The Power of Moments by Chip Heath & Dan Heath

Author:Chip Heath & Dan Heath
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

3.

By using Kamb’s level-up strategy, we multiply the number of motivating milestones we encounter en route to a goal. That’s a forward-looking strategy: We’re anticipating moments of pride ahead. But the opposite is also possible: to surface those milestones you’ve already met but might not have noticed. Earlier in the book, we mentioned the way Fitbit celebrates its customers for fitness milestones: The India badge, for instance, celebrates you for walking a total of 1,997 miles, which is the length of India. (Celebrating 2,000 miles walked would have been fitting, too, but somehow the India badge feels more interesting and memorable.) No Fitbit customers would have been aware of this feat had the company not told them.

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?

Certainly the kids know, in a generic sense, that they’ve improved over the course of a season. But improvements are slow and incremental. Almost invisible. You can’t rewind your memory to six months prior and observe how clearly your dribbling has improved.

But you can rewind a video. What if every boy on a basketball team received a simple before-and-after video comparing his performance at the beginning and end of the season? The improvements would be so obvious, so visible: Check it out—I could barely dribble with my left hand! Haha—I couldn’t make a free throw to save my life. What a stunning moment of pride that would be. Look how far I’ve come! And yet we have not encountered a single coach who has had the instinct to mint this moment of pride for his players.

Or think about how couples celebrate their anniversaries: by taking trips, going out for a nice dinner, or exchanging gifts. Those are moments rich with elevation and connection. But what about pride? Shouldn’t couples acknowledge and celebrate what they’ve accomplished together?

One couple we know kept an anniversary journal for the first decade of their marriage. Every year they would record the things they accomplished: Redecorating the back bedroom, hosting extended family for Thanksgiving dinner, and so on. They’d also record the trips they took, and the friends they saw most frequently, and, amazingly, what they fought about!

The husband said, “Reliving the big arguments from the previous year is not for the faint of heart, because you tend to want to refight them.” But having the record was useful because it provided concrete evidence of the progress they had made in their relationship. In the first year of marriage, they fought about almost anything. (One actual example: Which spices can stay on the kitchen table?) Over the next three years, the arguments steadily dwindled, and by the fifth year, they could recall only minor bickering. Not even an honest-to-goodness fight. And they laughed at the memory of fighting over spices.

That’s a laugh that signals a moment of pride. Look at how far we’ve come.

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