My friend recently recommended a restaurant in China Town. Excited and intrigued, I asked how she found it?


"Oh, a few years ago, we just decided to drive down to Chinatown and randomly picked a restaurant."

By sheer odds, this is probably the worst possible way to stumble across a great restaurant.

Now, back in high school, when driving around was a top recreational activity, my friend Kevin and I used to randomly drive in a direction - and half an hour later we would start looking around trying to find a place to eat.

We thought this tactic might help else discover hidden gems. In truth, we ended up looking for any place that sold pizza, and never hit any real winners.

Today, the high school versions of us might still drive the half hour, but then pull out their phone, go on Yelp.com and find the best rated local restaurant based on hundreds of local reviewers. Still get the adventure. But, you increase your odds of hitting a winner.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE FUTURE OF RESTAURANTS?

Terrible and even mediocre restaurants are going to die out. Because getting the optimistic drive-by customer isn't going to happen anywhere. Location next to the highway is going to matter less and less. Because now I can know there's a 5-star alternative just a few blocks away.

Over the last few months of posts, I have hinted about what I believe to be an upcoming revolution in traditional education. Many of you have asked me about this - what I think the future of education looks like.

More than ever, I'm convinced the future of education will be personalized.

The current classroom environment forces teachers to teach to the middle - teaching at the level that engages the most kids possible. In this model, some kids get left behind, while some kids are bored into apathy.

What if the role of the teacher changed? What is the teacher presented a concept - let's say long division. Then, the class would be instructed to use their tablets (each kid would need one in my world) and the accompanying adaptive learning software that quizzes at the pace of the individual.

The students who "get it" right away would be challenged with more and more difficult problems. For the kids struggling with this new concept, the software would ease up until they start to get it - or alert the teacher that Billy could use some 1-on-1 direction during this personalized learning time.

The best and brightest would be challenged like they should be. The struggling students would get the additional 1-on-1 assistance they need.

Teaching is personal. Technology is getting us to a place where it can be.

Out of all the blogs you read, this one is probably the shortest, right? That's intentional. Because:

1) Most blogs can't keep my interest past a single mouse scroll.
2) This blog is specifically designed to provoke thought (including my own), not to do your thinking for you.
3) This abbreviated format has kept me motivated to write 5 posts a week for more than 5 years.

The reason most people who want to blog, don't do so, is because they think they don't have enough to say.

And I wonder if our 3-page minimum requirements in school killed us for what writing really is. Because not once did this minimum requirement make your essay better. Merely longer.

So, don't blog with minimum requirements. Don't write a post. Write a sentence. The random you have on your mind right now. If after you write it down, you are inspired to explain, do so. But, don't feel you have to. Sometimes, it just makes it worse.

Last week I walked into a mattress store.

Our 6-year old innerspring was waking us up with back pain each morning, and the mattress store owner informed me that "memory foam" mattresses now make up 80% of his sales. I used to write for Sealy at my old ad agency, and even I wasn't aware of how giant this shift to memory foam had recently become.

Apparently, after 70 years of making beds out of metal, we decided there might be a more comfortable option. 

1 week into my new memory foam mattress, I'm convinced we were right. What's wrong with us? What else are we currently doing for no other reason than that's the way we've always done it? What's the next big thing we're going to look back at and wonder what we were possibly thinking over the last 30 years?*

*Answer: It's the food we eat.

Are you a music sexist? Have you ever even thought about it?

I just realized that 95% of the bands I listen to have a male vocalist. Don't get me wrong, I could listen to Regina Spektor and Adele all day long.

But, odds are, if I'm listening to it, a dude's singing it. And I'm not sure how awful that makes me.

Yesterday, when the tragic news of Kim Kardashian's divorce hit our office, it didn't take long before the jokes started flying. And then, one individual said, "How did she become famous in the first place?"

I sat back, waiting for someone else to remind the room of the embarrassing fact. One individual said, "I'm not sure." Another, "I think she's a singer."

My jaw dropped.

They didn't know?!? This girl gets famous for a sex tape, and can get the majority of the world to forget that's how she became famous? It's simply incredible! It's baffling!

So, I went home and told my wife the story, and she wasn't familiar with Kim's salacious past, either. In fact, she said, "I just thought she became famous for the same reason Paris Hilton did."

My jaw dropped harder.

These women are PR geniuses. I've never seen anything like it. Maybe I can turn a string of robberies into the starting fame I need to launch my music career? Because apparently, no one will remember the former?