The Last Five Minutes of a Repair Are All She Remembered

I want to talk about how a person decides whether I did a good job, because it almost never matches what actually happened in the house.

There was a furnace call back in January, deep cold, the kind of morning where the ground crunches and your breath hangs and the truck door handle bites your bare hand. North edge of Kingfisher, a frame house with a propane tank in the side yard and a dog on a chain who decided I was the most interesting thing to happen all winter. Older couple. The man met me at the door in a flannel shirt buttoned to the throat with a stocking cap on inside the house, which told me everything about how cold it had gotten in there overnight.

No heat. Had been out since the evening before. They'd run a space heater in the bedroom and slept in their coats.

I went down to the furnace in a crawl space that you got to through a hatch in the hall closet floor, and I want to be honest about what that crawl space was. It was tight. It was filthy. There was old fiberglass insulation hanging down in gray clumps and a dead mouse I'd rather not have found and about fourteen inches of headroom over a dirt floor. I was down there on my back for the better part of two hours.

The problem hid from me the whole time. It looked like the igniter at first. Replaced the igniter, no good. Looked like the flame sensor, cleaned the flame sensor, no good. Pressure switch tested fine. I pulled the inducer motor and bench tested it in my head and put it back. I crawled out twice to get parts off the truck, tracking dirt across their kitchen floor both times, apologizing both times, the wife saying don't you worry about that, the floor's seen worse.

Core line: "The end is the most expensive real estate in the whole visit, and most people give it away for free because they're already thinking about the next thing."

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Imagine you just walked out of a movie theater, the credits are rolling, you know, you're tossing your empty popcorn tub in the trash, and you're just heading out to the parking lot.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Right. The classic post-movie ritual.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

But how do you actually rate that movie in your head? Like do you pull out a mental spreadsheet and mathematically average out the entertainment value of every single scene minute by minute?

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Well, nobody does that. I mean, you definitely don't.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

You really don't. You probably just remember that one mind-blowing plot twist in the middle, and then uh maybe the feeling you had right as the end credits started rolling.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Aaron Powell Yeah, you don't average it out at all. And that gets right to the heart of what we are unpacking today. We really like to think of ourselves as these perfectly logical, calculating beings.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Oh, for sure. We think we're so objective.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Right. But human memory does not keep a continuous second-by-second ledger the way a clock does. Instead, our brains aggressively edit our reality down to just a few highly specific data points, and they completely throw out the rest.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Which brings us to the mission for this deep dive. Today we are exploring a piece called The Last Five Minutes Decide.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

It's a fascinating look at human behavior.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

It really is. It's built around the real-world experiences of Dave Hartzell, an Oklahoma master HVAC technician, with I mean, 45 years in the trade.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

That is a lot of time fixing heaters.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

A lifetime, really. Yeah. And we are going to connect his gritty everyday work in the freezing cold to a groundbreaking 1993 psychology study.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

The parallels are just wild once you see them.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

They really are. The goal here is to reveal this massive, almost invisible shortcut in how human memory works and how people ultimately judge you, your character, and the work that you do.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

It applies to literally everyone listening, no matter what your job is.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Exactly. Okay, let's unpack this. To really understand how wild this mental editing process is, we have to start by grounding things in a situation that defies logical evaluation.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

We need to go to a highly relatable, physically miserable crawl space in Kingfisher, Oklahoma.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Yes, we do. Because the physical reality of what Dave Hartzell experienced on this specific service call is the crucial setup for everything else.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Right. So let's set the scene. It is January in Oklahoma.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Oh man, so it's freezing.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

It is that deep, bone-chilling winter cold, the kind of morning where the frozen ground is just crunching loudly under your work boots.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

And the metal handle of the service truck practically bites your bare hand when you grab it.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Exactly. So Dave pulls up to a framehouse on the north edge of town. There's a propane tank out in the side yard, and a chained dog that Dave notes thinks he's the absolute most interesting thing to happen all winter.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Which is a great little detail. And the customers are an older couple who are in a really bad spot. Their heat died the evening before, so the house has been dropping in temperature all night long.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

And in January, that is actually dangerous.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

It is. They had to run a little electric space heater in their bedroom, and they actually slept in their winter coats just to get through the night.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Oh wow. That sounds miserable.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

Right. And when the husband finally opens the front door for Dave, he's wearing a thick flannel shirt buttoned all the way up to his throat, and he's wearing a stocking cap. Indoors.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Which is a detail that tells you instantly everything you need to know about the ambient temperature inside that house.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

You can literally see your breath in the living room. It is freezing.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

So Dave knows the stakes are high and he gets right to work, but the furnace isn't located in a nice, well-lit basement with plenty of room to move around.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

Of course not. That would be too easy.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Right. It's in a crawl space. You have to access it through a small, awkward hatch cut into the floor of the hallway closet.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

And when we say crawl space, we are not talking about a place where you can comfortably crouch.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Not at all.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

We are talking 14 inches of headroom. It's just a raw dirt floor. There are these gray, dusty clumps of old fiberglass insulation hanging down right in his face.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Just terrible working conditions.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

And just to add a little extra texture to the misery, there is a dead mouse somewhere down there.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Oh gross.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Yeah. So Dave spends the better part of two hours lying entirely on his back in this tight, filthy, freezing environment.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Two hours of sheer grinding frustration because the problem is completely hiding from him. Anyone who works with complex systems knows this pain.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Yeah. Troubleshooting can be a nightmare.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

He goes through a whole agonizing series of false starts. He thinks it's the igniter, you know, the part that actually sparks the flame, so he replaces it. Nothing happens. So then he thinks it's the flame sensor, which is a safety device. He cleans it off, still nothing.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

So he's just burning time in the freezing cold.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

Exactly. He tests the pressure switch. He even goes so far as to pull the entire inducer motor out.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

And for anyone listening who isn't an HVAC expert, an inducer motor isn't some tiny computer chip you just pop out with your thumb.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Oh, definitely not. It's a bulky, awkward fan assembly.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

Right. Imagine trying to unscrew a car engine part while lying completely flat on your back in the freezing dirt, wrestling this heavy metal object over your chest in the dark.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Just mentally bench testing it while you're freezing.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Yeah, only to realize the part is perfectly fine, and now you have to put it all back together. That is sheer misery.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

It is exhausting physical labor. And during this two-hour ordeal, Dave has to army crawl out of that 14-inch space twice to go out to his truck for different parts.

SPEAKER_00 5:25

Which means he is tracking yard dirt and crawl space mud across this older couple's kitchen floor twice.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

Right, and he's apologizing profusely to the wife, and she's politely telling him not to worry about it, saying the floor has seen worse.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

But as a professional, you know he is feeling the weight of that. He's making a mess in a freezing house, and he still hasn't fixed the heat.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

The tension has to be incredibly high.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

And the real twist of this whole ordeal is that the actual fix, once he finally identifies the true culprit, only takes him 15 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

Wait, really? Just 15 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

Yeah. It turned out to be a cracked section of flue pipe that was intermittently tripping that pressure switch.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

Wow. That is so frustrating.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

As Dade says, it's the worst kind of intermittent problem. The kind that works perfectly while you're staring right at it with your flashlight and then fails the second you turn your back.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Typical.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

So he spends two hours on his back in the cold dirt, fumbling around, replacing parts that aren't broken, just to find a problem that took him a few minutes to solve.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Okay, wait. I have to jump in and push back here on behalf of anyone listening who has ever hired a contractor to fix something in their home.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Go for it.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

If a technician comes to my house, spends two hours fumbling around, replacing the wrong parts, leaving my family freezing, and tracking mud into my kitchen, not once but twice, wouldn't I naturally remember that as a terrible customer experience?

SPEAKER_00 6:51

You would think so, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Logically, if I'm keeping score, that is a bad morning. That feels like a one-star review waiting to happen.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

What's fascinating here is that logically, yes, that is exactly how it should work. You would absolutely think the customer is running a mental meter.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

Averaging the whole thing out.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Right. You'd think they would tally up the two hours of freezing, add in the false starts, subtract points for the dirt on the floor, and evaluate the visit as a complete disaster.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

But that is not what happens.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

No. The customer's memory is already actively at work compressing this entire two-hour ordeal. It is erasing the false starts. It is completely throwing out the dirt on the floor.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

So if the customer isn't keeping a continuous ledger of those two hours, what exactly are they keeping score of?

SPEAKER_00 7:35

This is a question the medical field actually answered back in 1993, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:39

Exactly. This brings us out of that frozen Kingfisher crawl space and directly into the clinical psychology that explains why that couple will forgive the two-hour wait.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

Okay, let's hear the science.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

In 1993, two renowned psychologists, Daniel Kahnman and Donald Radelmeier, published a foundational medical study. And through that study, they proved the existence of something they named the peak end rule.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

The peak-in rule. This is the massive shortcut in human memory we mentioned at the start.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

It is the ultimate shortcut. The rule states that people do not evaluate their experiences based on a comprehensive average.

SPEAKER_00 8:15

So no mental spreadsheet.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

None at all. Instead, they judge an experience based on just two highly specific data points.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

Okay, what are they?

SPEAKER_01 8:23

The first is the peak, which is the single most intense moment of the experience, and that can be a wildly positive peak or a terribly negative peak. Makes sense. The second data point is the end, simply how the experience concluded in its final moments. That is it. The peak in the end.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

Here's where it gets really interesting. Because of this rule, Kahneman identified a secondary phenomenon called duration neglect. Oh, this part is wild. It really is. And for you listening, think about how weird this is. The actual length of time an experience lasts, the duration, carries almost zero weight in how you remember it.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

Zero weight.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Basically zero. An hour of mild misery and ten minutes of mild misery are filed away and remembered exactly the same in your brain, as long as the peak intensity and the final moments of both experiences match.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

It completely defies our standard logic, but if you stop and think about it from an evolutionary perspective, it makes perfect sense.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Oh so?

SPEAKER_01 9:17

Well, why would our brains do this? It comes down to cognitive load and basic survival. The brain is an incredibly energy hungry organ, and it's acting like a computer trying to save hard drive space.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

Ah, I see.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

It cannot save a continuous 24-hour video file of every day. It's too much useless data. So instead, it takes two high-resolution photos.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Right. So if you survive a bear attack, your brain doesn't need to remember the 45 minutes you spent hiding in a bush minute by minute.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Exactly. It just needs to remember how terrifying the bear's teeth were. That's the peak, so you know to avoid bears and how you finally managed to escape.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

Which is the end.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

Right, which tells you that you survived. That compressed file is all you need to navigate the future.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

That's incredible.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

To prove this applies to everyday life, Kahneman and Rettlemeyer looked at patients undergoing a highly uncomfortable medical procedure. They compared two groups. One group had a shorter procedure that ended abruptly right when the physical pain was at its absolute peak.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

Ouch. Which sounds awful.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

It was. The other group endured a significantly longer procedure, meaning objectively, they experienced more total minutes of physical discomfort.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

So a longer duration of pain.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

Yes. But for the second group, the procedure was deliberately designed to taper off and end gently.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

So group two objectively suffered for a much longer period of time. Logically, they should rate the experience as worse.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

But when asked to evaluate the experience afterward, the patients who endured the longer procedure that ended gently remembered it far more positively than the patients who had the shorter procedure.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

That is just crazy.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

The body kept a completely different ledger than the clock did. The brain threw away the duration and only recorded the gentle ending.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

I want you to think about how this applies to your own life. Like, think about the last big vacation you took.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Oh, that's a great example.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

You never really remember the boring, endless six-hour car ride on the highway, do you? You don't mathematically average the highway boredom into your memory of the trip.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

No, you definitely don't.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

What you remember is the stunning sunset over the ocean on your second night, that's your peak, and you remember the feeling of safely pulling your car back into your own driveway at the very end. The whole boring middle just drops out.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

It drops out entirely. And the profound implication here, looking back at our HVAC technician, is that Dave Hartzall intuitively knew this science in his bones after 90,000 service calls.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

He didn't need a study to tell him.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

Not at all. He lived inside the psychological reality long before he ever read a clinical paper by Daniel Kahneman. Right. He knew that the older couple was never going to remember the two hours he spent under the house. The middle was going to disappear.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

They were only going to remember their absolute coldest, lowest moment of waiting and whatever those final five minutes of the visit felt like.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

So because the ending carries this wildly disproportionate weight in our minds, we have to talk about the failure case. Aaron Ross Powell Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:14

What happens when professionals get the ending wrong?

SPEAKER_01 12:17

Because if you don't understand this rule, things go bad very quickly, even if you do great work. Dave has a specific term for this. He calls it the lazy ending.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

The lazy ending, that sounded like a trap.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

The lazy ending is a tragic trap because it almost always happens to people who are actually very good at their jobs.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Wait, really? Why the good ones?

SPEAKER_01 12:37

Well, imagine a technician does three hours of flawless, exhausting, highly technical work. They completely solve a complex mechanical problem.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

Okay, so the job is technically a success.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

But as a result of that hard work, their knees hurt, they are hungry, they are covered in dirt, and now their phone is buzzing because dispatches telling them they are running way behind schedule for their next appointment. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

Right. Their brain has already moved on, the problem is solved, they are physically depleted, and they just want to get out of there.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Exactly. So they rush the exit, they quickly button up the machine, they hurriedly mumble the final price, they shove an invoice on a clipboard toward the customer, they say, All right, should be good now, and they just bolt for the front door.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

And the result of that is devastating.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

Completely.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

Because that 90-second sour, highly transactional, slightly cold exit completely poisons the customer's memory of the flawless three-hour visit. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

It overrides all the good work.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Yeah, the customer will feel off about the entire job. They might hesitate to recommend the company to a neighbor, and if you ask them why, they won't even be able to articulate it. They'll just know they didn't feel great about it.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

Aaron Powell Because the end data point was bad.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

It's like imagine going to a restaurant and a chef cooks you a literal Michelin star meal. The ingredients are perfect, the culinary technique is flawless.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Best meal of your life on paper.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

Right. But instead of the waiter presenting it nicely, the chef walks out, slides the plate across your table in absolute silence without making eye contact, and walks away.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

Wow. Yeah, that would ruin it.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

The food itself is still chemically perfect, but your entire experience of the meal is ruined. The memory is ruined.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

Because in that restaurant scenario, your brain has stopped evaluating the chemical makeup of the food. It is now judging the emotional safety of the exit. Exactly. The sudden silence, the rudeness that becomes the new end data point. And because the peak end rule is a mathematical formula, your brain runs automatically, it takes that perfect meal, averages it with a terrible exit, and files the whole memory away as a negative experience.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

Which is just tragic for the person doing the work.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

If we connect this to the bigger picture, you start to see how many vital professions live or die by this exact trap.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

Like who?

SPEAKER_01 14:53

Thing about nursing. A nurse can provide incredible, attentive, life-saving care for an entire 12-hour shift. But if the final discharge process feels rushed, confusing, and dismissive, the patient leaves the hospital feeling uncared for.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

Oh wow. Yeah. That happens all the time.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Or teaching. A teacher can deliver a brilliant, engaging, 50-minute lecture. But if they lose their temper and yell at the students right as the bell rings, that final emotional note of anxiety is the only thing the kids carry into the hallway.

SPEAKER_00 15:23

That makes so much sense.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Dentistry, funeral services, IT support. Literally anyone providing a service is subject to the peak end rule.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

But Dave makes a really important professional boundary clear here. Because once you know this psychological trick, it could be very tempting to use it as a shortcut.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

Oh, absolutely. You could try to game the system.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

Right. But Dave is adamant that this is not a cheap sales trick. You cannot manipulate the peak end rule to gloss over bad work.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

Very true.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

If you do a terrible, sloppy job on a repair and then try to fake a warm, glowing goodbye at the door, it's just a lie. And people have highly attuned radar for lies, you know. They will eventually catch you.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

The honest, rigorous work must always come first.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

Always. The problem Dave is trying to solve is the exact opposite. He wants to stop good, honest work from being accidentally undermined just because the professional didn't realize the customer's memory was still being written at the front door.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

So knowing the absolute dangers of the lazy ending, how do you deliberately engineer a good one?

SPEAKER_00 16:26

Let's return to Kingfisher, Oklahoma, to see what mastering the peak end rule actually looks like in practice.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

So remember the scene. Dave is two hours behind schedule. He's filthy, he's just crawled out of the dirt for the last time.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

And he's got to be exhausted.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

He is. He knows he has to manage two things the peak and the end. Now, he couldn't control the peak in this specific situation.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

Because that already happened.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

Right. The most intense moment of misery for this older couple was waking up freezing and having to sleep in their winter coats, which happened long before Dave even arrived.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

Right, out of his hands.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

But Dave knows that half of his job is simply refusing to add a second peak.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Meaning don't be clumsy with bad news. Don't be grumpy or short with them just because you're having a physically terrible morning in the dirt. Don't artificially manufacture a worse load than the situation already handed them.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Minimize the peak. But the other half of the job, the crucial half, is actively controlling the end.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

The end.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

As Dave puts it, the end is the most expensive real estate in the entire visit, and most people just give it away for free.

SPEAKER_00 17:31

So what does he do differently?

SPEAKER_01 17:32

So instead of rushing to his truck, Dave forces himself to slow down and takes very intentional actions. Before he talks about the bill, he stands at the living room register with the husband. Okay. He has the man physically reach out and put his own hand over the vent to feel the warm air coming out, and Dave just waits.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

That is incredibly observant. Why is that specific action so important?

SPEAKER_01 17:53

Because it creates a physical anchor. He isn't just verbally telling the man it's fixed, he's making him feel the heat. Dave waits until he physically sees the man's shoulders drop. By doing this, Dave is actively engineering a new peak, a peak of absolute undeniable relief that overrides the previous peak of waking up freezing.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Oh wow. It overwrites the bad data point with a good one.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Precisely. Then he walks both of them over to the cracked flu pipe that he removed.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

To show them what broke.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Yes. But he doesn't use H E A C jargon. He explains in plain English why it mattered, why it was dangerous to put off, and exactly what he did and didn't replace. Transparency builds deep trust.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

Which is so rare.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

And then, despite being physically exhausted, he gets back down on his knees with their kitchen broom and meticulously cleans the dirt off their floor himself. Wow. Yeah, completely ignoring the wife's polite protest to just leave it.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

He insists on taking care of his own mess, showing humility, and then we get to the actual goodbye, the final 60 seconds.

SPEAKER_01 18:55

The very last thing before he walks out to his truck. He stands at the front door a full minute longer than he technically needs to. Just slowing down. He asks about their ching dog in the yard. He compliments the man, telling him that wearing that stocking cap indoors was a very wise call to retain body heat.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

Validating them.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Yes. He shakes his hand firmly and unhurriedly. And the result of those deliberate pace actions, he left that older couple feeling warm and seen, not just warm.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Sixty seconds at the end of an experience is completely different from sixty seconds in the middle.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

Night and day difference.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

I have to ask though, why is the ending the part that people most reliably neglect? Is it precisely because the ending happens when we are at our most physically and mentally depleted?

SPEAKER_01 19:42

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

You've solved the hard problem, your brain is officially turned off, and you just want to go home.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Cognitive depletion is real. It takes immense professional discipline to push through that physical and mental exhaustion.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

Because it's hard to be charming when you're tired.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

It really is. When your body is screaming at you to live, you have to consciously remind yourself that right now, in these final conversational moments, the customer's memory is actively being written.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

The job isn't done when the machine turns on.

SPEAKER_00 20:12

So what does this all mean? We've seen how the body files away the peak in the end and just quietly throws away the rest of the experience, no matter how long it took. Just erases the middle. Dave Hartzall's ultimate advice to any young technician coming up in the trade is this the job isn't over when the heat comes on. The job is over at the door. Don't waste the door.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

That is fantastic advice.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

It is. And for you listening, I really want you to think about the doors in your own life.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

The literal and figurative doors.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

Right. When you are finishing a big presentation at work, do you end strong or do you just mumble your way through the final slide because you're relieved it's finally over?

SPEAKER_01 20:54

A lot of us are guilty of that.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

We are. When you say goodbye to a friend after a long dinner, are you fully present for that goodbye, or are you already thinking about the traffic on the drive home?

SPEAKER_01 21:03

This raises an important question, something that goes far beyond customer service or fixing furnaces. If human memory aggressively throws away the long, ordinary middle of our experiences, how much of our own life story is just a highlight reel that we've tricked ourselves into believing is the whole truth.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

Oh, that is a heavy thought.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

And more importantly, what beautiful, quiet, ordinary moments in your middle are you discarding right now simply because they don't fit the dramatic criteria of the peak end rule?

SPEAKER_00 21:33

That is a phenomenal thought to leave on. Maybe it's time we start paying a little more attention to the quiet scenes in the middle of our own movies, and not just the plot twist and the end credits.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

I completely agree.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

Well, thanks for taking this deep dive with us. We'll see you next time.