A simple google search for Aha moment leads to this:

Along with 21,80,000 more results in about 0.50 seconds. All these results focus on creating Aha moments in products, but none talk about how to do the same in your life. I wanted to change that.

I have been bombarded with this phrase since I started building products. When the user feels special while using your product, something clicks, and voila. The magic moment arrives – the “Aha.” When you made your first payment using Google Pay; booked your first Uber ride – everything comes under this umbrella of Aha moments.

Recently, I realized this philosophy is more relevant in our day-to-day lives than it seems. An Aha moment is more than just pure happiness or bliss. It’s a weirdly special feeling. When I discover a new song. That’s an Aha. It’s just not just happiness, for sure. I get my instant dopamine rush, and it almost every time makes my day. 

I started asking myself – How can I experience this feeling more frequently? What changes do I need to make? How do I work towards this, just like I would if I was building a product?

I made a comprehensive list of everything that made me experience an Aha in the past 30/90/365 days. 

Here’s what I found out:

1. People are a large part of it. Most of my Aha moments came while doing things with others. Physically around other people. 
2. My work, writing code, gives me this feeling as well. But not every time. I need to face a certain amount of resistance to experience the Aha. That meant taking up more projects that were out of my comfort zone. 
3. Being more curious is a hack. Curiosity drives the Aha discovery.
4. There are certain Realization Aha moments; I prefer calling them One-Off Aha moments because I know I won’t experience them again. Few examples:
   • When I realized you could earn a dollar income from India, it’s the arbitrage people only discuss a little – Earn in Dollars, Spend in Rupees.
   • I learned that meme marketing is a thing i.e. brands pay meme pages to make memes on them. 
   • When I built a Calculator app, I understood for the first time what it meant to write the logic in code. Simple insights, like in any given scenario, only one decimal point can be on the screen. I never thought like this before. It felt like my entire worldview had shifted.

I think it’s easier to find the answer to the question: What are my Aha moments vs. the existential “What makes me happy.” It’s just way less intimidating. 

For me, the concept of Aha moment is learning. This learning kindles a weird freedom. It’s freedom from anything that is bothering me. The total sum of all the stress in your life at that particular moment is zero.

I asked myself, how many Aha moments have I experienced in the last week? 0. In the last month, 2. That’s not how I want to live my life. How do I optimize my life for it?

And the answer was by taking conscious action.

I want to be aware every time I experience an Aha moment, and I want to plan for it.

1. The Aha filter: Whenever someone asks something from me, I ask myself: Will this lead to a potential Aha moment? If the answer is Yes – I’m doing that thing. 
2. Planning it: I don’t make plans. It’s laborious, so I will wait for someone else to make a plan, and I’ll be more than happy to join it. I’m working on changing this behavior. I am the one initiating the plans and making the extra effort. It’s my cost of experiencing an Aha moment. 
3. Being fully present when the Aha is happening: This is self-explanatory. One thing that has helped me is keeping my phone aside. All notifications turned off, and I can only use my phone if I get a call from someone.
4. Having a genuine interest (curiosity). You can’t fake this. If you aren’t interested in things/people around you, it might be more beneficial to fix that before finding Aha moments.

I thought the planning might take the Aha out of it. But it didn’t. It nearly had no impact on the Aha-ness. That’s the interesting point about this feeling. It’s not easy to replicate, but it’s not easy to dismiss.

If the purpose of our lives is to live fulfilled and be happy, why shouldn’t we try to optimize the Aha out of it? 

In Short:

1. Define your Aha.

2. Make a list of everything that made you experience an Aha.

3. Optimise the hell out of it.

That’s my cue.

Yash Poojary.