How to overcome mindlessness | Oliver Burkeman

We all trundle through life sticking to the same old script, Oliver Burkeman says. But break away, and things may never be the same againIn the early 1990s, a team of US researchers posed as panhandlers on the streets of Santa Cruz, in California. As you’d probably expect, when they asked, “Can you spare any change?” most people ignored them. When they asked, “Can you spare a quarter?” they did better. But when they asked, “Can you spare 37 cents?” or &l