Habituation

Habituation is a cognitive habit that keeps us from having good ideas. It happens when your brain decides something no longer needs attention. You stop noticing the wallpaper. The ticking clock fades. The refrigerator hum disappears.

• Efficient? Yes.

• Useful? Usually.

• Dangerous? Absolutely.

The same mechanism that filters out background noise also filters out opportunity.

• The broken process at work.

• The confusing sentence in your manuscript.

• The assumption in your field that “everyone knows” is true.

The longer something is present, the less you see it. It’s the old rule of information science: the more frequently a signal is repeated, the less information it carries. This is why newcomers often have better ideas than veterans. They haven’t habituated yet. They’re still surprised.

Good ideas often begin with de-habituation.

Change rooms.
Change disciplines.
Change the order in which you do things.
Explain your work to a child.
Visit a competitor.
Have an outsider “scout” your processes.
Re-read something you wrote a year ago.

In baseball the rule is: you can’t hit what you can’t see. In innovation, the rule becomes: you can’t improve what you can’t see.

Habituation makes the familiar invisible.

So here’s a small exercise: today, notice one thing you’ve stopped noticing.

It might be the beginning of a very good idea.