Adding Surprise to Your Ideas

In the midst of all the chaos this week, we celebrated my mom’s 50th birthday yesterday. In the age of COVID, planning meaningful surprises is harder than ever, but we were able to pull together a few things, including a party on Zoom and a video of our extended family dancing from their respective homes.

Given all the constraints right now, my mom had low expectations for the day. The things we did plan felt special because they were entirely unexpected. This got me thinking: how can surprise play a role in our everyday lives?

Why Surprise Matters

Our world caters to predictability.

In the age of Big Data and speed, we expect things to be as precise and efficient as possible. Amazon packages arrive at the exact time promised. Yelp tells us exactly how a restaurant’s food will taste before we pick up the phone to place an order. Google Maps makes it virtually impossible to get lost.

Surprises are a lost art—which is exactly what makes them so powerful.

In one study, participants experienced a sequence of pleasurable stimuli, using fruit juice and water. The patterns of juice and water squirts were either predictable or completely unpredictable.

Scientists discovered that the reward pathways in the brain responded most strongly to the unpredictable sequence of squirts. “The region lights up like a Christmas tree,” observed one researcher.

The human brain craves the unexpected. How can we embrace surprise?

How to Apply Surprise

Surprise can be useful in everything from presentations to relationships to products. Here are three ways to apply it.

Outline Expectations: Reflect on what expectations your audience or recipient holds: a clear, dry presentation, a night out to celebrate a birthday, two-day delivery, etc. How can you exceed them? How can you radically transform them?

Evoke Emotion: Surprise amplifies feelings, and feelings are a very powerful way to touch and communicate with others. It’s why on many reality competition shows, the host surprises competitors with an appearance from a close family member. Think about any emotional ties you know your recipient has. How can you play to that?

Think Big, Start Small: Think about all the craziest, grandest things you could do to surprise your recipient. Then, take a small fraction of that and make it happen. You can surprise your client with a destination vacation to Hawaii, but you can also send them a handmade postcard and delight them on a smaller scale. How can you scale down something grand into something manageable, but still exciting?

Full post here.