Week 3 Session: Rereading the log for expectation

Sorting your existing entries by whether the wait ran shorter, about the same, or longer than you expected, and adding one more entry where your expectation was already on record before the wait began.

Your log has an “Expected wait” field you filled in every time since Week 1 and haven’t done anything with yet. This session is where that changes.

Before the session#

Read the Week 3 lecture first. It explains why a wait gets evaluated against what you expected, not just against zero, and why that’s a separate question from whether the wait’s judged duration itself changes. Bring your log.

Classifying what you already have#

Pick at least three existing entries. For each one, compare the “Expected wait” field against the Clock duration and sort it into one of three buckets:

• Shorter than expected — the wait finished before whatever you’d anticipated.
• Close to expected — the wait matched what you’d anticipated closely enough that you wouldn’t call it a surprise either way.
• Longer than expected — the wait ran past whatever you’d anticipated.

If an entry has no real “Expected wait” — you genuinely had no expectation going in — leave it out of this classification rather than inventing one after the fact.

Comparing across the classification#

Look for a pair of entries with a similar clock duration but different expectation classifications, and check what’s in their Outcome/notes. Ask: does the entry that ran longer than expected carry a worse outcome or stronger reaction than the one that was close to or under its expectation, even though the clock durations are similar? If so, expectation is a plausible part of the explanation. If the outcomes look similar regardless of classification, or if your log genuinely can’t tell because the entries differ in other obvious ways too, say that instead.

A worked comparison (a model of the reasoning, not a real pair of entries):

Entry A: waiting for a coffee order, expected wait “a couple of minutes,” clock duration four minutes — longer than expected. Outcome/notes: “annoyed, checked my phone twice.” Entry B: waiting for a coffee order, expected wait “probably five minutes, they looked busy,” clock duration four minutes — close to expected, arguably shorter. Outcome/notes: “fine, didn’t think about it.” Same clock duration, same kind of wait, different expectation classification, different outcome. Expectation looks like a plausible part of the story. It isn’t the only possible one — A and B could also have differed in what occupied their attention, which Week 2 already showed can move an entry’s outcome on its own — so one pair can’t separate the two candidates, only show that expectation is consistent with what changed here.

Logging one more entry, with the expectation already on record#

Add one new entry, in the exact log format from Week 1, from an ordinary wait where you can genuinely say what you expected before it started — because you’d been through a similar wait before, or because someone told you roughly how long it would be. Don’t manufacture a mismatch between what you expect and what happens, and don’t manipulate another person, a queue, or a service to produce one; take the expectation you actually had, log the actual outcome, and classify it honestly, whichever bucket it lands in.

In the session#

Bring your classified entries and the new one. We compare across the room: whose logs show outcomes tracking the expectation classification, whose don’t, and whose logs genuinely can’t tell either way because too much else differs between the entries being compared.

What this can and can’t show#

Finding that a longer-than-expected entry also carries a worse outcome is not proof that missing your expectation caused that outcome — attention, paradigm, and plain bad luck could all be doing some of that work instead, and a handful of personal entries can’t pull them apart. Treat a matching pattern as a reason to keep the expectation question open, not as something you’ve demonstrated.

Afterwards#

Keep the log running. Week 4 asks what you were told during the wait, which is a different question from what you expected walking in — so don’t treat this week’s classification as the last word on any entry; you’ll be rereading it again once information is on the table too.