When it feels like there’s no need to explore, and all you need to do is practice your routine and enjoy what you have, the right assumption is that you are missing an opportunity. This is when exploration is most urgent.
I think good advice is often of the form “in situation X, Y is appropriate”; from a collection of such advice you can build a flowchart of observations to actions, and end up with a full policy.
Whenever there is a policy that is “regardless of the observation, do Y”, I become suspicious. Such advice is sometimes right—it may be the case that Y strictly dominates all other options, or it performs well enough that it’s not worth the cost of checking whether you’re in the rare case where something else is superior.
Is the intended reading of this “exploitation and routine is never correct”? Is exploration always urgent?
It’s that exploration should always be a component of your labor, even when you are more heavily weighting exploitation and routine. Even if you like your job, spend some time every year pondering alternatives.
Exploration and exploitation can also be nested. For example, the building of the hydrogen bomb was a research program (exploratory) but was a large-scale commitment to a formal project (exploitation) in which one scientist took the time to think about whether the bomb might like the air on fire (exploration). It’s probably not a good idea for a project to focus all its energies on execution and exploitation, without setting aside some resources to considering alternatives and issues.
I think good advice is often of the form “in situation X, Y is appropriate”; from a collection of such advice you can build a flowchart of observations to actions, and end up with a full policy.
Whenever there is a policy that is “regardless of the observation, do Y”, I become suspicious. Such advice is sometimes right—it may be the case that Y strictly dominates all other options, or it performs well enough that it’s not worth the cost of checking whether you’re in the rare case where something else is superior.
Is the intended reading of this “exploitation and routine is never correct”? Is exploration always urgent?
It’s that exploration should always be a component of your labor, even when you are more heavily weighting exploitation and routine. Even if you like your job, spend some time every year pondering alternatives.
Exploration and exploitation can also be nested. For example, the building of the hydrogen bomb was a research program (exploratory) but was a large-scale commitment to a formal project (exploitation) in which one scientist took the time to think about whether the bomb might like the air on fire (exploration). It’s probably not a good idea for a project to focus all its energies on execution and exploitation, without setting aside some resources to considering alternatives and issues.