Using a 'surprise journal' to make better decisions?

It's an interesting idea - and not sure if the act of recording cognitive dissonance and other surprises will necessarily help in making better decisions but it makes sense (FastCompany):

Galef set out on a personal quest to identify her wrong assumptions. The outcome: the Surprise Journal. She keeps this journal with her at all times, writing down when something surprises her and why. For example, she noticed she was surprised that both older and younger people were attending her workshops, because she assumed people would self-segregate by age. She was surprised that her students would mention a concept from one of her colleague’s classes, because she didn’t expect that idea to be very memorable. “I started thinking about surprise as a cue that my expectations were wrong,” she says.

Many behavioral psychology and cognitive science studies demonstrate that humans find it difficult to change their opinions. In what is known as the “bias blind spot,” it is much easier for us to see other people’s biases than our own. The “confirmation bias” reveals that we seek out feedback from people who are likely to agree with us: We read newspapers and watch TV talk shows that are probably going to tells us things we already agree with. Galef says that there is much more research about how biased humans are than how to change these biases. “I really wanted to get better at changing my mind,” she tells me. “This is not a perfect solution, but it has gone a long way to making me more open and less defensive about when I’m wrong.”

Sometimes the surprises she stumbles upon are major shockers--a friend she thought was loyal betrays her, or a scientific belief is disproven. But the everyday moments of surprise are actually more exciting to Galef. It surprised her, for instance, that her teaching ratings were sometimes lower than the ratings of colleagues. This signaled to her that she had been over-confident about her teaching abilities and had perhaps not been open to feedback that could have improved her skills. Sometimes, it surprises her when audience members seem enthusiastic about one of her talks. Rather than just being flattered by the positive feedback, Galef takes this as an opportunity to assess her own understanding of what makes a topic useful or exciting: Perhaps her pre-suppositions about what other people find interesting is due for a change?