The peak-end rule: How to craft content people actually remember

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Ever notice how people don’t remember your entire video, thread, or newsletter… just one or two moments from it?

That’s not a sign your audience has a bad memory. It’s just how human brains work.🧠

This is the peak-end rule at play, and it’s one of psychology’s most useful (and mildly infuriating) cognitive biases.

In short, people remember the most intense moment (the peak⛰️) and how it ended (the end🎇). Everything else is a blur.

Human brains can’t hold a lot of new information, especially when they’re scrolling on the attention black hole that is their phones. Instead of expecting everyone to pay attention to your every word, use the peak-end rule to work with your followers’ brains and get more traction for it.

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Back in 1993, psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Barbara Frederickson ran a now-famous experiment that involved, of all things, cold water.🥶

Participants were asked to stick their hands in freezing water for a while. Then they repeated the experiment, but the second time, the water stayed cold for longer, but it was slightly warmer towards the end.

Guess which version people preferred? Yep, the longer one.🤷

Even though they had their hands in the ice water for more time, the warmth at the very end made everything before it seem like not a big deal.

Their judgment of the entire experience was shaped almost entirely by two points:

They didn’t care how long it lasted, either.

This finding was replicated later in more… unpleasant scenarios, like colonoscopies. 🏥The results were the same: people judged the whole experience by its emotional peak and its ending, not its total duration or average pain level.

That’s why a meal that’s just “fine” can become amazing if the waiter surprises you with a free dessert at the end.🍨

It’s why a weeklong vacation fades into a fuzzy montage, but you vividly remember parasailing for the first time (peak) and hugging your friends goodbye (end).

And it’s why, in relationships, we tend to remember the proposal💍or the breakup, not the hundreds of ordinary Tuesdays in between.

The peak-end rule is your brain’s way of creating highlight reels about your life. It’s efficient, but it means if you’re a creator, the middle of your content doesn’t matter nearly as much as you think it does.

As a content creator, you’re designing experiences: videos, newsletters, posts, courses, podcasts, and workshops. If you understand the peak-end rule, you can intentionally shape what people remember — and how they feel about you long after they’ve scrolled away.

The “peak” is the emotional high point, or the part that sticks in people’s memory. It could be:

Your goal is to engineer one unforgettable beat in every piece of content. That’s the clip people quote or the sentence they highlight.

Any time you create content, ask yourself, “Where is my ‘wow’ moment here?” If you can’t point to one, you don’t have a peak yet, and the content will probably fall flat.

Most creators fizzle out at the end of a video or blog. They drop the final line, paste in a “thanks for reading,” and call it a day. But the ending has a huge impact on what your followers remember.

Your ending is your reputation in miniature. It’s how people decide whether to:

Instead of phoning it in, try ending with one of these:

This rule has one especially freeing implication: length is irrelevant. You can make a 30-second TikTok or a 10-minute YouTube video; it doesn’t matter. If the peak and end are strong, the memory will be strong.

Remember, Kahneman’s subjects literally preferred longer pain if it ended on a better note. So, as a creator, don’t sweat about making your content a certain length. The quality of the peak and end matter way more than a magic duration.⏰

You probably have a checklist you run through before making and posting content. 📋Get more eyeballs on your content by adding the peak-end rule to your creative checklist.

Before you hit publish, ask yourself:

If you can say yes to all three, congratulations — you’ve just hacked your audience’s memory. If not, go back to the drawing board, because your followers deserve primo content.

The peak-end rule doesn’t just apply to single pieces of content. It shapes entire customer journeys.

You can use it for:

Make Your Moments Count

Your audience won’t remember everything you make, but they will remember how you made them feel at the best moment and at the end.💖

So design for that. Make your middle solid, sure, but obsess over your peaks and endings. That’s where loyalty, virality, and trust are born.

Your move: Next time you create something, pause before you publish and do this quick gut check:

As always, hit reply if something in here hits home.

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