Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There

by Tali Sharot

your brain stops responding to things that don’t change.I

complex neural systems, that obey the same overarching principle. The principle is simple: when something surprising or unexpected happens, your brain will respond strongly. But when everything is predictable, your brain will respond less, and sometimes not at all.

The economist Tibor Scitovsky, for example, said that pleasure results from incomplete and intermittent satisfaction of desires. This claim is worth repeating—pleasure results from incomplete and intermittent satisfaction of desires.

The lesson is that if you need to complete an unpleasant task, such as cleaning your toilet or vacuuming your carpet, it might be wise not to chop up the experience. Once you take a breather and come back, the smell will be worse, the noise louder, and the experience grimmer overall. Avoiding breaks will facilitate habituation and so make such tasks less unpleasant.

appeared again and again and again: first. Vacationers spoke of the joy

This evidence suggests that all else being equal you may benefit the most from several small trips spread throughout the year rather than one long escape.