Novelty Exploration vs. Pattern Exploitation

How going from exploration to exploitation can help you as both a consumer and creator of everything.

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:18):
There's a really cool concept that I always come back
around to, which is the oscillation in life between explore
and exploit. A good example of this is trying new restaurants.
When you try a new restaurant, you're taking a risk
that it could be bad for the potential reward of
it being better than anything you've ever had. Once you've
tried enough restaurants, you eventually have a list of them

(00:41):
that you know you'll like. So they're kind of known goods.
And when you decide to use one of those known goods,
you're now in exploitation mode. So the key point here
is that if you do too much of either of these,
exploring or exploiting it reduces your overall enjoyment. There's another
way I frame this a long time ago, which is

(01:01):
pattern versus novelty. And the example I use there is
for music. So my go to is like a melody
or a hook and a song, which the song keeps
coming back to. That's the pattern. And then there's the
unique things in the song as well, most importantly the
lyrics and maybe the tone or maybe the performance of

(01:22):
the artist. And those would be the novelty. But once again,
it's the oscillation between the two that's necessary. People love
familiar patterns, but if you do too much of it,
it becomes boring. People also love novelty, unique sounds and
ideas and tastes and lyrics and voices or whatever. But
within novelty, if there's too much of it, or if

(01:43):
it goes for too long, they eventually search for a
pattern so that it feels familiar. So they have something
to anchor on. Too much novelty. And you want patterns.
Too much pattern. And you want novelty, too much exploit
going to your favorite restaurants. And you'll want to seek
to explore, to try something new. Too much. Explore looking

(02:03):
for new restaurants, but keep getting disappointed every once in
a while or too often, and you just want to
go to someplace that you know you will like. Here
are some other examples in relationships. Taking your spouse to
your favorite restaurant few times a year, but constantly surprising
her with new restaurants as well. In content creation, it's

(02:24):
great to have new content and ideas all the time
coming from a creator, but we also love when our
creator has like a catchphrase or a familiar sound associated
with the videos or the podcast or whatever, or a
logo present in the stuff. Romance. You have known goods,
but you want excitement as well. Business customers know you're

(02:45):
trustworthy and dependable if they see your logo, but they
know you're also releasing new things as well. So yeah,
I see this as a really powerful concept for thinking
about how to get the most out of life, but
also to provide the most value as well. And now
that you've heard it, you're probably going to see it everywhere.