That magnet could be something as simple as an overheard conversation, or it could be a new task someone stops by and asks us to do. Even though we are on a deadline, we might jump at the novelty of the new stimulus and be drawn away from our goal.
Novelty (as well as the other three interest-related factors that I will address in my next three newsletters) offers us hard-to-resist stimulation of our unbalanced dopamine levels which draws us away from anything less interesting.
Another word to describe something that is interesting or novel to our brains is “sparkly.” It grabs our attention like a sparkling jewel!
We need to learn how to sparklize an important but uninteresting task by tweaking it into a novel experience. For example, we might ask a friend to sit or work nearby as a “body double,” or we might do a routine task in a different space or in a different order than normal or using a different tool.
