By the third day in Paris, I’d already burned through Montmartre, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Catacombs, and Notre Dame. I was running on fumes and was wondering if I was seeing things or just checking them off. I spent the morning at the Rodin Museum, and in the afternoon I visited Sainte-Chapelle, a 13th-century royal chapel on the Île de la Cité. The exterior was gray, and it was much smaller than Notre Dame. The first floor had a painted ceiling and places where religious relics used to be. Nothing matched the buildup from the guidebooks, and I remember thinking I’d wasted a spot on my itinerary.
Then I walked upstairs.
The second floor is nearly all stained glass, wall to ceiling, and that afternoon the sun was hitting it directly. Light poured through in reds and blues and golds, and for a second I just stood there, stunned. The walls contain about 1,113 stained glass panels, and they surround you in light. I don’t remember what I did for the rest of that day. I don’t fully remember the day before or the day after, either. But I remember that staircase, and I remember stepping onto that second floor, more clearly than almost anything else from two weeks in Europe.
The Peak-End Rule
Psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls this the peak-end rule. When people look back on an experience, they don’t average every moment. They remember the most intense point and how it ended, and that stands in for the whole thing. In his research, this held up even for physical pain. People who endured pain longer with a gentle ending rate the entire experience as less unpleasant than people whose pain was shorter but ended sharply. Even though the second group suffered less overall, they remember the peak.
That’s why a two-week trip collapses into one staircase. Not because the rest of it didn’t matter, but because your mind was never built to store it that way. It’s built to keep the peak and let the rest fade.
Keeping Score
More tells you a trip is only as good as how well you plan and fill every day. Hit every landmark, optimize every hour, and only then will it have been worth it.
Enough says something smaller and honest: your mind isn’t even keeping score that way. One staircase can outweigh six landmarks, whether you planned for it or not.
For the next week, whenever something makes you physically pause, stop walking, or stop scrolling, stay in it for ten extra seconds before moving on. That’s the whole practice. You’re not manufacturing the moment. You’re just staying long enough to catch it.
See you next week.
P.S. What’s one moment that’s outlasted an entire trip for you? Hit reply and tell me. I read every one.