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To explore or to exploit
One challenge in life is knowing when to explore new opportunities, and when to focus harder on existing ones. Do we keep learning new ideas, or do we enjoy what we've come to find and love?
In trying to assess if we should explore further or exploit our current opportunities, it's essential to consider how much time we have, how we can best avoid regrets, and what we can learn from failures.
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Exploring vs exploring: Consider how much time you have
When we consider seizing a day or seizing a lifetime, it is important to understand the interval over which we plan to enjoy them.
Explore when you have the time to use the resulting knowledge, exploit when you're ready to cash in.
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Minimizing the pain of regret
Regret is the result of comparing what we did with what would have been the best.
We can minimize regret, especially in exploration, by trying to learn from others. In new territory, we can best prevent regret with optimism because we'll explore enough so that we won't regret any missed opportunity.
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The accumulation of knowledge
Not all of our explorations will lead to something better or be satisfying, but with enough exploration behind us, many of them will.
Failures provide us with useful information that will enable us to make better explore or exploit decisions.
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SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
Understanding probability
Understanding probability will help you get a more correct picture of the world and help you make better decisions.
Most of us fall prey to the same handful of issues beca...
Assuming events are independent when they are not
When two event are interconnected, the former happening increases or decreases the probability of the latter happening.
- Your car insurance gets more expensive after an accident because car accidents are not independent events. A person who gets in one is more likely to get into another in the future.
- Most of our plans don’t go as we’d like. We get delayed, we have to backtrack, we have to make unexpected changes. Sometimes we think we can compensate for a delay in one part of a plan by moving faster later on. But the parts of a plan are not independent. A delay in one area makes delays elsewhere more likely as problems compound and accumulate.
Not understanding when events are independent
In Naked Statistics, Charles Wheelan explains: “A different kind of mistake occurs when events that are independent are not treated as such . . . If you flip a fair coin 1,000,000 times and get 1,000,000 heads in a row, the probability of getting heads on the next flip is still 1/2. The very definition of statistical independence between two events is that the outcome of one has no effect on the outcome of another.”
Wanting a simpler life
When we desire a simpler life, we normally mean we want products and services to have fewer steps, fewer controls, fewer options, less to consider. But we also want all the feature...
Conceptual models
A conceptual model is the underlying belief structure about how something works.
For example, on many computers, the process of dragging and dropping files into a folder seems simple because people already understand physical files and folders. But understanding it is only possible because of an effective conceptual model. A computer does not have files and folders and will store data in multiple places.
The complexity of a structure is all in the mind. When we want something to be simpler, we only need a better conceptual model of it.
Tesler’s law of the conservation of complexity
"The total complexity of a system is a constant. If you make a user’s interaction with a system simpler, the complexity behind the scenes increases."
Breaking down the creative process
- Acquire a deep understanding of a specific system and the rules it functions with.
- Take a step outside of that system and look for something surprising that destabilizes its rules....
The meaning of "jootsing"
Jootsing means “jumping out of the system."
Philosopher Daniel C. Dennett describes the process of understanding a system in order to step outside of it as “jootsing,” using a term coined by Douglas Hofstadter.
Jootsing and creativity
The concept of jootsing shows us that constraints and restrictions are essential for creativity.
Most of us say we want to be creative—and we want the people we work with and for to be creative. The concept of jootsing reveals why we often end up preventing that from happening. Creativity is impossible without in some way going against rules that exist for a good reason.