Fridays tend to be fairly light for me professionally in summer. This is a good thing, as I realized, by a year or two into having school-aged kids, that summer Fridays were going to feature a lot of kid camp finales. It might be a show or a showcase, but after spending a week on some theme, the kids aren’t just going to drift out at the end.
This has occasionally required some scrambling but on the whole, it’s a good thing. In life, we probably don’t pay enough attention to endings. As this week has explored how life should be like summer camp, I’ll end with the thought that it’s good to end with a bang.
What we remember
There’s some interesting research finding that people most remember any obvious highlights of an experience … and how it ended. This can be problematic with travel, as a magical week in Europe can end with a 3-hour flight delay and then a 2-hour wait in customs, all of which taints the overall memory. Human nature is unfortunate that way!
But when you know this, you can consciously tweak the endings of any experience under your control to make sure that the ending is as positive as possible. If your team at work has suffered through a tedious project with a cantankerous client, you might pull out all the stops for an end-of-project celebration — and tell everyone you don’t plan to see any of them at the office on Friday. If friends are in town visiting, maybe you go to that restaurant with the fabulous tasting menu on the last night they’re there. I love to travel somewhere fascinating over Labor Day weekend — it helps me feel like I’m wringing every last drop of pleasure out of summer.
Cue the fireworks
Even for mundane things, putting something positive at the end can shape the experience. Instead of drifting out at the end of a meeting (“Well, if nobody has any questions…”) build in time on the agenda to share some positive news in the last five minutes.
Maybe you won’t all wind up signing each others’ tie-dyed T-shirts and singing the camp song, but it brings a bit of the camp magic to the work day — and since I think life should be more like summer camp, that’s a great way to end things up.
Another great Vanderhack. Great advice!
I always plan something big for the end of a trip, but I hadn't thought about applying it to meetings or projects. I already know where I'm going to apply it next!