Julia Galef of Slate writes about the power of surprise and its importance to discovery and learning in this great article. When things don’t go the way we expected them to – when we are surprised – those are the best opportunities for learning something and for confronting our own confirmation bias. I think this is an important tool for questioning our assumptions. I might do as the article suggests and start keeping my own surprise journal.

Surprise! The most important skill in science or self-improvement is noticing the unexpected