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We’re all guilty of it: getting stuck in a rut.
Think of yourself as a spontaneous, will-o’-the-wisp, can’t-pin-me-down sort of character? Just take a look at your diary over the past six months. From week to week, how different is it, really? How many new places, faces and activities feature amid the expected drudgery and routine?
Perhaps your answer is “lots!”, in which case I can only commend you. For my part, I was shocked when I took stock of the tepid predictability of my life. A life I love, make no mistake – but assessing my schedule at the tail-end of 2024, I identified an invisible safety net ring-fencing my social life. The same few bars and restaurants featured heavily on repeat, on nights accompanied by the same names and fuelled by the same basic b**** brand of reasonably priced Sainsbury’s rosé. All of this blended into one amorphous blob with credit card statements as proof, an endless Groundhog Day of business names that seemed to mock my total lack of originality: Asda, Pret, The Radnor Arms, ad infinitum.
Then, in January, I had an epiphany. Like most adults, I couldn’t help but notice that time was inexplicably speeding up as I got older. Weeks became months became years that disappeared in the blink of an eye – or, more aptly, in the “dun-dun” of Netflix’s opening soundbite. It was terrifying to be approaching midlife riding atop what felt like a runaway train whose brakes had been tampered with.
Science had some answers to explain this phenomenon. For one, the brain receives fewer images as we age than it was trained to receive when we were young, according to Adrian Bejan, a mechanical engineering professor and author of Time and Beauty: Why Time Flies and Beauty Never Dies. “People are often amazed at how much they remember from days that seemed to last forever in their youth,” he says. “It’s not that their experiences were much deeper or more meaningful, it’s just that they were being processed in rapid fire.”
We also tend to make fewer memories the older we get, precisely because we get stuck in that aforementioned rut. Our brains are programmed to hang onto noteworthy experiences while filtering out or glossing over the familiar. Breaking free from expected patterns and trying new things could be the key to slowing the breakneck speed of time; research has found that the more boredom and routine in one’s life, the faster time is experienced. Likewise, focusing on the future rather than living in the moment ups the pace.
“Slow it down a little more, force yourself to do new things to get away from the routine,” Bejan advises. “Treat yourself to surprises. Do unusual things… Do something. Make something.”
To that end, I decided to shake things up at the beginning of 2025 – to “hack” my perception of the passage of time by intentionally participating in a new experience every week, one that would require me to be fully present. The question is: does it work?
Week one
I kick off with something I’ve long been putting off: joining my local a cappella choir. They meet on Mondays, which is, admittedly, the first stumbling block. Monday nights are nights in – always have been, always will be – yet breaking out of routine and, thus, my comfort zone is the name of the game. Rewatching Peep Show while eating cold lasagna will simply have to wait.
I arrive with no small amount of trepidation – entering a space where you don’t know anyone has first-day-of-school vibes, no matter how old you get. Five minutes later, nerves are all but forgotten as we jump to our feet and sing the kind of vigorous “Ae-ee-oo-oh!” vocal warm-ups I haven’t done since secondary school. It’s giving Glee circa 2015 and I’m loving it.
As we segue into practising the first song, it takes every iota of concentration to keep up with the complex five-part harmony; two hours later, I’m left with a combination of contentment and mental exhaustion from exercising parts of my brain that have grown flabby from lack of use. It’s the good kind of tired though, and my phone, for once, stayed firmly in my pocket all evening.
Week two
It’s bitterly cold when two friends and I pull up outside a school across town after work. We wander the sprawling maze of dark, locked buildings, looking for signs of life as our frozen breath hangs in the air, and finally stumble upon the sports hall. Inside, a group of adults awaits, ready to play children’s games.
If this sounds in any way creepy, I promise you it’s not. This is Playfolke, the brainchild of a teacher who surmised that kids are exercising all the time without realising – because they’re playing, not “working out”. And though I’m initially sceptical about how good a cardio sesh one could realistically get from playing stuck in the mud and throwing bean bags into a coloured hoop, within the first three minutes, I’m forced to admit I was entirely mistaken. Children’s games, as I am suddenly, brutally reminded, involve constant running around.
Nursing a stitch and chugging water like a dehydrated lunatic, I comprehensively tick off the “in the moment” part of the assignment – it’s impossible to think about the future when a mother of three is chasing you the length of a school hall as if her life depended on it.
Week three
I am many things, but “crafty” is not one of them. The 2025 me, however – the one who is embracing new experiences – grasps the nettle of opportunity and says “sure” when invited to a jewellery-making evening.
When I arrive, I find a spread of coloured blocks of polymer clay, which we’re going to (allegedly) fashion into earrings. And, while I have doubts about my artistic prowess, the array of resources does spark a tingle of magpie excitement when I spy some gold leaf. Ooh, shiny!
We swiftly sink into a state of serene absorption, fingers too busy rolling out shapes to be tap-tap-tapping on screens, brains too hyper-focused on the task at hand to be skittering off in different directions – which is perhaps more the point of this activity than the end product. That said, my horseshoe-shaped earrings turn out, against all odds, pretty rad.
Week four
In theory, working from home is the dream: swapping the commute for an extra hour in bed; staying in slippers and a Taylor Swift hoodie all day; forgoing showering for longer than is strictly hygienic. Yet, in practice, motivation can be hard to come by.
And so, two years after first being invited, I rock up to a local “working from home” group that meets three times a week in various coffee shops. It’s not easy to yank myself out of bed half an hour early on a Friday to head out into the biting cold, but it’s not long before I’m glad I did. There’s chatter and distraction, yes, but also a fizzing energy that girds me to file my final feature of the week.
I find myself surrounded by interesting people working on interesting projects; I sit and stare out at a beguiling seascape view, white-crested waves gilded by winter sun. This, I muse, is quite possibly worth showering for.
Week five
You know what I used to love before my smartphone became surgically attached to my hand? Reading. Somewhere along the line I put down books and picked up terrible digital habits instead. My “new things” experiment, however, may very well have provided an ideal solution in the form of Silent Book Club.
Held in a pub or café, the event is open to all: simply turn up, grab a drink, and settle in for an hour’s communal silent reading. Wholesome, no? Being surrounded by fellow bibliophiles changes the very energy in the room, propelling me to do what I so often cannot manage of my own volition: switch off and plunge into a novel for 60 minutes straight. The result is bone-deep peace and a brain that feels like it’s been on a spa break.
Week six
Though a homeowner for the last two and a half years, I don’t really do entertaining. It’s linked to insecurities about my distinct lack of domestic goddess credentials and a deep, internalised sexism that has hardened into the belief that my inability to afford Farrow and Ball paint or whip up a flawless frittata makes me less of a woman.
But I recently made a new friend and, now more attuned to spotting potential “new experiences” as if they were a menagerie of Pokemon inviting me to catch ’em all, I impulsively invite her over for Sunday lunch. I instantly question my decision as I scrub kitchen counters, hide my drying underwear from view and stab furiously at my ceramic diffuser in an attempt to switch it on for the first time in a year. Yet once I manage to shake off the crippling hostess anxiety, I remember the life-affirming pleasure of hospitality: piling plates high, cracking open the good wine, having an excuse to light the one fancy Jo Malone candle to my name. We eat, drink, and overshare in the way that’s only truly possible when cocooned in domesticity – however imperfect it might be.
Week seven
I see an advert for an “Oyster and Beer Night” at a local bar and can scarcely think of a lovelier way to spend an evening. Messaging around friends to see who’s in, I do not expect the answer to be “no one”, but such is life. “I hate oysters”, “I hate beer”, and “I hate oysters and beer”, come the replies in swift succession. But I’m on a roll these days and push down the impulse to swerve the event, buying a solo ticket instead.
I arrive on the night to find a few women I sort-of-but-not-really know, and we sit together, somewhat shyly at first. Two beers later, we’re exchanging worst hangover anecdotes, explaining the concept of Cilla Black to a bemused Australian, and already organising our next riotous group night out – which may or may not feature bivalve molluscs.
The result
While January is often a long, unforgiving, joyless slog that drags its heels, February more closely resembles a cheap firework: a bright flash, loud “crack!” and it’s all over. Likewise, March, the month of my birthday and Mother’s Day, canters by with little let-up.
But the start of 2025 has been genuinely and dramatically different to the years that preceded it. The weeks and months have felt long and languorous, rich in filling like a fruit-packed tea loaf. Gone is the sense of racing through the days too quickly, the pages torn off a calendar in comically fast double-time. Rather, each new experience has forged new memories, vibrant and shimmering, that expand my sense of time – giving it extra scale, breadth and depth. My mind seems to have literally been rewired, too, attuned as it is now to seeking out novelty instead of scurrying back to the safety of the familiar whenever it gets the chance. Once you start looking for opportunities, you start seeing them everywhere.
But the real secret? Embracing anything that requires your full attention, that demands you be fully present in the real world and put down your damn phone, is the biggest game-changer of all. Call it “enforced mindfulness” if you like. We might not be able to achieve Cher’s greatest fantasy of turning back time, but turning off the fast-forward button could be as straightforward as consciously living in the here and now.
