"Is this all there is?" It is the question that turns up when the days start to feel the same: the same route, the same meals, the same evening on the same sofa. Nothing is wrong, exactly. It has just all gone flat.
Here is a finding that explains more than it seems to. Twenty-two people who had won major prizes on the lottery were compared with 22 people who had not. The winners were no happier. And they took less pleasure in the ordinary things of everyday life than the non-winners did.
The money had not stopped working. It had raised the bar, and everything else looked smaller beside it. Winning the jackpot, it turns out, is a fast way to ruin breakfast.
That is the rut in a sentence. It is not that your life is dull. It is that you have got used to it. And getting used to things is something you can work against, with small changes rather than a dramatic overhaul.
The word itself tells you how it happens. A rut was first a groove worn into a road by many wheels passing the same way; only in the 19th century did it come to mean a dull routine. The more often you take the same track, the deeper it gets.
Why good things go flat
Every good change fades. The new job, the new house, the new car: the lift is real, and then it wears off.
One team followed 481 students for three months after something good happened to them. The lift faded in two ways. The pleasures the change brought became familiar and stopped registering, and the students' wants crept up, so that what had felt like plenty began to feel like the minimum. Yesterday's luxury is today's furniture.
Two things slowed the fade. The students who kept appreciating what had changed, and the ones who kept finding variety in it, held on to the lift longer. Sonja Lyubomirsky, one of the two authors, sets out the wider evidence in .
Those two, appreciation and variety, run through everything below.
1. Embrace micro-adventures
Variety does not need a passport. It barely needs a bus fare. A micro-adventure is a small, cheap break from the usual: a part of town you have never walked, a museum you keep meaning to visit, a new hobby, a different route to work, a restaurant you would normally pass by.
The smallest one of all is a conversation. 5 Ways to Build Your Inner Strength and Live a Fulfilling Life has the commuters who were asked to talk to a stranger on the train and had a more pleasant ride than those who sat in silence, though other commuters, asked to guess, expected the opposite.
And the micro-adventure that lasts is learning something hard. How to Rewire Your Brain and Change Limiting Beliefs has the older adults whose memory improved after three months of learning quilting or digital photography.
Aim for one new thing a week. It keeps the variety going, and variety is the brake on getting used to things. 3 Key Benefits of Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone, linked below, has the young adults whose phones tracked where they went: on days that took them to more different places, they felt better. It also has why a year of routine feels short when you look back on it.
2. Plan roughly, not to the minute
A mix of work, movement, rest and things you enjoy across the day keeps it from blurring. But be careful how you plan the enjoyable parts.
Across 13 tests, scheduling a leisure activity at a set time, such as a film or a break, made it feel less free and more like work. It cut the excitement beforehand and the enjoyment during. Nothing kills a nap like a calendar invite. When people planned only roughly, "sometime this afternoon" rather than a precise slot, the effect disappeared.
So plan your fun loosely. Put "walk with a friend, this weekend" in the diary, not a time to the minute. Leave room for the thing to be a treat rather than a task.
3. Take breaks from the good things too
This one goes against instinct. When something is pleasant, the natural move is to keep going. When something is unpleasant, the natural move is to take a break. Both are the wrong way round. Your instincts would make a poor DJ: the favourite song on repeat, the dull one with a pause.
Across six tests, with songs, noises and a massage chair, breaks made pleasant experiences more enjoyable and unpleasant ones more irritating. The break interrupted the getting-used-to, so the good thing felt fresh again when it came back. People still chose to avoid breaks in the nice things and take them in the nasty ones.
So spread out the good things. Save the favourite meal for once in a while instead of every week. Listen to the album you love, then leave it for a month. And get the dull job done in one go, without stopping.
4. Create a morning ritual
The first part of the day sets the tone for the rest. A short ritual gives it a shape that belongs to you rather than to your inbox: some light stretching, a few slow breaths, a quiet moment with the window open, a short workout.
Keep it small enough that you will do it on a bad morning too. A ritual you skip when you are tired is a hobby. A left unrolled by the bed makes the stretching the easy option. 7 Ways to Make Every Day Work Better, linked below, has what the body is doing in the first hour after waking, and why the morning light matters.
5. Declutter one corner
Clutter quietly adds to the load. Breaking Free from Low Moods: Powerful Strategies to Reset Your Mind and Energy has the wives who described their homes as cluttered and unfinished and had a flatter daily pattern of the stress hormone cortisol, with their mood sinking over the day.
Start with one area, a desk, a shelf, the hall. Clear it, then add one thing that you enjoy looking at: a plant, a picture, a photograph. A space that has changed is a small piece of variety you walk past every day.
6. Plan something to look forward to
A short break from the routine does not need to be a long holiday. A day trip, a weekend away, a night at a concert, or a staycation spent exploring your own area all count.
Much of the pleasure arrives before you go. Across four tests, waiting for an experience was more pleasant and more exciting than waiting for a possession. A trip on the calendar lifts the weeks before it in a way that a parcel on its way does not. A tracking number is no match for a date on the calendar.
The glow afterwards is shorter. Finding Balance: 8 Ways to a Healthier Work-Life Dynamic has the holiday glow that fades within weeks. So a run of small things to look forward to beats one big trip a year: each one brings its own weeks of anticipation.
7. Take an awe walk
Sixty healthy older adults took a 15-minute walk outdoors once a week for eight weeks. Half of them were simply asked to walk. The other half were asked to look, on the way, for things that filled them with awe, anything vast or beautiful or hard to take in, such as a huge sky, an old tree or the light on a building.
The awe walkers felt more joy on their walks, smiled more as the weeks went on, and had less distress in their everyday lives. Their selfies changed too: over the weeks, they took up less and less of the frame, and the world behind them took up more. Their anxiety, low mood and life satisfaction did not shift, so it is a lift rather than a cure.
The walk was the same. Only what they looked for changed. Same street. Bigger sky. gathers what is known about this emotion and where to find it in an ordinary day.
8. Be where you are
A rut is partly a habit of attention. The same street, the same desk, and the mind somewhere else.
When people were asked through their phones, at random moments of the day, what they were doing and thinking, they were thinking about something other than what they were doing almost as often as about the thing itself. And they were usually less happy when their minds had wandered.
Pick one ordinary moment a day, the walk to the car, breakfast, the evening meal, and actually be in it. Notice three things you have stopped noticing. That is appreciation, the other brake on getting used to things, in its simplest form.
Then keep a record of the ordinary. People asked to write down what an ordinary day had been like underestimated how interesting it would be to read it again later, and they underestimated it most for the dull, everyday moments. A note on your phone, a photo of the kitchen table, three lines about what you did: your future self will enjoy them more than you think.
And once in a while, imagine it gone. 5 Steps to Manifest Your Dreams with the Law of Attraction has the people who wrote about how a good thing in their life might never have happened, and felt better than people who wrote about how it came about. They expected the opposite. Picturing life without the person or the place you have stopped noticing is a quick way to notice it again.
Is this all there is?
Go back to the lottery winners. They had more than they ever had, and ordinary life tasted of less. A rut is the same thing on a smaller scale: a good life you have stopped feeling. The cure is not a bigger life. It is a fresher look at this one.
What it takes is small: variety, a little space between the good things, fun that is not timetabled to death, something to look forward to, and a habit of noticing what is already there.
What is one small change you can make today to shake things up?
Pick one thing you do every day, and do it differently tomorrow.
Ready for a bigger stretch? 3 Key Benefits of Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone — what the discomfort is telling you, how far to go, and why a year of routine feels short.
Want the day itself to run better? 7 Ways to Make Every Day Work Better — Starting With What Your Body Is Doing — the morning light, the afternoon dip, eating early, and what your surroundings do to your thinking.
Know someone who says every week feels the same? Send them this, and invite them on a micro-adventure.
Disclaimer: This article is general information. For advice about your own health, talk to a qualified health professional. If the flatness has lasted for weeks and comes with low mood, poor sleep or losing interest in almost everything, it may be more than a rut, and it is worth talking to someone.
Affiliate Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, All For Life earns from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. We only link to products we would recommend without the commission.
Sources
Brickman P, Coates D, Janoff-Bulman R (1978). Lottery winners and accident victims: Is happiness relative? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 36(8):917–927. doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.36.8.917
Wiktionary. rut. en.wiktionary.org
Sheldon KM, Lyubomirsky S (2012). The Challenge of Staying Happier: Testing the Hedonic Adaptation Prevention Model. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 38(5):670–680. doi.org/10.1177/0146167212436400
Epley N, Schroeder J (2014). Mistakenly seeking solitude. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 143(5):1980–1999. doi.org/10.1037/a0037323
Park DC, Lodi-Smith J, Drew L, et al. (2014). The impact of sustained engagement on cognitive function in older adults: the Synapse Project. Psychological Science 25(1):103–112. doi.org/10.1177/0956797613499592
Tonietto GN, Malkoc SA (2016). The Calendar Mindset: Scheduling Takes the Fun Out and Puts the Work In. Journal of Marketing Research 53(6):922–936. doi.org/10.1509/jmr.14.0591
Nelson LD, Meyvis T (2008). Interrupted Consumption: Disrupting Adaptation to Hedonic Experiences. Journal of Marketing Research 45(6):654–664. doi.org/10.1509/jmkr.45.6.654
Saxbe DE, Repetti R (2010). No place like home: home tours correlate with daily patterns of mood and cortisol. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 36(1):71–81. doi.org/10.1177/0146167209352864
Kumar A, Killingsworth MA, Gilovich T (2014). Waiting for Merlot: Anticipatory Consumption of Experiential and Material Purchases. Psychological Science 25(10):1924–1931. doi.org/10.1177/0956797614546556
de Bloom J, Kompier M, Geurts S, et al. (2009). Do we recover from vacation? Meta-analysis of vacation effects on health and well-being. Journal of Occupational Health 51(1):13–25. doi.org/10.1539/joh.k8004
Sturm VE, Datta S, Roy ARK, et al. (2022). Big smile, small self: Awe walks promote prosocial positive emotions in older adults. Emotion 22(5):1044–1058. doi.org/10.1037/emo0000876
Killingsworth MA, Gilbert DT (2010). A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind. Science 330(6006):932. doi.org/10.1126/science.1192439
Zhang T, Kim T, Brooks AW, Gino F, Norton MI (2014). A "Present" for the Future: The Unexpected Value of Rediscovery. Psychological Science 25(10):1851–1860. doi.org/10.1177/0956797614542274
Koo M, Algoe SB, Wilson TD, Gilbert DT (2008). It's a wonderful life: mentally subtracting positive events improves people's affective states, contrary to their affective forecasts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 95(5):1217–1224. doi.org/10.1037/a0013316