What the data actually shows
Research on vacations is the clearest example. Studies in this area, including work by de Bloom and colleagues, found that the largest wellbeing boost from a holiday often comes from the anticipation beforehand rather than from the afterglow once you are home — vacationers tend to be measurably happier in the run-up than their post-trip levels would predict, and the lift afterward often fades quickly. In other words, a sizeable share of a trip's happiness value is paid out before you ever leave.
How you spend also shapes how good the anticipation feels. Research by Van Boven and Gilovich found that people derive more happiness from experiential purchases than material ones, and follow-up work by Kumar, Killingsworth and Gilovich found that waiting for an experience produces more pleasurable, less impatient anticipation than waiting for a possession. We savor the upcoming concert or holiday in a way we rarely savor the upcoming gadget — the wait itself is more enjoyable.
The broader mechanism is savoring: anticipation lets you enjoy an experience twice, once in imagination before it happens and again in the living of it (and arguably a third time in memory afterward). Because the imagined version is unconstrained by logistics, weather, or fatigue, the anticipatory enjoyment can be remarkably pure — which is part of why it sometimes outshines the real event.
Why this feels different from how it actually is
We tend to treat the event as the "real" thing and the waiting as mere preamble, so we discount the happiness the wait is quietly providing. The days of looking forward to something don't feel like part of the experience, even though research suggests they often carry as much or more of its emotional payoff.
There is also an asymmetry between experiences and things. Waiting for a possession tends to feel impatient — you just want it to arrive — while waiting for an experience tends to feel pleasurable, full of imagining and planning. Because so much modern consumption is material and instant, we get a lot of practice with impatient waiting and comparatively little with the savoring kind, which makes the value of anticipation easy to miss.
And the highlight-reel culture trains us to focus on the moment of arrival — the photo at the destination, the unboxing, the milestone hit — not on the long, pleasant stretch of looking forward to it. So the part of happiness that is most reliably available, and most under your control, is the part we are least encouraged to notice.
A sizeable share of a trip's happiness value is paid out before you ever leave.
What the research says to do about it
Build anticipation in deliberately. Booking experiences in advance rather than last-minute gives you a longer runway of looking forward, which the research suggests is a genuine source of wellbeing in itself — so the gap between booking and going is a feature, not wasted time. Spacing pleasures into the future and letting yourself plan and imagine them extends their total enjoyment.
Favor experiences over things where you can, and lean into the wait. Because experiential purchases produce more pleasurable, less impatient anticipation, choosing the trip or the class over the object tends to pay an anticipation dividend on top of the experience itself. Talking about, planning, and imagining the upcoming experience is part of how that value gets realised.
Use savoring as a skill. Deliberately attending to an upcoming experience — picturing it, planning the details, letting yourself enjoy the prospect — is a documented way to draw more happiness from it. The same applies afterward through memory, which means a well-chosen experience can pay out three times: before, during, and after.
What the research says does not help
Inflating your expectations does not help, and is the main way anticipation backfires. If you build an event up into something that has to be perfect, the gap between the imagined version and the real one can produce disappointment that cancels out the anticipatory gain. Looking forward to something is most valuable when the expectations stay realistic rather than escalating.
Spontaneity-for-its-own-sake, with nothing ever planned ahead, forfeits the anticipation entirely. Last-minute everything may feel free, but it skips the looking-forward stage that research suggests carries a real share of an experience's happiness — so always-instant gratification can quietly leave wellbeing on the table.
And waiting for material purchases is not the same lever. The pleasurable-anticipation effect shows up much more strongly for experiences than for things; counting on the wait for a new possession to deliver the same savoring tends to disappoint, because waiting for objects usually feels impatient rather than enjoyable.
A well-chosen experience can pay out three times: before, during, and after.
What this looks like in real life
A trip booked three months out
Reserving a holiday well in advance can feel like a long, pointless wait for the 'real' thing. But the research on vacations, including de Bloom and colleagues, suggests those weeks of looking forward often carry a sizeable share of the trip's happiness — a lift that can outweigh the afterglow once you're home. The gap between booking and going isn't wasted time; it's the anticipation dividend paying out.
The concert versus the gadget
Waiting for a new phone tends to feel impatient — you just want it to arrive. Waiting for an upcoming concert tends to feel pleasurable, full of imagining and planning. Same waiting period, very different experience, which is the experiences-over-things asymmetry in miniature: choosing the concert pays an anticipation dividend on top of the event itself.
The reunion built up too high
Looking forward to a long-awaited reunion is a real source of pleasure — until the imagined version has to be flawless. If expectations climb until only a perfect evening will do, the gap between the picture and the reality can produce a letdown that cancels the anticipatory gain. The lever works best when the looking-forward stays warm but the expectations stay grounded.
Real numbers in context
The headline pattern, from research on holidays including de Bloom and colleagues, is that the largest happiness boost often arrives before the trip rather than after it — anticipation can outweigh the afterglow. The exact size varies by study and by person, and not every event follows the pattern, so treat it as a robust tendency rather than a guarantee that the wait always beats the event.
On the spending side, the consistent finding (Van Boven and Gilovich; Kumar, Killingsworth and Gilovich) is directional: experiential purchases tend to generate more pleasurable and less impatient anticipation than material ones. These are modest effects rather than dramatic ones, and the practical takeaway is simple — anticipation is a genuine, stretchable source of happiness that is largely free and under your control, as long as you keep expectations from running away.