When was the last time you did something for the first time?

This phrase is not mine, but it resonates enormously with me:

When was the last time you did something for the first time?

I find it a very simple question, but a fairly powerful one. Because if you have to think for five minutes before finding an answer, or worse, if you cannot find one at all, it might be worth asking yourself what has happened over the last few months.

Not necessarily because your life is going badly. But maybe simply because you have let yourself slide into a routine where the days resemble each other so much that they end up blending together.

There is routine and there is routine. I don't think a routine is bad in itself, quite the opposite. A good routine can even be what keeps you standing during a difficult period. You get up at 6:30, you take your shower, you eat, you do some sport, you go to work. Even when your head is not in a good place, your body more or less knows what to do because the path is already laid out.

That is not the routine I am talking about. I am talking about the one where you turn around one day and realise that six months have just gone by without you really being able to tell one month from another.

You worked, ate, slept, watched a few series, saw the same people, took the same roads, did more or less the same things. Nothing dramatic happened, but when you try to remember those six months, almost no memory stands out.

It is a fairly strange feeling. As if time had sped up.

And I think there is a fairly simple reason for that: if day 1 looks a lot like day 56, your brain does not have many reasons to tell them apart. Everything blends into one big period called "the last few months".

Doing something new does not mean going to the other side of the world

This is where the question becomes interesting. When was the last time you did something for the first time?

The answer does not have to be: "I went skydiving over the Grand Canyon last Wednesday." It can be much simpler.

Tuesday, because I tried cooking an ají de gallina for the first time. Saturday evening, because I finally did that night hike everyone in my area talks about. Last Thursday, because I had the courage to go and talk to someone I did not know. This morning, because I took a different road to get somewhere and discovered a place I had never seen.

It can be tiny. The goal is not to turn your life into a permanent competition to see who does the most extraordinary things.

The goal, for me, is simply to keep discovering. To keep creating first times.

First times slow time down

When I think back to my travels, it is often quite striking. A week in a completely new place can leave me with more memories than several months of normal life. Not because it lasted longer. But because an enormous number of new things happened.

A new place to sleep, a new person met, an unknown food, an unexpected mess, a road you had never taken, a different language, a decision to make without knowing exactly what is going to happen.

The brain has to be present. And when you are present, oddly enough, time feels far denser.

I think that is also why the years sometimes seem to go by faster and faster. We already know an enormous amount. We have our habits, our work, our favourite places, our routes, our restaurants, our holidays. Everything becomes more efficient, but also more predictable.

That is not necessarily bad. A completely unpredictable life would probably be exhausting. But I think it is important to deliberately keep a bit of novelty in it.

You just have to be honest with yourself

I don't think you should set yourself a stupid rule like "one new experience per week". There is no quota. There is no right answer. You just have to be honest with yourself.

If I ask you today: When was the last time you did something for the first time? And you can answer naturally: "yesterday", "last week" or even "last month", very good.

But if your last real answer goes back two years… Maybe the question deserves to stay somewhere in a corner of your head. Not to feel guilty. Simply to avoid waking up one day with the feeling that the last five years have vanished in the snap of a finger.

For my part, I want to be able to answer this question all my life. Not necessarily with an incredible story. Sometimes simply with: "Tuesday. I tried something new."

Back to the notebook