Rediscovering Our Mundane Moments Brings Us Unexpected Pleasure

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/rediscovering-our-mundane-moments-brings-us-unexpected-pleasure.html?utm_source=pressrelease&utm_medium=eureka&utm_campaign=rediscoveringeverydaymoments

We like to document the exciting and momentous occasions in our lives, but new research suggests there is value in capturing our more mundane, everyday experiences, which can bring us unexpected joy in the future.

“We generally do not think about today’s ordinary moments as experiences that are worthy of being rediscovered in the future. However, our studies show that we are often wrong: What is ordinary now actually becomes more extraordinary in the future — and more extraordinary than we might expect,” explains psychological scientist and lead researcher Ting Zhang of Harvard Business School.

The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Science has shown that we consistently make errors in trying to predict how we’ll feel about something and how much we’ll remember from that experience later on.

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This doesn’t mean that we should start documenting everything we do in order to maximize pleasure, however.

Some acts of documentation, such as trying to get just the right shot of your artfully prepared restaurant meal, can interrupt the present moment and detract from the overall experience. Additional research is needed to discover where the tipping point lies between enjoying the present and documenting the present for enjoyment in the future, says Zhang.

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