The ordinary moments you’ll wish you’d kept

The time capsule study

In 2014, a team at Harvard Business School led by Ting Zhang asked 135 students to make a small time capsule at the start of summer. They wrote about their last social event, a recent conversation, a few lines from a paper they had written. Then they predicted how curious they would be to open it, and how interesting they would find it.

Three months later they opened their capsules. They were significantly more curious and more interested than they had expected to be. What had felt too small to bother with in June had become interesting by September.

As Zhang put it: “What is ordinary now actually becomes more extraordinary in the future.”

Ordinary days are the ones we misjudge most

In another of the studies, people in relationships wrote about two days with their partner: an ordinary day, and Valentine’s Day. Months later, they were fairly accurate about how much they would enjoy rereading Valentine’s Day. It was the ordinary day they got wrong. They enjoyed reading it far more than they had predicted.

That fits how memory works for most of us. The big days get photographed, retold and remembered. The ordinary ones blur together, so we assume there was nothing in them. Then a few sentences bring one back, and it turns out there was.

Why we don’t write them down

The researchers also found a reason we skip it. In their last study, people overestimated how much they would remember of a recent conversation, and the more they overestimated, the less interesting they expected a written account to be. We think we will remember, so it feels pointless to keep.

Given the choice, only 27% chose to write about a recent conversation rather than watch a talk-show clip. A month later, asked which they would rather revisit, 58% picked the conversation.

The researchers add a fair warning: documenting everything can pull you out of the moment you are trying to keep. The aim is a line or two, not a running commentary.

Small things worth keeping

None of these will feel important on the day. Most of them will be the first things you look for later.

• Something your child said, in their exact words.
• What you had for dinner on a normal weeknight, and who was at the table.
• The song that was on in the car.
• The weather, and what you did because of it.
• A small thing that went wrong and turned into a joke.
• Where you were standing when you heard some news.
• What your street, your kitchen or your commute looked like this year.

How to keep them without a diary habit

1. Keep it tiny. One or two sentences. The studies used a few lines, and a few lines were enough to bring the feelings back.
2. Catch it the same day. By the weekend, an ordinary Tuesday is already gone.
3. Add the photo you already took. A picture with one line under it does more than either alone.
4. Say it out loud if writing won’t happen. Twenty seconds of talking is a whole entry.
5. Let it come back to you. The value is in the rediscovery. Put a reminder on the same date next year, or reread a random week now and then.