Imagine you are out for dinner at your favorite restaurant and the waiter seats you at the best table. It’s nice and quiet, so you can have a pleasant conversation with your partner. The table is also right next to a window with great views. You drink your wine and enjoy delicious food. The dinner lasts a few hours. Do you think you would enjoy the evening more if you sat at the nice table all the time, or if you were occasionally sent to the back of the restaurant where it was crowded and noisy?
“Well, that’s a stupid question,” you’re probably thinking. Who would want to go somewhere wild if they had a sweet spot right where they were? This is certainly what intuition suggests. But that’s wrong. Studies show that people enjoy good things in life more (like listening to music or getting a relaxing massage) if they break them into smaller pieces.
A nice table is pleasant, but the joy experienced during the first hour fades with time. The reason? Habituation. It is our brain’s tendency to respond less and less to things that are constant, that do not change. As we get used to the pleasant aspects of our lives, both big (a loving spouse, a comfortable home, a good job) and small (a great view, a tasty dish), we notice them less and appreciate it Unless, that is, you break up the experience. Moving for a while to the more cramped part of the restaurant (perhaps to visit the bathroom) will cause dishabituation, making the luxury of your window seat more noticeable.
For another example, consider holidays. A few years ago one of us (Tali) went on a work trip to a sunny resort in the Dominican Republic. Her mission was to find out what made vacationers happy and why. She interviewed people about their experiences and asked them to fill out surveys. When the data was in, she noticed one word that kept appearing over and over again: first. Holidaymakers spoke of the joy of “seeing the sea for the first time”, the “first swim in the pool”, the “first sip of a holiday cocktail”. Firsts seemed very important. You can’t get used to a first.
Since firsts usually happen earlier in a vacation, Tali wondered if people had a better time at the beginning of their trips. Fortunately, the major travel company she worked with asked customers from all over the world to rate their feelings during their vacations. Crunching those numbers revealed that joy had peaked 43 hours in. At the end of day two, after people got their ears, was when they were happiest. After that it was all downhill.
Which is not to say that they found themselves unhappy by the end. Even when they returned home, many still benefited from a warm holiday night glow. Yet less than a week passed before they quickly adjusted to home life – work, school runs, bills. Within seven days it was hard to detect any effect of the time away on their spirits.
This evidence suggests that you may benefit most from several small trips spread throughout the year, rather than one long escape. That way, you’ll maximize firsts and afterglows, not to mention the pleasure of anticipation, which you’ll experience more often.
Of course, this applies much more generally than holidays. For example, it was found that people who received massages with breaks in between enjoyed them more than those who were not interrupted. Anything great will become at least a little less great over time. Why not take a break and enjoy it all over again?
What about unpleasant experiences? Should you split it too? Imagine you had to clean a toilet. Would you rather do it in one go or take little breaks every 10 minutes? Or suppose your upstairs neighbor Marvin is practicing the drums, and you can hear the annoying noise loud and clear. Should you make Marvin a cup of coffee so you both have a break from the bang bang bang of his drumsticks?
Most people want to endure the unpleasantness in pieces. When researchers asked people whether they want a break from smelling a nasty smell or just want the whole thing in one go, 90 people said, “Breaks, please!”. The vast majority – 82 out of 119 – also said they wanted a break from an annoying noise. They did this because they believed the experience would be less distressing with a break.
This seems like a reasonable prediction, but it is not correct. When people were actually exposed to the noise, those who took time out suffered more overall. The pause interrupted their natural habituation to the unwelcome stimulus. The lesson? If you have to complete an unpleasant task, it would probably be wise not to chop it up. Once you return, the smell will be worse, the noise louder and the experience overall grimmer.
There is perhaps some folk wisdom embodied here. Admonitions to “get it over with” or “rip off the band-aid” are familiar – and in “absence makes the heart go mad” we have perhaps age-old advice that recognizes the influence of habit in relationships . But even though they are there in our language, we seem to have a hard time overcoming our intuitions to the contrary. However, the results of psychological experiments are clear, and being aware of the powerful effect of habit can help us all experience a little less pain and a little more pleasure.
Cass Sunstein is a university professor at Harvard and the author of Nudge. Tali Sharot is professor of cognitive neuroscience at UCL. Their current book, Look again: The power to notice that was always there be published Bridge Street Press.
Further reading
Stumbling over happiness by Daniel Gilbert (HarperCollins, £9.99)
10% happier by Dan Harris (Yellow Kite, £10.99)
Think fast and slow by Daniel Kahneman (Penguin, £12.99)
