Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next—and disappear. That’s why it’s important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to

the reality is that most of us just don’t have the flexibility in our lives to be able to walk away from our work for a full year. Thankfully, we can all take practical sabbaticals—daily, weekly, or monthly breaks where we walk away from our work completely. Writer Gina Trapani has pointed out three prime spots to turn off our brains and take a

A mystery can be very simple: if I drive this road, not my usual road, what will I see? Changing a known route throws us into the now. We become refocused on the visible, visual world. Sight leads to insight.

By adding a side quest to your day, you create space for curiosity, exploration and playfulness – and could discover something amazing and totally unexpected along the way.

Try a change of scenery: work in a different room if you work at home or find a new coffee shop. This is why we often have great ideas on vacation, and why a trip can freshen up a relationship—the dopamine release causes greater focus on a problem, or on each other.