What Makes a Moment Memorable?

A visit to the oldest cinema in the world, and a simple rule that explains how we remember events in life.

Try to think back to one of your recent vacations. What’s the most vivid memory that comes to mind, the moment that stuck with you the most?

In my case, it’s a visit I made recently to the south of France, where I stepped into the oldest cinema in the world: Eden Theatre in La Ciotat. A classic old cinema with beautiful red chairs. It’s so old that the Lumière brothers, the inventors of cinema as we know it today, held one of the first public film screenings there in 1895, showing their famous short film in which a train is seen pulling into a station (Legend says the audience was so startled by the moving train, they ran from the theater, thinking it was real.)

This raises the question: why do we remember certain moments and not others? What makes a particular event stick in our memory, while so much else fades away? The question of memorability is one of the most fascinating puzzles in the study of memory. And professor Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize winner in Economics and probably the most famous cognitive psychologist in the world, offered a compelling answer known as the Peak-End Rule. According to this rule, we don’t remember events as a whole. We remember them based on two key moments: the most intense point (the peak) and the final moment (the end).

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Peak-End Rule – a psychological principle that suggests we don’t remember entire experiences, but rather two key moments: the most intense part (the peak) and the final part (the end).

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Take, for example, a dinner at a restaurant. The food was delicious, the atmosphere was great, and everything seemed to be going well. But when it came time to pay, it took two hours just to get the check. It would not be a wild guess to assume that the pasta you ate will fade from memory, but the feeling of waiting endlessly to pay will probably stay with you much longer. According to the Peak End Rule, that makes perfect sense. The frustration at the end of the evening colors your entire memory of the experience.

Kahneman and his colleagues also showed this idea in an experiment involving a painful medical procedure. People went through two versions of the same treatment. One group had a shorter version that ended suddenly. The other group had a longer version, but the last part was a little less painful. Surprisingly, the people in the second group, who actually went through more pain overall, later said the experience felt less bad. Why? Because the ending was a bit easier. That small difference changed how they remembered the whole thing. In other words, even though they suffered for a longer time, their memory of the event was more positive(!). It is a great example of how our brain remembers just a few key moments, and how that memory can be very different from what really happened.

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So how can this rule about how our brain remembers be useful in everyday life?

The first insight is to pay attention to how our experiences end. Just like in the medical study, there are many situations where it is worth ending on a good note. After a workout, for example, finishing with a light and enjoyable stretch can make the whole session feel better. When learning something difficult, like math, ending with an easier problem can leave you with a greater sense of confidence and success.

The same applies to creative work. Writers often talk about the importance of ending a writing session on a high. As Hemingway once said, it is best to stop when you know what happens next so you can return the next day with momentum.

A good ending does not just shape how we remember the past. It also makes it easier to return to the activity in the future. When the last impression is positive, we are more likely to come back, to repeat, to keep going.

The second insight is to create peaks. If we want certain moments to stick, we can try to build small highlights into the experiences. One theory, for example, about why people remember so little from the COVID lockdown period is that life during that time was relatively monotonous. With so much routine and time spent at home, there were fewer standout moments for our brains to hold on to.

That does not mean every trip needs to include hiking the Himalayas. But any experience that breaks slightly from the familiar and disrupts the usual rhythm, from a spontaneous day trip to a conversation with a stranger on the street, can become a memory with a much better chance of lasting.

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the oldest cinema in the world, Eden Theatre in La Ciotat, South France.

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The third insight is to understand that there is a difference between the experience itself and the memory of it. One is not more important than the other. So even though the first two ideas focused on how to make things more memorable, it is just as important to know when to let go of the memory and simply be in the experience.

We live in a world that often values memories more than moments. I know that I too sometimes find myself too busy trying to photograph a beautiful landscape so I will have something to look back on instead of just looking at it. But the fact that a moment is not preserved in memory does not make it less meaningful. In fact, some of the most important moments in our lives are the ones we tend to overlook, like being outside on an ordinary sunny day or spending quiet time with family.

Because sometimes the most meaningful thing we can do isn’t to create another peak in our memory, but to give attention and value to the ordinary moments, the ones that often matter most.