There’s a Trick That Can Make Every Single Day a Little Better

Downtime

Whatever is going on right now, give yourself something to look forward to. It doesn’t have to be big.

Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Boarding1Now/Getty Images Plus. 

This is One Thing, a column with tips on how to live.

My favorite question to ask strangers and dear friends alike is what they are looking forward to. “In life?” they might reply. “This year?”

“Yes,” I reply, “all of the above.” This life, this year, this week, today.

My personal favorite answers to hear are mundane, though—that someone is looking forward to seeing their dog or taking a walk on a beautiful day. Often I’m inspired anew to make these plans for myself too. When it comes to looking forward to things, long-term items are wonderful, but ideally, the horizon of looking-forward-to isn’t excruciatingly long. Five business days or fewer tends to be the sweet spot; otherwise you’re left panting until the next reprieve, whenever that is. We’re all looking forward to rare banner days, but who knows when they’ll strike?

The sci-fi soap opera Twin Peaks advises a version of this idea: “Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don’t plan it, don’t wait for it, just let it happen,” special agent Dale Cooper advises Sheriff Harry Truman in an episode. In this suggestion, pleasure hinges on a combination of serendipity and instant gratification. On the contrary, having something to look forward to causes you to derive joy entirely from planning and waiting. I say: Give yourself presents. But plan them.

Science shows us the benefits of looking forward. A 2018 study published in Frontiers in Psychology used functional magnetic resonance imaging to demonstrate a correlation between anticipation of good things and well-being. According to the authors, we evolved to anticipate. Making preparations for the future was, for our ancestors, linked with survival. But you can, the scientists note, use your made-to-anticipate brain to “look forward to” negative things. And that is just anxiety.

Another study, published in 2015 in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, found that looking forward to something as simple as a funny New Yorker cartoon boosted pleasant feelings before and after a stressful event. In fact, anticipating something good was as effective in aiding stress recovery as recently experiencing something good. In other words, looking forward to a treat can be, to some extent, as good as the treat itself.

Personally, when I need something to look forward to, my favorite thing to stick in my schedule is getting a really good sandwich. Usually a deli sandwich on quality bread that’s impractical to keep at home and fresh ingredients that had I combined them myself just wouldn’t taste as good.

But truly anything can be the sandwich. Grabbing coffee. Having tea and a cookie every night before bed. Sometimes, I’ll just go through what I already have planned and think about what good things I have coming up that I can focus on.

These things are small. Sure, it’s nice to look forward to a luxurious vacation, a graduation—something huge. But the most important part is not necessarily the thing itself but the act. The thing matters less than the fact that you’re simply looking forward. 

How would we even describe such a feeling? We know that anticipation of bad things is anxiety, but is there a word for anticipation of good things? Ah, yes: excitement.

One Thing

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