Don't Repeat Yet
What you just did is off-limits, and comes back only after enough different moves.
Formerly Tabu
No repeats until three others.
Seen in Arnold Schoenberg, Suite for Piano, Op. 25, 1921–23
Try it on your work
Make forty marks, cuts, folds or placements on the thing you're working on. Any kind of move you use is forbidden until you have used three other kinds. Stop at forty and look at the last ten: they are the moves you would never have reached.
Describe your project in twelve sentences. No sentence may reuse a verb until three other verbs have appeared. Stop at twelve. Circle the verb the rule forced on you that turned out to be accurate.
For one working week, keep a short list of the last three methods you used to solve anything. Whatever is on the list is unavailable for the next problem. Stop at the end of the week and count how many times the fourth method was better.
How it has been used
Some search methods keep a short memory of recent moves and simply refuse to repeat them for a while. The ban is not a judgment; it lifts on its own. Poets have used the same trick for centuries, forbidding an end-word's return until others have had their turn.
Where it leads
Grouped under Give me a useful restriction