wake up and it’s five years later? It gets rid of that feeling like, I don’t know.

[00:00:59] [00:01:00] Every day is the same, like you just wake up and you go to work and you watch TV while you eat dinner and then all of the days blend together. We can’t technically slow down time, although if you’ve figured out a way, please let me know. But we can use neuroscience to hack our brain to alter our perception of time, making it feel like we have significantly more time And our life is longer.

[00:01:22] This is based on research from Dr. David Eagleman. He is a neuroscientist from Stanford University. And basically, here is the core premise. The brain’s job is to build an internal model of the world. When you run into surprises, it notes that because that’s something new to add to the model so your neural circuitry changes.

[00:01:41] But, as you age, because you have seen things before, you have done them before, you’re not having to change your model of the world, so you’re not having to lay down new neural circuitry. So when you look back at a time where you had to learn more and you had to change your model of the world more, You remember it [00:02:00] as longer because you had to lay down more neural circuitry.

[00:02:04] Does that make sense? Here’s an analogy that might help. Picture a book, and every page is a new memory. At the end of a childhood year, that book would be really long because there would be so many new memories, and your brain is making a page out of each one, again, to create that internal model of the world.

[00:02:21] But as an adult, your brain is like, Oh, I saw that already. I knew that. So it’s not filling those pages. And then at the end of the year, the book is super, super thin. So it’s not that you experienced less time. It’s that your brain perceived there to be less to remember. So you remember less time and then you feel like the year flew by.

[00:02:43] So the point of the novelty rule is to give your brain things to fill those pages with. As a kid, everything is novel, and we’ve also lived literally less life. A month to a one year old is literally one twelfth of their whole life, whereas a month to a [00:03:00] 35 year old is one four hundred and twentieth of their life.

[00:03:06] So, less. As we get older, a day is literally a smaller percentage of the time that we’ve experienced on the planet, so we need to consciously work more to create that novelty to slow down time. The secret to slowing time perception down then is to increase the novel experiences that we have, so our brain has to change its model of the world and essentially write more pages of the book.

[00:03:32] The novelty rule is designed so at the end of each year you’ve created a really large robust book, which means you will remember that year as longer and you will perceive the time of that year as slower. I’ve played around with how to action this science the best in terms of living our healthiest, happiest life a lot, and the structure that I have found works best for the novelty rule is, once a week, I try to fit in at least one novelty activity.

[00:03:57] These can be really small. I’m going to share a [00:04:00] whole list of ideas in just a second, but the idea is to have something to lay down that new neural circuitry so your brain is more primed to remember that week and not have our time fly by and just all blur together. So that said, here are some of my favorite weekly novelty rule ideas.

[00:04:20] Brush your teeth with your non dominant hand. Switch your watch to your other wrist. See, these can be super, super, super tiny. These two actually came from the scientists that I learned about these concepts from. Again, super tiny actions. You can take a different route home from work or on your after work walk.

[00:04:39] You can make a new recipe. You can try a new grocery store or farmer’s market. You can check out a new restaurant or cafe. Hey, you can call a friend that you don’t normally talk to. You can play a board game that you’ve never played. I love board games. I get asked all the time how to bring that sense of joy and playfulness and lack of inhibition [00:05:00] and silliness into nights without drinking since I’m an intentional drinker now.

[00:05:04] Board games are the answers. I’m always trying out new ones and I absolutely love them. They will get everybody laughing so hard. You can try a workout that you’ve never tried before. You can watch a TV or movie type that you would never normally watch. Like, you can watch a documentary if you were normally a comedy person.

[00:05:20] Again, this is not about doing something big and different and scary. It’s just about switching up. up the things that you are already doing, switching up these little tiny things to force your brain to lay that new neural circuitry so that you can remember the time is longer so that everything doesn’t blur together.

[00:05:37] You can work in a different place. If you work from home, maybe you can change the room of the house that you’re working in. If you work from an office, maybe you can go work in a different part of the office. You can let your friend or your partner choose your outfit for the day and putting on those different clothes is going to make you think differently.

[00:05:52] It’s going to make you act differently. The weekly novelty rule is really about looking at the things you are already doing in your [00:06:00] normal life and asking, what is one small tweak I can make? You’re wearing clothes. How can you do that differently? You’re eating food. How can you do that differently? You are commuting to work.

[00:06:11] How can you do that differently? I try to make sure that I do just one of these a week. I will ask myself on Sunday, what is my novelty rule going to be this week? And then ideally I will make a plan and I will put it on the calendar to do it. Actually, let’s talk about calendaring for a second and then we will get into some monthly novelty rule ideas.

[00:06:32] I say this over and over and over, but what we calendar in actually happens. Thanks. And if we do not calendar it in, it does not happen. Our calendars show our priorities. And so many of us say that we prioritize our health, we say that we prioritize our happiness, we say that we prioritize our relationships, but our calendars only have our work meetings.

[00:06:57] So of course those get done [00:07:00] while everything else falls by the wayside. I know that we all have to work, but putting your workouts, your meditation, time to call a friend. All of these things on the calendar signals to your brain that these things matter too, and it helps you make sure that they actually happen.

[00:07:18] Also, this is cool, research shows that anticipating events can boost mood, it can boost motivation, it can boost optimism, it can decrease stress and irritability. So it is a huge life hack to always have things that you are looking forward to. And then you get the pleasure from not only the experience itself, but also days, weeks, or even months of pleasure from the anticipation.

[00:07:45] So at the beginning of the week, I will schedule in my novelty thing, and then all week I get to look forward to watching a fun movie with Zach or meeting up with a friend for an afterwork walk in a neighborhood that we haven’t explored yet. This is also going to play a huge role in [00:08:00] the monthly novelty rule activities.

[00:08:02] So let’s get into those right now. If the weekly novelty rule is about taking things that you are already doing and making them more novel, the monthly rule is about adding in extra novelty. These are the adventures and the activities that are going to pepper your year. So you look back and you’re like, Oh, wow.

[00:08:20] I went to that concert. I swam in the ocean that day. I hosted a theme dinner party this day. And all of these novel activities, these deviations from your normal life are going to add pages to that book. So when you look back on the year, it’s going to feel richer. It’s going to feel more robust. It’s going to feel like you literally had more time.

[00:08:40] And again, because our brains get so much pleasure from anticipation, you can use calendaring in monthly novelty rule activities to increase your joy level. all year long. Zach and I like to do planning sessions every six or twelve months. We will just open our Google calendars and we’ll ask what will be our [00:09:00] novelty rule for September, for October, for November, for December, et cetera.

[00:09:04] And then we will write those all in and then we’ll make sure that we have at least one for every month. And if we get more later, that’s amazing. But, Aiming for at least one every single month also just a little side note while we’re talking about using our anticipation to increase our happiness in life There are so many little ways to do this and it is such a life hack You can read restaurant menus before you go so you can get really excited about what you’re ordering You can take those little hotel tours that they have online again You always want to put in You can put any fun things coming up on your calendar so you can see them and you can imagine doing that thing and then you can increase your joy in the time leading up to the actual event.

[00:09:46] But it’s also helpful to just note that a huge part of the pleasure that you get from events is the anticipation and this is just because of the sheer time quantity. For your wedding, let’s say, you spend almost a year. [00:10:00] planning it. And then the day itself is like a few hours, maybe a weekend. So if you lean into the joy of anticipation, the joy of planning, you get to have that for a year instead of seeing that year as the chore that lets you get to the few hours of joy of the event itself.

[00:10:18] Make the planning part of the fun. Do it over a fun meal, look forward to it, see it as a key part of the total experience. It is a real mindset shift and it lets you milk so much more happiness out of your experiences. Okay, that was a bit of a digression, but another fun thing that we do is we use the monthly Novelty Rule sessions as a way to make sure that we are seeing all of our friends who live.

[00:10:44] all over the country. Our friends are so spread out these days and a quick trip to visit one of them in Montana or Colorado or us all taking a group trip together a hundred percent count as a novelty rule. I love this for a few reasons. One, [00:11:00] Anna Goldfarb, who wrote the book Modern Friendship, she shared when she was on the podcast that one of the biggest mistakes that we make with is we’ll get together and we will catch up on our lives.

[00:11:10] Instead of making new memories together. So we’ll get together over dinner and we will share all the memories that we have made elsewhere, or even worse, we’ll just sort of report on the monotony of our days when the thing that cements lasting, satisfying friendships is actually experiencing novel activities together.

[00:11:31] So thinking about your friendships and the relationships that you want to cement, and then using the novelty rule to do that is a huge win. Two, it helps ensure that those friendships stay strong, even with all of us living all over the place these days. You’re getting that critical face to face time.

[00:11:49] But also, back to point one, we’re all One novel adventure together is worth dozens of dinners that you forget about or that all just sort of blend together in [00:12:00] your mind. And then three, this is, I don’t know, whatever, but it does serve as kind of a litmus test. If Zach and I are sitting down and we’re planning our monthly adventures and we’re looking at all of our friends who live in different places and we don’t find ourselves excited about prioritizing seeing some of them, that is actually really good information to have and maybe a sign that those are more legacy friendships than active ones at that particular moment, which is totally okay.

[00:12:28] It’s something else that we dive into. in the Anna Goldfarb episode. I can link that one in the show notes if you want to listen. It’s really, really good. It covers making friends as an adult in a completely different way than I have heard anybody talk about anywhere else. So taking trips with friends or to visit friends is a great monthly novelty rule activity.

[00:12:48] I’m going to share a few other ones that I like. I am constantly Googling baby animals near me. I literally put that in quotes just to see if there’s any cute animals. animal farms. I love [00:13:00] visiting cute animal farms. There’s a great alpaca farm in Bend, Oregon. Hot tip. I also love looking at the bulletin boards at grocery stores and cafes.

[00:13:09] This is a great place to see if there’s like a festival coming up on a Saturday or I found one on a hiking trip to Idlewild. That’s like a little mountain town near Palm Springs. I was there with my dad and we were at a Mexican restaurant and I saw this flyer. for a murder mystery party that was a fundraiser for the local library.

[00:13:29] And we went and it was so fun. There were all of these Pacific Crest Trail hikers there and we talked to them and we helped solve the murder mystery. And it is still one of my strongest memories. It was amazing. You can have a concert app or Spotify has lists of concerts for your favorite artists near you.

[00:13:46] You can also just Google fun things to do in whatever month you’re in, whatever town you’re in. So. fun things to do in October, San Francisco, fun things to do in August, Des Moines. Google that and you will find [00:14:00] really interesting, cool activities. Just to give you a little bit of inspiration, I will share some of the monthly adventures that I have done recently.

[00:14:07] We went to Earthbound Farm in Carmel and we picked fresh herbs. This is free. I don’t know why this is free, but you can ask for scissors and then you can go out into their herb garden and you can pick fresh herbs. And then we made a really herb rich dinner with tons of mint and basil and parsley and it was so lovely and so fun.

[00:14:24] We rented bikes in Healdsburg and we biked through this gorgeous back road of wine country. My book club read a book about the first woman who swam across the English Channel. It was really inspiring. It also made me see women swimming and the history of women swimming in such a different light. And then we, to celebrate that book, for our book club meeting, we went open water swimming in the bay, which I have never done, and it was so much fun.

[00:14:51] And then we made a really cute, like, English and French themed meal to eat after to represent, like, her swimming from France to England. Having a book club with [00:15:00] your friends where you always do some sort of novel activity based on the book that you read is a great way to make a recurring plan so you know you are going to get your novelty rule in.

[00:15:09] You know you’re going to see your friends. Friends, and it’s all set up so it happens with the least amount of friction. I love recurring plans so much for all of these reasons, and this is a great use of those. I also love for monthly novelty rule activities going camping, especially in nature that you haven’t been to before.

[00:15:28] You could plan a social gathering, like a recess party where you play childhood games and you eat childhood foods. You could plan your own murder mystery. You could also just redecorate a room in your house. These do not have to be social activities. You could start taking classes for a new skill that month, like taking Spanish classes or ice skating lessons or gymnastics lessons.

[00:15:50] Anything that your brain is going to perceive as new, forcing it to make those new pages in the book and thus creating more perception of time [00:16:00] in your brain, counts. Okay, just one last thing. I want to share a little note for people who have kids. I got a few messages when I shared the novelty rule initially on social media.

[00:16:14] It got millions of views. So lots of people come out of the woodwork with comments and a lot of people who had kids were like, there is no way that I have time to do this. That is nice for you. It is not nice for me. So I wanted to share three approaches to the novelty rule. If you have kids, First of all, kids see everything is novel.

[00:16:36] They have all of those empty pages in their brain books. So try to see through their eyes as much as possible. They can be a novelty superpower because when you go to the park with them, when you go to Disneyland with them, when you go to the grocery store with them, everything that they’re seeing is new and fresh and novel.

[00:16:56] So the more that you can tap into that, the more that you’re going to be able to [00:17:00] access the novelty rule just naturally in your day to day life. And again, having kids can be even better than not having kids in terms of the novelty rule just because you have this wonderful perspective shift. through your children.

[00:17:13] Second, children make amazing novelty buddies. Plan some adventures with them. Ask them what they want to do. Ask them if they want to go for a walk in a different neighborhood or to seek out a different type of food for your weekly novelty rule. You can take them to an aquarium or for a hike or all of these different fun monthly adventures.

[00:17:34] Kids make amazing novelty buddies, so tap into that. And third, I would say that the novelty rule is a really beautiful way that you can commit to prioritizing yourself, that you can commit to filling your own cup, both because it helps you better take care of the other people that you really want to be there for in your life, but also because your cup is simply worth filling just because you exist and you are [00:18:00] you and you deserve that.

[00:18:02] So you can carve out a little bit of time to do your tiny weekly things. Again, these are not that big. And to do your monthly adventures. Maybe you’re taking a few hours off on a Saturday. Do not need to be huge. I cannot stress that enough. Do not make them so big that you cannot do them at all. Make them very, very tiny until you’re in the flow of things, and then if you want to, increase from there.

[00:18:26] But again, these do not have to be huge, and I think that it can be a really beautiful commitment to yourself. And that is your introduction to the Novelty Rule. Definitely let me know if you have any questions. I can do a follow up Q& A episode, and And then I will be sharing my weekly and my monthly novelty adventures over on Instagram.

[00:18:45] I am at Liz Moody. So stay tuned and make sure that you’re following me over there if you want any ideas. Also I would love to know if you’re trying out the novelty rule in your own life. I would love to know all of the ways that it changes your [00:19:00] life. I promise it makes the biggest difference. It has woken my life up in a way that I did not think was possible.

[00:19:08] So I am so excited to hear your results. And yeah, thank you so much for listening. That’s all for this episode of the Liz Moody podcast. If you loved this episode, one of the best ways that you can support the pod is by sending a link to your friends, your family, your partner, your coworkers, you name it.

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[00:20:15] It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional.