When was the last time you were surprised by something you learned or realize? How often do you think “How could I live without knowing this”? When was the last time you were surprised by yourself?

Why should you ask yourself these questions? I use them to gauge the pace of my personal development and learnings. It can also be a metric of performance if applied to employees. Contrary to the coding principle of least surprise.

If you chart this out for yourself, and it would look something like this:

There is probably something off, factors negatively influencing this metric can be

• low mental energy
• routine and little variety in life which kill curiosity
• a fixed mindset

Curiosity and mental energy through sport and work-life balance make this chart fluctuate more which indicates a development. Great sources of surprises are books and great places on the web.