My SO used to say, "If some is good, too much is better." He meant that you can't get enough of a good thing. I used to be amazed that he had years of the same fruit juice for breakfast (grape), that he travelled the same street to work (Victory Bl), and that he played the same computer game (Midnight Sunitaire) over and over. He even concentrated his reading experience on one type of nonfiction writing.

Then he lost his driver's licence because of his Parkinson's and had to change some of his habits. He found that there were other juices to be had, other streets to travel (to the VA) and many other books in the world just waiting to be read. Just recently he asked for variety in the dinner menu, as, he said, he was ready to grow fins or feathers if we had any more fish or chicken.

I have always found that you can indeed have too much of a good thing. After a week of peanut butter sandwiches, I would switch to tuna. Or a few days of chinese chicken salad, I was ready for a granola bar instead. A recent study suggests that our internal record keeping of exeriences is typically incomplete and imbalanced. We tend to forget the variety in our lives of three things: people, music, and food.

They also found that satiation can be relieved by virtual experiences: remembering other times, other places, early friendships, other favorite foods, long-unheard music. And that a bit of real variety can restore interest in what had become boring.

This could be important in a restricted diet, where you begin to feel that one more lettuce leaf is going to turn you into a hamster. And doubly important in a job where monotony can be both mind-numbing and dangerous.

We often tell our employees who have to traverse the same set of streets to play "mind games": to look for something new, to find objects in alphabetical order, to do anything to break the monotony which leads to carelessness and accidents.

Nice to know that we're on the right track, literally and metaphorically.