The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact

Gallup discovered that the six most revealing questions are the ones below. Notice that the final three of them might as well have been penned by Reis himself: 1. Do I know what is expected of me at work? 2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right? 3. Do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day? 4. In the last

“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. We run school like it is nonstop practice. You never get a game. Nobody would go out for the basketball team if you never had a game. What is the game for the students?”

To spark moments of connection for groups, we must create shared meaning. That can be accomplished by three strategies: (1) creating a synchronized moment; (2) inviting shared struggle; and (3) connecting to meaning.

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.

Art Aron 36 questions. A. Aron et al. (1997). “The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness: A Procedure and Some Preliminary Findings,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 23: 363–77.

These were stories about action.

Nobody dines on pepper and oregano. A little novelty can go a long way. Learn to recognize your own scripts. Play with them, poke at them, disrupt them. Not all the time—just enough to keep those brown shoes looking fresh. By breaking the script, we can lay down a richer set of memories. As the authors of the book Surprise put it, “We feel most com

Novelty even changes our perception of time. In an experiment conducted by Vani Pariyadath and David Eagleman of Baylor College of Medicine,

Psychologists call this “self-insight”—a mature understanding of our capabilities and motivations—and it’s correlated with an array of positive outcomes, ranging from good relationships to a sense of purpose in life. Self-insight and psychological well-being go together.

“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 .”