Every new notebook I’ve ever owned has ten perfect pages.
Then there’s a gap of a few days, a half-scrawled note with good intentions, a couple more days with some random chicken scratch and then 90 blank pages waiting to be used.
The new brilliant notebook system I was using completely abandoned, and finally the notebook goes to join its ancestors in a random drawer somewhere—never to be seen again.
I used to think this was a failure. That I somehow didn’t design the system right or I didn’t have enough “willpower” to make it work for me. But that strong start wasn’t just some sort of accident.
In the beginning, my brain is getting dopamine from the exciting newness of a fresh notebook. I didn’t have to will myself into doing anything, the “newness” was doing all the work.
Most people treat this burst of activity as a problem because it eventually fades. But I’ve start to treat is more as a tool. Like it’s a known fact about how my brain works.
Unlike interest, novelty can be manufactured on demand.
Why do you think people with ADHD are often so creative? We’re leaning into that novelty that moves our brains into action.
I call this Create (one of the 4 Cs of Motivation), and it’s a useful tool for making boring tasks feel new and exciting. Here are some strategies for using Create:
Change the scenery. Take your work to a coffee shop, the library, a friend’s house, or even just a different room in your own home. Rearrange your desk. Work outside if the weather is nice. The same task in a brand new setting can be the trick that gets you moving again.
Do it weird. Embrace the weirdness with no shame, try cleaning your house like a spy who has three minutes before the guards return. Fold your laundry in rainbow order (ROY G. BIV FTW) or by your favorite to least favorite items. Invent a creative way to do something that’s probably never been done that way before. It sounds silly because it is silly! And that’s the point. That silliness is novelty, and novelty is fuel for our brain.
Give newness a purpose. When you’re in that early honeymoon period with something like a new notebook, a fresh gadget, or a new productivity system you just found on Youtube—use that excitement to tackle something important you’ve been avoiding. Ride the wave of newness for as long as it lasts.
When the novelty fades (because it always, always will), that doesn’t mean the method or strategy failed. It’s expected, that’s the nature of novelty.
So mix up the scenery, invent a new strategy, or start something new again.
Novelty is a renewable resource! It just has a short shelf life, so you need to flex your creativity and restock often.
This week’s worksheet: Manufacture Some New. Restock novelty when a task or strategy starts to go stale.
Ten perfect pages then ninety blank ones is the most accurate description of a notebook I have read. The reframe is the part that does the work: the burst is not the accident and the fade is not the failure, the newness was doing the lifting and then it stopped being new. Most advice treats that as a character problem and prescribes more willpower, which is asking the wrong system to do the job. If novelty is the fuel, the question is not how to need less of it. It is how to keep supplying it without starting a new notebook every three weeks.