How to Make a Moment

Ever feel like time is flying? Why did it feel like being a teen lasted for ever, but your thirties feel like they lasted about 2 years?

Turns out there is a scientific explanation for it.

The Oddball Paradigm

The Oddball paradigm is an experimental design that’s been used in psychological studies since the 1920’s. It suggests that the perception of time feels shorter when events are repeated, but when an interruption is added to a flow/process, then the interruption gives the subject a sense of more time having passed.

Perhaps a better way of describing the Oddball effect is via an experiment conducted in 2004 (Time and the Brain: How Subjective Time Relates to Neural Time) which uncovered that ‘the expansion of time is processed objectively in our brains based on the stimulus we receive'.

In this experiment, subjects we shown an image on a screen repeatedly. Each image was shown for the exact same time. In this case, a brown shoe.

But then, after some time of the brown shoe appearing over and over, a new image was shown for the same amount of time. A red flower.

The participants were then questioned about how long the images were displayed for. What the experimenters found is that participants stated the length of time the flower was displayed on the screen was between 30-50% longer than the time the shoe image was displayed for, even though the displayed times were identical.

The outcome of the study found that our brains eventually create shortcuts when it recognises a pattern and no longer assigns as much cognitive load to analysing that event. A sort of memory autopilot once we're confident we understand it.

But when something breaks the pattern – for good or bad – the brain kicks in to remember more elements of the experience. The shortcuts aren’t there, so we take on more information which requires more effort. It’s this effort that ‘feels’ like things take longer and why certain pivotal, pattern breaking moments really stand out in our memories.

In order to create a memorable moment, normal patterns need to be disrupted.

If you ask anyone you know to list out their best memories or pivotal times in their life, I’ll wager you’ll be pretty hard pressed to come across a memory that didn’t involve this pattern break.

Birth of a child, new job, traveling overseas, getting married. From here on out i’ll refer to these as peak moments. Times when your path was a linear line until something major happened whilst travelling on that line – a peak.

Similarly, negative experiences follow the inverse pattern. A death, a divorce, losing a job, getting ill. All these were a dramatic event that changed the linear line; this time for the negative, which we’ll call a pit.

The line between peaks and pits are largely us in autopilot mode in which we are typically following a pattern in which many events don’t really stand out, at least in a way we would reflect on as pivotal moments. The pits and peaks are where something has thrown us into a new mental model.

This is largely why many of the key moments we reflect on occur in our childhood, teens to early twenties and it felt like you were 16 forever. This is a time period when we are experiencing 'firsts' more frequently, and if we refer back to the Oddball effect study previously mentioned, why time feels like it’s going faster as we get older. We’ve typically established more patterns. There’s fewer firsts and fewer events where we typically feel out of our depth. The more repetition we do in our day to day, the faster time seems to move.

Time itself remains the same of course, but how our brains interpret it is how it ‘feels’ faster or slower. Time is objective to our brains.

If it feels like time is flying, that’s likely a sign you probably need more peaks in your life and your experience patterns are likely pretty flat.

Every peak (and pit) moment has a number of factors that help break the moment from the norm. And the good news is that once you know about them you can start to literally engineer these moments in your work and personal life.

How to Make Peak Moments

Peak Moment Making Ingredient #1 – Elevation

As mentioned above, in order for a moment to stand out it needs to rise above expected events. To elevate itself beyond the expected patterns.

An elevation story:

When I was about 13 my parents took me to Disneyland for the very first time. It would’ve cost a fortune and travelling to the states with me and my little sister would’ve been quite the effort (something I now realise being a dad myself). Day one in Disneyland my dad orders us some lunch and we’re waiting. Apparently my sister and I were getting hangry and were a little cranky. My dad then noticed that people who ordered after him were being served. One after the other, everyone else but him was receiving their order.

My dad’s not one to take this lightly, so he asks to speak to the manager and explains the situation. He’s assured they’ll fix it straight away.

My dad frustratedly returns back to our table, going through the scenario of the thousands of dollars spent to get here in his head, and in The Happiest Place on Earth no less. He’s not happy. He’s headed for a pit.

Within minutes, Disney employees start appearing with all sorts of food and treats. Hotdogs, popcorn, drinks, chocolate, ice creams, cookies, chips – the works.

My dad only probably ordered some fries and a couple of cokes’, but the staff went out of their way to ensure that we didn't experience a pit whilst we were in the Magic Kingdom.

More than 25 years later my dad still talks about this moment. The experience was elevated from the norm and turned a pit into a peak that has created a memory that has lasted decades. And all it cost the business was a couple of hotdogs and chocolate bars.

Now, if this was what happens to everyone, then the experience becomes expected and is no longer a peak. Disney calls these Magic Moments. All cast members are given autonomy when and how to give them. You can never request a magic moment. They are spontaneous and brought out when the need calls for one.

Ensuring the elevation experience stays as an exception, then the ability for it to be a peak experience remains.

Do it every time and it becomes part of the linear straight line of the experience.

A moment needs to rise above the norm. Diverge from the expected.

Peak Moment Making Ingredient #2 – Insight

Insight in this case refers to a moment of clarity. Where something is understood and discovered for the very first time that changes your perception on something. Think of it as the ‘Ah-ha!’ moment.

Typically an insight needs to be uncovered by the person having the experience. Discoverability of the insight for themselves helps to make the insight stick. This is one of my favourite tools to use in presentations and times when I’m trying to affect change. To know the triggers that will bring someone to action and then create the breadcrumb trail. To maybe not explicitly suggest an outcome, but let the person I’m trying to influence uncover it themselves.

Tripping over the truth often has more impact than being told the truth.

Peak Moment Making Ingredient #3 – Pride

What is your proudest moment?

Pride is one of the seven deadly sins apparently, which I think is a load of crap. Being proud of something is a feeling we should strive for rather than avoid. It shows achievement. A milestone achieved or an outcome reached. We have many of these in our lives.

A promotion at work. Seeing your child graduate. Nailing a presentation.

They can be big or small, but pride can be a massive driver in creating a moment.

They are moments when we’re at our best and when we’ve strived to do something new or something we previously thought unlikely.

We often celebrate these moments alone. An internal high five to ourselves. However, when we deliberately look to identify when these moments occur in others lives, we can enhance these moments.

That’s why celebrations and recognition of effort are so important. Acknowledgment of the event helps to strengthen the event.

Recognition – when not routine or expected – is a huge driver of pride. Acknowledging the effort of something that someone has done can help elevate the task/moment from mundane to memorable.

Peak Moment Making Ingredient #4 – Connection

Moments shared are moments made more memorable.

Camaraderie during moments help to solidify an achievement, it’s why winning grand finals of sport are so memorable. Part of a group and shared with a group. The supporters, the staff, the team and team mates. We all had a common goal that we achieved together.

When we feel a connection to others, we are more empathetic, we have validation and we feel stronger in our purpose.

Creating moments through connection can be achieved through a common goal. A shared struggle and getting through it together, and most importantly, meaning.

A moment can be elevated beyond a tedious team building event into a moment of connection when a purpose or meaning exists.

If you’re just ticking a box your boss told you to, then there’s likely to be no moment that’ll be lasting. Working on something game changing, difficult or with a higher purpose together though, that creates a connection. Purpose and meaning in a team will help the team go above and beyond and achieve something special, something memorable.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

It's important to recognise here that in order to make a moment, you don’t need all four of the above. One all by itself could be enough to make a moment really stand out.

What I love about this framework is that we can look at our day to day; our work, our social lives, our family time, and identify moments where these are or can occur.

When we know about them, we can take steps to make these moments even better.

• How might we elevate this experience?
• Is there a way we can celebrate this moment?
• How can we strengthen the sense of community in this moment?

These types of mental models and questions can help make to make a moment even more memorable. We can engineer moments. Not make them fake or artificial of course, but acknowledge when a moment is meaningful and help to enhance it.

The input can be so minor, but the outcome so great!

A Multi-million Dollar Moment

There’s one story in particular I heard recently about South West Airlines. South West were one of the first airlines to start adding in personality to their safety demo speech before every flight.

• “Smoking is only permitted on the wings of the plane. If you can light them, you can smoke them.”
• “Please position you belt buckle tight and low on your hips like my grandmothers support bra”
• “If you don’t like the jokes or service on the flight tonight, there are six ways out of the plane. Forward doors, middle doors and two at the rear”

Cabin crews did it as a way to help make the process a little less mundane. It wasn’t something any team, boss or strategy consultancy firm suggested, nor was it something anyone asked for.

But once it started happening, South West noticed that about 1 in 70 unprompted notes of feedback from customers had mentioned these safety demos and how much they loved them.

Eventually, someone got curious about what – if anything – this meant to the bottom line of South West. Did this moment do anything more than make a few people laugh on the occasional flight? Did enhancing this moment have any economic value?

The team then started to gather data on all the people who were on the same flight as the people who gave the feedback about the fun safety demo – after all, they all heard the same thing. They then got a view of how many of those people then purchased additional flights after the event and measured that to people on flights that just had the standard safety announcement that most people tune out.

What they found was that the people who heard the fun announcement flew, on average, one half flight more than those that didn’t hear the announcement.

The value of that funny flight announcement?

If South West doubled the number of customers that hear a funny flight announcement, they would increase revenue by US$140million! All from adding in an elevated moment into the experience flow of their customers. No technology. No large funded program. Just human connection. (You can read more about this in a great WAPO article here)

Often, these moments are difficult to quantify. Either getting hold of the data. Fitting the research in to your set timeline. Proving the value over a long amount of time. Difficult to identify quick value. The molasses pace of corporate decision making. Any number of reasons that the answer is NO to going after these moments.

Other times, peaks can be reduced to mere bumps once we factor in 'reasonable compromises'. Things that have good intentions can often erode the impact of the moment.

This example is what peak moments could look like when buying a home for the first time. How might a bank make a peak moment in this instance? The beauty of this moment is that the peak for the customer is going to happen (hopefully) either way. How might a bank utilise the moment to make the experience even more memorable? In this diagram, reasonable compromises that address typical business needs like extra effort, automation, scale, cost of postage etc, start to remove the impact from the moment.

The intent still remains, but the moment has been compromised into being expected, rather than remarkable. Sometimes we can even end up turning a peak into a pit, when we completely misinterpret the scenario and how a 'reasonable compromise' resulted in the opposite of the power of the moment. Turning peaks into tiny bumps is an easy trap to fall into when creating these moments. Be aware when it is happening, and really zero in on what makes the moment special, rather than just what gets the task done. Remember : Elevation, Insight, Pride and COnnection.

If there’s one thing I’d hope you, the reader takes away from this article, it’s to keep on seeking out these moments. Strive for peaks. You now know the formula. Just add them in incrementally.

Big Bang change can be difficult. But we’ve all got the ability to improve a moment in incremental ways in the work we do and lives we lead.

Don’t try to change the world, just aim to change a moment. Moments add up quick.

South West started with one funny dude on an airplane throwing in a joke to break up the day. $140million later, they now take those moments very seriously.

Peak moments matter, especially right now in a time of so many pits.

Thanks for reading.

You can find other stuff like this (and completely unlike this) that I dig here: https://twitter.com/DaylanDoes

Keen to understand more about how to create peaks? I recommend the following:

Creating Magic by Lee Cockerall . https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7159767-creating-magic

Be Our Guest by The Disney Institute. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25967971-be-our-guest

The Power of Moments by Chip Heath https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466952-the-power-of-moments

Its a Jungle in There by Steven Schussler https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9186445-it-s-a-jungle-in-there

Magic Journey: My Fantastical Walt Disney Imagineering Career by Kevin Rafferty https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40583988-magic-journey