Significance of the end rule for your life

Minimizing regret

The key to good improv is knowing when to stop.

On the day I had this particular realization, I was filing into a gym with a bustle of other college students who had been promised some entertainment and free food. We filled the bleachers and eventually the performers came out- an improv troupe of three people, two actors and an MC, none of them much older than the students in the crowd.

This was not very promising. Bad improv and strict school-appropriate guidelines were bound to bore, but as the performers started engaging the crowd with it became clear that they actually knew what they were doing.

Each bit or scenario or game consistently ended on a laugh- and that’s when I realized who the most important of the three performers was- it was the MC. Before a joke had run its course, and right when it had gotten a real solid laugh, he would dive out in front of the performance like a referee calling a technical knock out so they could move on to the next bit and end on a laugh.

If I had to estimate, having the MC there to play this function was 80% of their success.

---

This is the end rule. People are strongly impacted by their last impression of an interaction or event. If you have to write a bad essay, write a strong last paragraph and you could salvage it all.

This can lead to some pretty strange conclusions about how you should live your life.

For example, a relative of mine makes polar plunges- coolers filled with water that can cool down to 40°F (4°C), I got to try it out recently and it was unpleasant. You lose control of your breathing and begin to hyperventilate, your body starts shaking, the small joints in your hand ache, and you of course feel very very cold.

Would you rather spend 2 minutes or 30 seconds in a polar plunge?

For either experience the first 30 seconds will be exactly the same, so 2 minutes objectively is more suffering, but around the 1 minute mark, your breathing will start to slow, your body will go numb, and the rest of the experience will not be as unpleasant.

Studies show that the person who spent 2 minutes in the water, the person who objectively suffered more, will be more likely to repeat the experience than the person who only spent 30 seconds in the water. Because the end rule means that the person whose experience ended more pleasantly, (2 minutes) will have a more positive impression of it than the person who left earlier.

But life doesn’t usually present us with two experimental options, people get into the water, decide whether they can handle it and then they leave or they don’t.

---

Since this is still a blog about communication, I would be remiss if I didn’t illuminate the useful applications of the end rule for that domain.

First, never be afraid if you stumble or are nervous at the start of a speech or presentation. Stay present with yourself and the audience and continue speaking until you find your rhythm. Some of the best speakers in the world are uncertain when they start, and if you stay standing your courage will win the audience to your side and you’ll be able to end well.

Secondly, always organize your topics so you close with the strongest most engaging part. For example, this point was originally last, and then I made it second.

Lastly, I recently checked out Chris Voss’ excellent negotiation MasterClass online and he gave a decent application of the end rule for negotiation- always end your negotiation how you want the next one to start. If you begin a negotiation with compliments and socializing all that goodwill will be entirely lost by the end of the negotiating process, but if you end well, and you show your negotiation partners that you respect them and you’d like to work with them again in the future, then you’ll leave a lasting impression as someone that they can make a deal with.

---

The end rule is a specific application of a generalizable principle:

Meaning is made at the end.

The psychologist Jacques Lacan recognized this principle in language. The end of the sentence reaches back and changes the beginning.

Jack and Jill

At a very young age

Were exposed to

A foreign language.

Your mind anticipates the last words, because the last words determine the meaning of the whole. 

The same is recognized in literature. A story that ends with a death is a tragedy, and a story that ends with a marriage is a comedy. The exact same story with just the end swapped out, can be a tragedy or a comedy.

The theologian C.S. Lewis recognized this in his description of eternity in The Great Divorce:

“Both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective. Not only this valley but all this earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved. Not only the twilight in that town, but all their life on earth too, will then be seen by the damned to have been Hell. That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, 'No future bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say 'Let me but have this and I'll take the consequences': little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say, 'We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven,' and the Lost, 'We were always in Hell.' And both will speak truly.”

Here is the lesson: Minimize regret. The meaning of all events in your life, all the things you’ve done, and all the things done to you, that meaning has not yet been determined. There’s still time to make the decisions that will mean that as you look back on your life, you see more and more the purpose of things, and feel more and more that in some way, each step along the path was there for a reason.

The end of the story has not yet been written, which means there’s still time to decide what kind of story it will be.