“Novelty for Free” is April 2026’s 30-day challenge for the Novelty Experiment.

There’s a common misnomer that novelty requires payment.

To be honest, many of the activities I’ve already done this year have cost something, even if it’s very little (like gas getting to an activity) or a cost I would have already been paying for anyway (like going to get a coffee, and weaving in novelty through going to a new place).

But this month we’re going to get experimental about how to find the new, unusual, and interesting for free-dot-com.

This won’t be a totally perfect no-spend challenge, of course, since there are things I’ve already paid for that will come to be in April, or because of the unexpected adventures that I don’t want to say no to just because they’ll have a cost.

This is more about my pre-planning (see below) and searching for things that will be free.

And this brings us back to the “why?”

It’s (mentally) easy to throw money at something and feel like you're going to reap a benefit. It’s just not so. Not when it comes to brain benefits and your happiness.

A couple of scientists dedicated decades to questioning what activities created the most satisfaction. They found that the activities we do because of “intrinsic motivators”, or those that we do purely for our own enjoyment, produce more lasting satisfaction than the ones we pay for or do because we think we “should.”

In fact, if we are “should”-ing on ourselves, we’ll just make it worse.

When we pay for experiences that are expensive, research also shows that our enjoyment actually decreases if we don’t end up enjoying it. Almost as if our brain interprets that we are doing these things because we paid for them, not because we genuinely wanted to, and that makes us enjoy it less.

It can also be applied to activities we decide to pay for, when we already do them because we love it. It’s called the overjustification effect.

These are some of the many reasons that making April a month of free novelty activities is part of the monthly challenges.

Novelty doesn’t have to be inaccessible just because it’s perceived to be associated with cost. It can be part of a free endeavor, or intentionality, one that we can discover without the added pressure of money to endanger our enjoyment of the activity.

Talk soon,

Rachel
Leadership trainer, novelty junkie, and human being

P.S. It’s been a stressful few weeks, and when I had an opportunity to find a small slice of novelty by walking in an interesting area, I took it! Let me tell you, beauty abounded! Not only was it a good preview of what novelty for free could be, it helped center me in the midst of chaos. I hope you enjoy the beautiful landscape I stumbled upon at sunset!