The Power of Moments

That's because research has found that in recalling an experience, we ignore most of what happened and focus instead on a few particular moments.

When people assess an experience, they tend to forget or ignore its length - a phenomenon called "duration neglect." Instead, they seem to rate the experience based on two key moments: (1) the best or worst moment, known as the "peak"; and (2) the ending. Psychologists call it the "peak-end rule."

What's indisputable is that when we assess our experiences, we don't average our minute-by-minute sensations. Rather, we tend to remember flagship moments: the peaks, the pits, and the transitions.

In our research, we have found that defining moments are created from one or more of the following four elements: elevation, insight, pride, connection.

...we must understand when special moments are needed. We must learn to think in moments, to spot the occasions that are worthy of investment.

Coming-of-age rituals are boundary markers, attempts to crisp up an otherwise gradual evolution from adolescence to adulthood. Before this day, I was a child. After this day, I am a man.

When a life transition lacks a "moment," though, it can become formless. We often feel anxious because we don't know how to act or what rules to apply.

Turning 50 seems like a real threshold of some kind, but of course it's not. There is no day in your life when you are more than a day older than the day before. Aging is exquisitely incremental. But being arbitrary doesn't make these occasions less meaningful. Milestones are milestones.

Students get short-changed, for instance. Sure, they advance in "grade," but why not celebrate their 1,000th day in the classroom, or their 50th book read?

Transitions should be marked, milestones commemorated, and pits filled. That's the essence of thinking in moments.

Moments of elevation are experiences that rise above the everyday. Times to be savored. Moments that make us feel engaged, joyful, amazed, motivated. They are peaks.

This event takes place every year for sophomores at Hillsdale High and has become known as the Trial of Human Nature (or the Golding Trial).

Jouriles and Bedford then asked themselves a question that would guide the rest of their careers: What if we could design an academic experience that was as memorable as prom?

Bedford and Jouriles succeeded at creating an academic event as memorable as senior prom. In fact, even more memorable. As Jouriles said, with no little pride, "In every graduation speech I've heard, the Trial has been mentioned. I've never heard prom mentioned."

"I think it's very rare for parents to see their students' work," said Jeff Gilbert. They see swim meets. They see dance performances. They see plays. But it's very rare for parents to see the academic work their kids do. "School needs to be so much more like sports," he added. "In sports, there's a game, and it's in front of an audience."

The "occasionally remarkable" moments shouldn't be left to chance! They should be planned for, invested in. They are peaks that should be built.

It's amazing how many times people actually wear different clothes to peak events: graduation robes and wedding dresses and home-team colors. A peak moment means something special is happening; it should look different.

Beware the soul-sucking force of "reasonableness." Otherwise you risk deflating your peaks. Speed bumps are reasonable. Mount Everest is not reasonable.

Boosting sensory appeal doesn't require extravagance. Money can easily be misspent. When researchers at Emory University surveyed 3,000 people about their weddings, they found that more expensive weddings were correlated with a higher chance of divorce.

If you imagine a $1,000 wedding versus a $30,000 wedding, for instance, which one is more likely to take place in a personally meaningful, emotion-heavy location rather than a pretty but generic banquet hall? Which one is likely to feel "handmade" rather than produced?

It's going to be way harder than you think to create peaks. But once you've done it, you're going to consider every ounce of effort worth it. You will have created your own defining moments.

This is the great trap of life: One day rolls into the next, and a year goes by, and we still haven't had that conversation we always meant to have. Still haven't created that peak moment for our students. Still haven't seen the northern lights. We walk a flatland that could have been a mountain range.

A study of hotel reviews on TripAdvisor found that, when guests reported experiencing a "delightful surprise," an astonishing 94% of them expressed an unconditional willingness to recommend the hotel, compared with only 60% of guests who were "very satisfied."

It's striking that 6 out of the 10 most important events [of life according to a survey] all happen during a relatively narrow window of time: roughly age 15 to 30.

If you ask older people about their most vivid memories, research shows, they tend to be drawn disproportionately from this same period, roughly ages 15 to 30. Psychologists call this phenomenon the "reminiscence bump."

"The key to the reminiscence bump is novelty," said Claudia Hammond in her book Time Warped. "The reason we remember our youth so well is that it is a...time for firsts - first sexual relationships, first jobs, first travel without parents, first experience of living away from home, the first time we get much real choice over the way we spend our days."

Surprise stretches time...this is the intuitive explanation for the common perception that time seems to accelerate as we get older. Our lives become more routine and less novel.

For those anxious about facing a future that's less memorable than the past, our advice is to honor the old saw, "Variety is the spice of life." But notice that it does not say, "Variety is the entree of life." Nobody dines on pepper and oregano. A little novelty can go a long way.

As the authors of the book Surprise put it, "We feel most comfortable when things are certain, but we feel most alive when they're not."

Here's our three-part recipe to create more moments of elevation: (1) Boost the sensory appeal; (2) Raise the stakes; (3) Break the script. Usually elevated moments have 2 or 3 of those traits.

...moments of elevation can be hard to build. They are no one's "job" and they are easy to delay or water down. Beware the soul-sucking force of reasonableness.

This three-part recipe - a (1) clear insight (2) compressed in time and (3) discovered by the audience itself - provides a blueprint for us when we want people to confront uncomfortable truths.

You can't appreciate the solution until you appreciate the problem. So when we talk about "tripping over the truth," we mean the truth about a problem or harm. That's what sparks sudden insight.

What may be counterintuitive is that self-insight rarely comes from staying in our heads. Research suggests that reflecting or ruminating on our thoughts and feelings is an ineffective way to achieve true understanding. Studying our own behavior is more fruitful.

Mentors focus on improvement: Can you push a little bit further? Can you shoulder a little more responsibility? They introduce a productive level of stress.

About 40% of the students who got the generic note [from their teacher on their paper] chose to revise their papers. But almost 80% of the "wise criticism" students revised their papers, and in editing their papers, they made more than twice as many corrections as the other students.

What great mentors do is add two more elements: direction and support. "I have high expectations for you and I know you can meet them. So try this new challenge and if you fail, I'll help you recover." That's mentorship in two sentences. It sounds simple, yet it's powerful enough to transform careers.

If you're always in a life vest, you don't know if you can swim. Sometimes you have to take the life vest off - with someone still standing by to offer support and rescue - and say, 'Let's see what happens.'

What's the source of Blakely's extraordinary grit?...When Blakely and her brother were growing up, her father would ask them a question every week at the dinner table: "What did you guys fail at this week?" "If we had nothing to tell him, he'd be disappointed," Blakely said. "His attitude taught me to define failure as not trying something I want to do instead of not achieving the right outcome."

The promise of stretching is not success, it's learning. It's self-insight. It's the promise of gleaning the answers to some of the most important and vexing questions of our lives: What do we want? What can we do? Who can we be? What can we endure?

Of all the ways we can create moments of pride for others, the simplest is to offer them recognition.

But this instinct to notice and commemorate achievements is oddly lacking in many areas of life. take youth sports leagues. There are natural moments of pride scattered throughout the season: points scored, victories won. But what about the kids' greater skill at basketball?

Milestones deserve peaks. The Boy Scouts understand this idea well. The Scouts' Merit Badge program, active for more than 100 years, is a great example of introducing multiple milestones and celebrating each one. the Merit Badges are presented to the Scout at a "Court of Honor" where the Scouts are recognized in front of their peers. That's a peak.

There's something appealing about a moment of pride that comes with its own souvenir.

But moments that demand courage often arrive unexpectedly. They're fleeting, and we can be caught off guard. Too often the moment passes and we find ourselves wishing later that we'd spoken up or done something.

Managing fear - the goal of exposure therapy - is a critical part of courage. But courage isn't just suppressed fear. It's also the knowledge of how to act in the moment.

His [Peter Gollwitzer] research shows that when people make advance mental commitments - if X happens, then I will do Y - they are substantially more likely to act in support of their goals than people who lack those mental plans.

In short, courage is contagious. It is hard to be courageous, but it's easier when you've practiced, and when you stand up, others will join you.

Think of it: Your moment of courage might be a defining moment for someone else - a signal to them that red is red, that wrong is wrong, and that it can be righted if we stand, together, against it.

There are three practical principles we can use to create more moments of pride: (1) Recognize others; (2) Multiply meaningful milestones [reframe a long journey to feature many "finish lines"]; (3) Practice courage. The first principle creates defining moments for others; the latter two allow us to create defining moments for ourselves.

So why do we laugh? Provine found that laughter was 30 times more common in social settings than private ones. It's a social reaction. "Laughter is more about relationships than humor," Provine concluded.

"Reasonable" voices in your organization will argue against synchronizing moments. It's too expensive to get everyone together. Too complicated. Couldn't we just jump on a webinar? Couldn't we just send the highlights via email?...But a big moment needs to be shared in person. The presence of others turns abstract ideas into social reality.

If a group of people develops a bond quickly, chances are its members have been struggling together.

If you want to be a part of a group that bonds like cement, take on a really demanding task that's deeply meaningful. All of you will remember it for the rest of your lives.

The outcome [from Morten Hansen's "Great at Work" survey] is clear. Purpose trumps passion. The best advice is not "Pursue your passion!" It's "Pursue your purpose!" (Even better, try to combine both.)

Passion is individualistic. It can energize us but also isolate use, because my passion isn't yours. By contrast, purpose is something people can share. It can knit groups together.

...leaders should learn to cultivate purpose - to unite people who might otherwise drift in different directions, chasing different passions.

We are accustomed to thinking about relationships in terms of time: The longer the relationship endures, the closer it must grow. But relationships don't proceed in steady, predictable increments. There's no guarantee that they will deepen with time...What we'll see is that, if we can create the right kind of moment, relationships can change in an instant.

Nonresponsiveness is corrosive. It deprives us of our individuality...When you find yourself infuriated by poor service, for instance, chances are it's because of a lack of responsiveness.

Relationships don't deepen naturally. In the absence of action, they will stall. But...acting with responsiveness to others can create tighter bonds...And those bonds can continue to strengthen with astonishing speed.

Groups bond when they struggle together. People will welcome a struggle when it's their choice to participate, when they're given autonomy to work, and when the mission is meaningful.

Target a specific moment and then challenge yourself: How can I elevate it? Spark insight? Boost the sense of connection? Life is full of "form letter in an envelope" moments [i.e. ordinary], waiting to be transformed into something special.

In the short term, we prioritize fixing problems over making moments, and that choice usually feels like a smart trade-off. But over time, it backfires.