Your Eyes Are Stealing Your Judgment

Don't just envy others. You should also see what they've done and what they've sacrificed behind the scenes.

Our eyes have an automatic filtering ability. For example, we're more likely to notice rare cases, whether they're success stories or failure tales.

Since they're uncommon, we remember them. But for the things we see every day, we just ignore them. The inner thought is like 'I've seen this before, and there are similar ones.'

Gradually, these fresh, novel, and rare things will take up the active part of our memory, while the daily stuff will fade into the background.

This leads to a situation where, if we don't deliberately recall, we can't remember ordinary people and events. Instead, those extreme and rare things keep popping up in our minds.

If you want someone to remember you and have a deep impression of you, don't do ordinary things. Even if they're warm, happy, and useful, they won't be memorable.

It's like taking a girl out for dinner for a whole year and spending tens of thousands of yuan. It won't leave as deep an impression as buying her a gift worth ten thousand yuan.

Because the daily things are so ordinary, our emotions stay flat. And flat emotions won't leave a deep mark in our memory. Only by doing something different and causing a big emotional wave can we be remembered.

What we call a deep impression emphasizes the contrast. The bigger the contrast, the deeper the impression.

All this shows three things: we tend to overlook daily but valuable things; we're prone to notice things with contrast or differences; and we only remember the moments with strong emotional swings.

We easily see others' success but ignore their past experiences, as well as the more common failure cases or general situations.

Meanwhile, this situation can be exploited. By creating surprises, unexpected events, or stories to stir up your emotions, they can make you remember.

The Peak-End Rule emphasizes carefully designing the 'peak and end experiences'. This rule says that people mainly judge an experience based on two points:

The peak moment (the most intense emotional point in the experience, whether positive or negative), and the end moment (the recency effect).

So, an excellent experience = a great start (the primacy effect) + at least one positive peak moment + a perfect ending (the recency effect).

We can use this human psychology in marketing, speeches, and even daily life.

Our memory is limited. We may easily forget or get confused about some things. But we usually remember the moments with strong emotional swings, the peaks and valleys of an event more clearly.

For ourselves, it's quite dangerous. We'll ignore some truly important things, and our judgments about some things may be based on these impressions, which can be very inaccurate.

In this case, we need to record what's important.

Take keeping accounts as an example. Many people say they haven't bought any big or expensive items, nor do they buy luxury goods. But they run out of money by the end of the month.

Why? It's because the daily expenses are so ordinary that we forget about them. In fact, we might buy a cup of milk tea, order a bag of snacks online, have a cup of coffee, or enjoy an afternoon tea. On weekends, we go shopping, and a hot pot or barbecue can cost one or two hundred yuan.

Over time, we spend thousands of yuan every month and tens of thousands a year. Then we say we haven't spent money recklessly, but we still can't save.

This is the result of unclear records, which affects our judgment.

This kind of thing happens a lot, whether it's about spending, earning, or time. We say we're busy, but when we really record our time, we find we spend six hours a day on short - video apps. We say we've done a lot of things, but when we calculate the time, we've spent hours reading various articles every day.

More than a year ago, I wrote an article saying that clarity leads to success. Now, we can also say that clarity leads to good judgment.

If you want to improve your judgment, you need to be specific, clear, and have enough data to support your views. It might be tough, but you can't avoid it.

Daily Reading & Writing by Xiaolu 2025.10.04 [Day 760]