Driving through rows of auto repair shops this summer, we arrived at a quirky ice cream shop in Ayvalık. Tasked with picking flavors for the family, I defaulted to my usuals—chocolate, vanilla, coconut, blackberry. But the owner interrupted, suggesting tahini as one of his favorites.

Tahini? Not a flavor I would have picked myself but out of politeness and a bit of spontaneity, I said yes.

Back home, as we sampled the flavors, tahini turned out to be the clear winner: perfecly balanced, nutty and creamy. If I had stuck to my classics, I would have missed the best flavor.

This got me thinking. We build mental shortcuts over time, like a decision tree in our mind based on our past experiences. And it becomes self reinforcing, we make the same choices and get the similar results over and over. They’re useful but can also trap us in the same routines.

To break free and discover better alternatives, we need to add randomness: make an unexpected choice every now and then. Only this way we can escape the local maximum.

And sometimes it won’t work out, randomness will result in worse outcomes, but that’s OK, it’s the price we need to pay to discover better alternatives.

This reminds me of my favorite Seinfeld episode, The Opposite (Season 5), where George decides to turn his life around by doing the exact opposite of what he would usually do. Check it out, it’s hilarious—and surprisingly insightful.