Something You Should Know
The Power of Noticing What Matters & Mastering Meaningful Conversation-SYSK Choice
28 Feb 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Then habituation, this thing we humans do where we just get used to things, sometimes for good, sometimes not.
A great analogy is the AC going in the background, so the noise of the air conditioner is there, but you really don't notice how annoying it is until someone turns it off, and then you're suddenly, oh, I'm so glad. We think social media is a little bit like that.
Also, if you need to figure something out, you might want to lie down and how to really connect with others in a conversation and why it's so important.
When we're in a conversation and we're really connecting with each other, your pupils will start to dilate at the same rate. In fact, this is probably happening between you and me right now. And most importantly, there's these electrical impulses within our brains. People start to think the same way.
All this today on Something You Should Know.
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Chapter 2: What simple trick can help cut flowers last longer?
We stop noticing things. And it's really interesting what our natural tendency to habituate does to us. And I suspect you've never really stopped to think about it. So now you can, along with my guest, Tali Sherritt. Tali is a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London and at MIT. And she is founder and director of the Effective Brain Lab.
She's co-author of a book called Look Again, The Power of Noticing What Was Always There.
Chapter 3: How does habituation affect our daily happiness?
Hi, Tali. Welcome to Something You Should Know.
Thanks, Michael. I'm glad to be on it.
So explain a little more about our tendency to habituate.
Sure, it's kind of a puzzle that people have these wonderful things in their life. Perhaps it's a great job, a loving family, a comfortable house, but those things often have a limited impact on our daily happiness. And so why is that? And at the same time, there's terrible things around us like sexism and racism, cracks in our personal relationships and efficiencies at the workplace. And
Those also seem to go unnoticed if they're there, if they've been there for a long time. And so that's kind of the puzzle that we start off with, right? Why are those wonderful things in our lives don't keep us happy and don't bring us joy for a long time? And what about those terrible things? How is it that we kind of overlook them and can't really see them?
Well, you probably have to imagine that maybe it plays a role. I mean, if something horrible happens to you, your child dies or something, you've got to find a way to get on with your life. And by habituating or by being able to accept that, I guess that makes it easier.
Yeah, absolutely. So on the one hand, so okay, let's name this process that we're talking about.
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Chapter 4: What is the concept of 'resparkling' in our lives?
It's called habituation, okay? And habituation is basically our tendency to respond less and less and less to things that are constant, that are always there. So a really like intuitive example is you walk into a room full of smoke and at the beginning, the smoke is really overwhelming, right? The smell is salient.
But studies show that within 20 minutes, you cannot detect the smoke any longer, right? Your olfactory neurons stop responding to the smoke. And in a similar manner, just as we stop responding to different smells or stop responding to the cold of a pool when we jump in, we also stop responding to these wonderful and terrible things in our lives.
And so you're saying, well, that's, you know, it's a good thing. And you're right. I mean, habituation is there for a reason. It has an adaptive purpose. And one of the adaptive purposes is that if something bad happens to us, even something really terrible, like a loss of a loved one, it is good that over time we adapt and we don't feel the pain as much, right? And we can go on with our lives.
But as with most of these rules that our brain functions by, there is the good side and the bad side, right? And so The problem here, and especially in how we habituate to the less so good things in our life, is that we may stop noticing them and then we don't try to change them, right?
Now, if it's something that you cannot change, it's good that you habituate, you don't think about it, you don't notice it, you don't respond, you don't feel bad about it. But if it's something that we can change around us and both in our personal life, right? Maybe it's a relationship that has gone sour or it could be societal problems.
Then for those things, it is a problem if it doesn't bother us anymore because we won't be driven to change.
I'm sure everybody's had that experience of getting something new and exciting like a car. Or, you know, I remember when I got my house, the house I live in now. When I first walked into it to look at it, I just, you know, I knew it. For me, this was a great house, and I wanted this house. But I knew. I knew then, and it has come to be, that now it's just my house.
I mean, it's a nice house, but it's not as exciting now as it was then.
Yeah, and I have the same experience. And here's the thing, and you may have felt this as well. If you go for a while, if you go on a business trip, you're out for even a few days, maybe a week, maybe two, and then you come back, you may have noticed that it kind of, and we call it re-sparkles, right?
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Chapter 5: What makes someone a 'super communicator'?
So we say, you know, break up the good, but swallow the bad whole.
We're talking about how we get used to things, how we habituate to things, and why it's good and sometimes not so good. My guest is Tali Sherritt. She is author of the book, Look Again, The Power of Noticing What Was Always There.
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So, Tali, that song thing just makes no sense to me because it would seem so frustrating to be listening and going, oh, here comes my favorite part. Oh, man, what'd you stop the song for? I mean, I would find that, I would think I would find that so frustrating.
Absolutely. It's so unintuitive. And they actually show 99% of the people say, no, I don't think I would enjoy it more with breaks. So it's one of those results that is hard for us to imagine. It's true. It's unintuitive. When you actually measure people's responses, that's what they found.
Wow. So, yeah, some other ways to do this. Well, before we get into the other ways to do this, a lot of times people will talk about, you know, appreciate what you have and try not to habituate. Like, you don't take for granted the beautiful view out your kitchen window, even though over time, of course, you're going to.
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Chapter 6: How can changing your body position enhance creativity?
And why is it that when you change your environment that that stirs things up?
When you change your environment, it's a new environment, what happens is you are triggering learning. You need to learn, right? If I'm now in a new city, I need to learn about the city, like where things are. If I'm now working on a new project with a new team, I need to learn about the different people, maybe the hierarchies and things like that.
Anytime that you're changing, you actually are putting yourself in a state of learning. And what's really interesting is that it turns out that learning is a trigger for joy. There's a wonderful study by two neuroscientists, Bastian Blain and Rob Rutledge. And what they did is they had people, volunteers, play a game. And if they played well, they could get money.
And every time the people got money, they were happy, right? They like money. But it turns out that they were even happier when they learned something new about the game, especially something that they could use. So their kind of conclusion was that learning, in fact, brings you more joy than monetary goods.
Well, when you think about all the things you've habituated to, The good things and the bad things. It's amazing. We just get used to stuff. And what if we didn't? And I love your advice about if there are things you enjoy, break them up. You'll enjoy them more. And things you don't enjoy, don't break them up. Get them done. and you'll suffer less. I've been speaking with Tali Sherritt.
She's a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College in London and at MIT, and she's author of a book called Look Again, The Power of Noticing What Was Always There. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Tali. Thanks for being here.
Thank you so much, Michael. This was really fun.
Hey, it's Hillary Frank from The Longest Shortest Time, an award-winning podcast about parenthood and reproductive health. We talk about things like sex ed, birth control, pregnancy, bodily autonomy, and, of course, kids of all ages. But you don't have to be a parent to listen.
If you like surprising, funny, poignant stories about human relationships and, you know, periods, The Longest Shortest Time is for you. Find us in any podcast app or at LongestShortestTime.com.
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