This book was pretty interesting. It takes certain quirks about the human experience (like how we tend to remember the best and worst moments of an experience, or the last moment, but forget the rest... or why we feel most comfortable when things are certain, but most alive when they're not) and tries to apply a methodology to it to see if memorable moments and experiences can be crafted instead of randomly experienced.

The authors basically argue that there are four elements to a memorable experience:

         1. Elevation
         2. Insight
         3. Pride
         4. Connection

And every memorable experience you've ever had has involved one (or more) of those four elements. It's either been a moment that stands out from the everyday, it's one where you learned something new and valuable, it's something you're proud of, or it's something that made you feel more connected to someone else or the world as a whole.

The book gives a ton of examples of really memorable experiences and analyzes them through this lens, then challenges you to figure out how to create them in your own context. If I had one criticism of the book, it would be that the context they assume most of their readers are coming from is someone who works in sales or marketing and is trying to sell a product or service, which is kind of a bummer because I think the ideas in this book transcend the general topic of "business strategy" and I wish they would have taken a little more time to look at other contexts like how a parent might try to create memorable experiences for their kids, or how to throw a great party, or how to get people more engaged with the mission of a nonprofit. The authors touch on these things a bit, but they always circle back to the, "Okay, so your boss has challenged you to improve the customer service experience..." and that's a bit of a bummer.

Other than that, though, this is honestly a pretty interesting book and I'll probably keep it as a reference in the future. It kind of reminded me of Atomic Habits in the sense that it's got a premise that's pretty interesting and while it's not a cure-all for everybody's issues, it's a valuable resource that will likely click with certain people in certain contexts, and I love holding onto books like that so I can share them with people when the opportunity arises.

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Created Mar 06, 2024 at 5:38pm • Submit your own review...