The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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a defining moment is a short experience that is both memorable and meaningful.
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Defining moments rise above the everyday.
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Defining moments rewire our understanding of ourselves or the world.
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Defining moments capture us at our best—moments of achievement, moments of courage.
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Defining moments are social: weddings, graduations, baptisms, vacations, work triumphs, bar and bat mitzvahs, speeches, sporting events. These moments are strengthened because we share them with others.
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The lack of attention paid to an employee’s first day is mind-boggling. What a wasted opportunity to make a new team member feel included and appreciated. Imagine if you treated a first date like a new employee: “I’ve got some meetings stacked up right now, so why don’t you get settled in the passenger seat of the car and I’ll swing back in a few hours?”
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Transitions, like milestones and pits, are natural defining moments.
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Transitions should be marked, milestones commemorated, and pits filled.
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If you Elevate the Positives (Plan B), you’ll earn about 9 times more revenue than if you Eliminate the Negatives (Plan A). (8.8 times, to be precise.)
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First, boost sensory appeal. Second, raise the stakes. Third, break the script.
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Beware the soul-sucking force of “reasonableness.”
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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.
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surprise is what makes the moment memorable.
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These “spontaneous” gifts are only half-spontaneous, as it turns out. Pret A Manger employees are allowed to give away a certain number of hot drinks and food items every week.
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that the secret to growing a business is to “reduce negative variance and increase positive variance.”
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On the afternoon of the first day of the Course Design Institute, Palmer introduces an activity called the “Dream Exercise,” inspired by an idea in L. Dee Fink’s book Creating Significant Learning Experiences. He puts the following question to his audience of 25 to 30 professors: “Imagine that you have a group of dream students. They are engaged, they are perfectly behaved, and they have perfect memories. . . . Fill in this sentence: 3–5 years from now, my students still know . Or they still are able to do . Or they still find value in
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The differences between the “before and after” syllabi from the CDI are often striking. (To see an example of a complete syllabus before and after the CDI, visit http://www.heathbrothers.com/CDIsyllabi
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To stretch is to place ourselves in situations that expose us to the risk of failure.
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Studying our own behavior is more fruitful.
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Action leads to insight more often than insight leads to action.
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Self-understanding comes slowly. One of the few ways to accelerate it—to experience more crystallizing moments—is to stretch for insight.
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Often it’s other people who prod us to stretch. You hire a personal trainer because you know she’s going to push you beyond your comfort zone. And this is the same quality we value about our mentors: They bring out the best in us. You’ll never hear someone say, “Yeah, the best coach I ever had was Coach Martin. He had no expectations whatsoever and let us do whatever we wanted. He was a great man.”
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Mentors focus on improvement: Can you push a little bit further?
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After the papers were returned, the students had the option to revise and resubmit their paper in the hopes of earning a better grade. About 40% of the students who got the generic note 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.
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I know you’re capable of great things if you’ll just put in the work.
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In organizations, mentorship can take a stronger form. High standards + assurance is a powerful formula, but ultimately it’s just a statement of expectations. 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.
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It’s always safer to stay put—you can’t stumble when you stand still.
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If risks always paid off, they wouldn’t be risks.
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The promise of stretching is not success, it’s learning. It’s self-insight.
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Moments of elevation lift us above the everyday. Moments of insight spark discoveries about our world and ourselves. And moments of pride capture us at our best—showing courage, earning recognition, conquering challenges.
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regardless of how skilled we are, it’s usually having our skill noticed by others that sparks the moment
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The importance of recognition to employees is inarguable. But here’s the problem: While recognition is a universal expectation, it’s not a universal practice.
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Wiley sums up the research: “More than 80 per cent of supervisors claim they frequently express appreciation to their subordinates, while less than 20 per cent of the employees report that their supervisors express appreciation more than occasionally.”
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This gap has consequences: One survey found that the top reason people leave their jobs is a lac...
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The proper pace of recognition is weekly or even daily, not monthly or yearly.
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For formal recognition programs, they recommend using objective measurements, such as sales volume, to protect against cynicism.
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The larger point is that most recognition should be personal, not programmatic.
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Notice the similarities here: The recognition is spontaneous—not part of a scheduled feedback session—and
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effective recognition makes the employee feel noticed for what they’ve done.
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Risinger began to use tailored rewards more often.
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The prizes were symbols.
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And of course what’s most important is the message: “I saw what you did and I appreciate it.”
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Positive psychologists, who search for scientific ways to make people happier, have discovered the potency of what’s called a “gratitude visit.”
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Kamb’s insight was that, in our lives, we tend to declare goals without intervening levels.
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Level 1: Order a meal in Spanish. Level 2: Have a simple conversation in Spanish with a taxi driver. Level 3: Glance at a Spanish newspaper and understand at least one headline. Level 4: Follow the action in a Spanish cartoon. Level 5: Read a kindergarten-level book in Spanish. And so on, leading up to . . . Destination: Be able to have full, normal conversations in Spanish with Fernando in accounting (not just “Cómo está usted?”)
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Cal Newport, an author and computer science professor, spent years studying the habits of successful people. “From my experience, the most common trait you will consistently observe in accomplished people is an obsession with completion. Once a project falls into their horizon, they crave almost compulsively, to finish it.”
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You can’t manufacture “moments of courage.” But in this chapter we’ll see that you can practice courage so that, when the moment demands it, you’ll be ready.
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