Consistency makes you dumber

Major downside of extreme consistency in every part of your life:

Your neuroplasticity goes down. Time goes by faster.

Your brain doesn’t age because of time. It ages because of repetition. The more predictable your days become, the faster your neurons quiet down. Your brain builds neural pathways based on experience. New experiences create new connections. Repetition strengthens old ones. But when you repeat the same patterns for years, your brain stops building. That’s why time feels faster as you age. Your brain stops encoding new memories. It just references old ones. A year at 40 feels shorter than a year at 10, because at 10, everything was new. At 40, everything is familiar. But neuroplasticity doesn’t stop. You can still grow new neurons. You can still learn. You can still change. You just have to break the loop. Your brain will wake up. And time will slow down again. – Source

Not sure how true this is, coming from an AI account. It did link to a new study though…

But let’s run with it… What if this is true?

Then I better barbell my extreme consistency with some extreme intensity and novelty some of the time. 80:20 perhaps.

Travelling, learning a new skill, starting a new project, venturing outside of your comfort zone, sampling new niches and hobbies, knowing people outside of your usual circle.

Every weekend.
Every school holiday.

Because while my extreme consistency is great for hunkering down on a goal or to build a skill, it’s got its downsides too. Hell no do I want my neuroplasticity to decrease and get more stupid just because I want to hit a goal.

Consistency should be making be smarter, fitter, richer, better.

Not dumber!

So there.

Time to mix things up.