One mid-December afternoon, as I sat writing my next blog article, an idea popped into my head: Wouldn’t it be fun to watch a performance of Handel’s “Messiah” this holiday season? 

Happy to find an excuse to procrastinate, I looked online for dates and showtimes. The only performance nearby was the same day, at 7 pm. Just a few hours away. “Forget it,” I told myself. “I’ll wait until next year.” A little voice gently rebutted: “Why wait? There’s still time.”

Several phone calls and a flurry of texts later, my mom, sister, and I walked into a non-denominational church, sat in the hard-backed wooden pews of the first row, and for the next two and a half hours, I was caught up in one of the most awe-evoking musical performances of my life. By the end, I was grinning so hard it felt like my face might split open. I came home before midnight and stayed up until the wee hours to finish my article, wrapped in a glow of deep well-being without a trace of guilt or regret.

I had just experienced one of the odder quirks of human existence: the things we enjoy the most are often the things we plan for the least.

We All Could Use More Spontaneity

Why is it that the highlight of our vacation to Paris isn’t the Louvre or the Eiffel Tower, but wandering down a random little street somewhere and finding a hole in the wall cafe that serves onion soup? 

The answer, in one word, is spontaneity. Neuroscience confirms that pleasant surprises trigger dopamine.¹ Even an experiment with bumblebees discovered that the fuzzy bugs got a boost of happiness when given an unexpected reward.² Since fun surprises and spur-of-the-moment adventures seem to cheer us up, why don’t we seek them out more?

Well, as fun as spontaneity is, we love control even more. And control and spontaneity don’t exactly go together. Daniel Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard, wrote an entire book – very much worth reading – about why humans are terrible at predicting what makes them happy (Stumbling on Happiness, in case you’re interested). He notes that we enjoy imagining future events like dinner at a fancy restaurant so much that we’ll postpone doing it so that we can fantasize about it. “Forestalling pleasure is an inventive technique for getting double the juice from half the fruit.” ³

The problem is, the more time you spend imagining your romantic evening at the waterfront steakhouse – the flattering candlelight against your lover’s face, the succulent tenderness of the filet mignon – the more likely the real thing will fall short of our expectation. Reality is no match for imagination. None of us plan to stub our toe on the way to the restroom or to feel gassy after eating too many buttered rolls. The same is true for vacations to Paris, our future spouses, or just about anything you can fantasize about.

Spontaneity, on the other hand, is about responding to the moment. Maybe the notion of listening to Handel’s “Messiah” at the Bible Church on Camelback Road is a romantic one, but with little time to plan and fantasize, my mind is more of a blank receptacle walking in – primed to receive everything as it is.

We’d probably be better off if we did more things on a whim with fewer expectations – Greek festivals, pottery classes, talking to a new person we just met – than if we tried to plan everything in life for maximal satisfaction. Having no expectation beyond novelty and discovery is good for our growth and often leads to interesting, lasting memories.

The biggest challenge with spontaneity is just finding time to, well, be spontaneous. 

“Beware the Soul-Sucking Force of Reasonableness”

Children are masters of spontaneity. You don’t have to ask a kid twice if she wants to go on a last-minute trip to Disneyland. But even the youngest-at-heart adult will hesitate and tell you he has to check his schedule first.

In all fairness, few of us would get very far in life without structure. That’s just the nature of the real world. The problem is when the structure becomes too much of a comfort zone. “Beware the soul-sucking force of reasonableness,” warns psychology author Chip Heath.⁴ We look for excuses not to do the harder thing, even when it seems exciting.

The most memorable things in life require some uncertainty. An evening at home with hot chocolate and a book is very comfortable but not very memorable.

Finishing my blog article so I could go to bed by ten o’clock is a much more reasonable proposition than a last-minute excursion to see a Baroque musical performance. It’s also the easier and the more forgettable one. Making last-minute phone calls and arrangements to go somewhere new and getting myself dressed appropriately and out the door requires me to overcome entropy and a bit of discomfort. There’s also the fear of the unknown: “What if the venue stinks? What if the mezzo-soprano is off? What if we sit next to weirdos?” The most memorable things in life require some uncertainty. An evening at home with hot chocolate and a book is very comfortable but not very memorable.

An even bigger enemy to spontaneity than fear is overplanning. What room is there in life for novelty, for zestful living if every day down to the minute is boxed in and accounted for? “Planned spontaneity” is an oxymoron. Magic won’t happen if you are constantly having to toggle and move things around.

One of the saddest things I ever remember reading was a productivity book in which the author proudly shared a template of his daily schedule. In sterile Excel-style cells, he listed every activity he did, broken into five-minute chunks. There wasn’t a single moment from when he lifted his head from the pillow to when he laid it down again that wasn’t accounted for. I think the only exception may have been the time he spent on the toilet.

There will always be critics who look at spontaneous outings and experiences as “wasteful” or as a luxury that busy people can’t afford. I can’t help but wonder if the real reason is that they are anxious. Not just about the temporary discomfort of trying a new thing but of what they might discover about life and themselves if they allowed themselves to be caught up in a moment. There’s more than one individual who changed his entire life course after an impromptu encounter with art, science, or some other epiphany-triggering event.

Few of us need another book or lecture on the importance of managing our time. We’ll either get around to it, or we won’t. But I worry that not enough of us listen to the inner child who yearns for moments of adventure and novelty. Without last-minute excursions to eat ice cream cones, listen to live music, and connect with the people around us and the earth beneath us, what good is all our productivity?

The hours and years of disciplined work and little chores lead to rewards, certainly. But it’s only in those in-between moments and adventures that we are most awake and alive.

1. Rothenhoefer, Kathryn M., et al. “Rare Rewards Amplify Dopamine Responses.” Nature Neuroscience, vol. 24, no. 4, 8 Mar. 2021, pp. 465–469. PMC, 12 Aug. 2022, doi:10.1038/s41593-021-00807-7.
2. Solvi, Cwyn, Luigi Baciadonna, and Lars Chittka. “Unexpected Rewards Induce Dopamine-Dependent Positive Emotion–Like State Changes in Bumblebees.” Science, vol. 353, no. 6307, 30 Sept. 2016, pp. 1529–1531. DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf4454.
3. Gilbert, Daniel Todd. Stumbling on Happiness. Kindle ed., Vintage, 2 May 2006.
4. Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2017). The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact. Simon & Schuster.