You’ve heard the saying: variety is the spice of life, right? Well, we agree. Simply swap out the word variety with surprise, and you’ve unlocked one of the best-kept secrets of success — one that we’re more than happy to spill the beans on. 

Have you ever walked into a dark room, only to find a group of your closest friends and family waiting to jump out and surprise you with a party? Ever been on the receiving end of a “just because” gift from someone special? Or went on a closet-reorganizing binge only to uncover a memento from your childhood that you thought had been lost long ago?

That feeling — the way your brain sparked, your heart skipped, or your skin flushed? The rush, the spike of serotonin, the feel-good burst of dopamine? That, right there, is surprise, and it’s an incredibly powerful thing.

Surprise is an emotion. It’s a motivating circumstance. It’s variety, it’s variability, it’s unpredictability. Experiencing a surprise brings on a rush of dopamine and serotonin, and experiencing our expectations being subverted only makes us crave more.

Modern workplaces are plagued with issues like apathy, complacency, indifference, entitlement, and a lack of purposeful positioning. Enter: Surprise.com: the #1 work app to drive workplace performance and the world’s first SuccessOS for teams. Only Surprise utilizes AI to combine the thrill of variability and unpredictability with tangible rewards on a timescale that actually aligns with today’s highly-stimulated, high-expectation workforce. This combination results in a powerful boost to employee performance and team success, and it’s why Surprise outperforms traditional bonuses.

There’s nothing like the power of Surprise when it comes to transforming your team into your organization’s top performers. Get started, for free, today.

Gretchen Fox is the Director of Content Marketing at Surprise.com. A novelist, blogging veteran, and social media aficionado, she splits the majority of her time between wordsmithing, wrangling her children, and rewatching old episodes of The Office and Parks & Rec ad infinitum.