EXPLORE AND EXPLOIT: A Balance in Time

Exploring and exploiting are two strategies for establishing knowledge-performance balance.

The usual explanation is that when you accumulate knowledge (i.e., explore), it is difficult to perform and deliver a product (i.e., exploit). In contrast, it is hard to explore when you produce using the accumulated knowledge (i.e., exploit).

Although referred to as an explore-exploit dilemma or tradeoff, there is no dilemma or tradeoff if you don’t try to look at the phenomenon like a 2D X-ray looks on a 3D body.

You might have seen chest scans: the spine goes right through the heart; from the top of it, the collar bones fly in opposite directions, and all that hangs in the funny reticulation of ribs. Why? Because the 2D picture has no depth dimension. The same applies to exploring and exploiting—one dimension is missing: time.

So, can we explore and exploit simultaneously? The answer will depend on what time frame we imply by “simultaneously.”

Let’s add a time dimension—the missing depth. If “simultaneously” means “during the same second,” we cannot explore and exploit simultaneously. We cannot do two things within the exact second—multitasking does not work.

However, if we talk about minutes or hours, then, of course, we can. You can explore and exploit during the same hour or even minutes. I am writing this passage—exploiting my writing ability—and will now find an unfamiliar word I did not use before. I will check it now at Thesaurus.com, and I will use it. Yes, this word might look oddball, but finding it was an act of exploration populating the same 3-5-minute frame as exploitation.

You can study something for an hour or two and use it the same day. Have you ever prepared a last-minute presentation and delivered it right away? You likely used a cheat sheet once or twice during an exam—peep, learn, write, and impress examiners with your knowledge. You were exploring and exploiting under stress.

Therefore, the explore-exploit concept is not a dilemma but a balance you must strike in your performance.

This balance is expressed in time units: how many hours you dedicate to learning and how many hours you spend performing to deliver output. If you only focus on learning, you risk becoming a perpetual student; if you only perform, you risk becoming obsolete. Many jobs require exploration as a crucial part of the role. {FAIL FORWARD, TRIAL AND ERROR}

Some might disagree and say that a certain quantity of knowledge must exist to start performing, and before you have accumulated it, you cannot do anything. It is, again, a matter of definition. Think the very basic—learning to write. You start at six or seven by working hard to draw loops and hooks and to join dashes in notebooks. Even then, you produce. You both explore and exploit.

Some might again disagree, saying these scribbles are only valuable to affectionate relatives and, therefore, do not count. Then, the actual boundary does not separate exploration from exploitation but defines exploitation as something that somebody might want to buy and exploitation as something that no one will. We’ll return to that.

However, if you do not establish these limitations, exploring and exploiting will always go hand in hand, and the key is balance.

{DELAY, FEEDBACK, EXPERT, GUESSWORK, I-DEALS, IMPOSE CONSTRAINTS}