Nataliey Bitature argues that your brain defaults to autopilot to save energy, making you drive home without remembering it or repeat tasks mindlessly. To stay sharp, she says intentionally seek novelty daily: a new fact, skill, recipe, route, or way of dressing. New activities and people break the cycle.
If you go 3 days, 4 days, 1 week, 2 weeks, and every day you've not learned something new, then you're doing something wrong. Because the world is constantly evolving and changing. You need to be moving forward. Whether you learn something funny or something interesting, something for work, something for home, a new recipe, a new route to drive home, learn something new every day. It keeps your brain flexible and active. If you do the same thing over and over and over, your brain goes into autopilot to conserve energy. That's why you can be in the car driving and you'll find yourself at home, yet you are not going home if you're not paying attention. Or when you reach a door that you open all the time, your hand just opens and unlocks it in a way that you know. Or the way you get dressed every morning— everyone has a way that they put on pants, right leg first or left leg first. You don't even think about it because your brain is designed to conserve energy. So anything you do multiple times, it does automatically without consciously thinking about it. But if your whole life is in autopilot, you're not going to notice new things, new connections, the way things are happening. Keep learning, trying different things, putting yourself in new situations, meeting new people, being uncomfortable in things that you don't normally do. Do it often so that your brain stays agile.
