Exploration and Execution

You slowly open your eyes. Blinking away the confusion. To your left lay motionless figures. To your right, a basic supply kit. A knife, bandages, some rations. Not much. In front of you is a small opening. A clearing wide enough for a single person quickly consumed by the foilage of the jungle. You hear a low growl moving just behind the tree line.

What do you do?

Your first professional job may not resemble crashing into a remote island but there is a similiar amount of uncertainty. What will the job be like? Will I make friends here? What if I mess up? What if I’m not good enough? Uncertainty can fuel thoughts of self-doubt, fear, and anxiety. That’s scary.

Modern workplaces sympathize to that feeling. Training helps prepare you to chip away at those unknowns, establish cultural norms, and what is expected of you at the organization. You may receive a mentor to be your sage guide through the jungle. But when the training ends and the mentor moves on, what then?

Where do you go?

Ultimately, the path you create is entirely yours. You will share you successes and triumps with a team, but no one is on your path. Each person is on their own path. Visitors will come and go. You may stay at some camps. Maybe join a group of explorers on an adventure against common wisdom. But you, and only you, can choose where you do and where you go.

To chart your future, what a big task. Daunting, even. So daunting that you may not do it. You might never enter that jungle in front of you. Worried about the dangers within.

You may enter the jungle but never consider where you are going. Only there to exist. Cautious and always doubting your judgements and decisions.

Maybe you will take note of the time and plot when you should rest, find food, and get water before entering. “Preparedness prevents injury,” you tell yourself. You only enter after adequate provisions have been made.

Maybe, just maybe, you will enter into that jungle with excitement. Excited about the possibilities of discovery ahead of you. Excited to be alive and to enter into a place only you can go.

To never enter the jungle or to enter the jungle roaming aimlessly is not living. Fear and Helplessness are your protectors. Imagine there they will guide you. Or reflect on where they have guided you. At some point, we have all had those feelings hold our hands and tempt us into dark places.

But to enter the jungle is the reward itself. To find you way. To carve your path. To discover who you are. Should you run in and figure things out along the way? Should you plan out your desired path? What if you could do both?

To storm in or to plan it out. Exploration and execution. Those are the two mindsets I call The Artist and The Engineer. I believe that both must be incorporated for authentic, reproducible, and sustainable creation.

At times, you will be the Artist. Exploring curiosities. Watching leaves float on a river. You will be content with the present and mindful of your environment. You will make piercing observations about the world. Your motions and thoughts are connected to The Big Picture.

And then you will become the Engineer. Your passion turns into purpose. You have a desire to turn that curiosity into something bigger. You design a system, build it, tweak it, optimize it. You plan out the implementation and acquire resources. The details are your ally.

How great would it be to have a clear path beautifully laid out in front of you? Whether for your life, a project, or hobby. You finish a task and start on the next one. Repeat until everything is done. Here, productivity dominates. Getting to the next step quicker and with fewer resources expended. Most of the uncertainty and risk has been removed. All you have to worry about is the thing immediately in front of you and trust that there is a next step defined. Each completed step surges dopamine through your brain. Urging you to do more, quicker.

If someone else designed that path, then the dopamine-driven productivity focus can be problematic. Say you are a promising young software engineer being fast-tracked for management. Even that statement, “fast-tracked”, implies there is a sequence of steps laid out and a typical progression speed. Fast-tracked means progressing along the management path at a quicker pace. Dopamine fueling the legs. External expectations are motivating your actions. What matters is at what age you can hit the next milestone. Your biological urge to keep pushing isn’t working for you. It’s working for them.

Enter burnout.

There is a misalignment between biology and psychology at that moment. Our own desires are not stimulating our biology. Stimuli are handed to us. And it is far too easy to let the stimuli keep coming. Because it feels to good finish something; anything.

To break free of the cycle you must be your own designer. Put on the Artist’s apron and design, sculpt, mold, play. Breaking free requires intention, energy, and willingness to observe, inspect, and disect. You can follow the path you create. Your biology and psychology can be synchronized. There is a harmony.

Being the Artist is not about a grand design. It is not about skillfully crafting a perfect image and detailed narrative. It is about observation. It is about curiosity. It is about exploration. To find those ideas and passions that fill you full of energy and excitement. To dive head first into an unknown. Not because of the possibility of notoriety but because excitement. The act of doing is the reward.

Eventually, the Artist will produce a sketch. An impression of an idea. An image. A stroke of color waiting for interpretation. It is then time to call in the Engineer. Down with the apron, up with the surveying tools.

The Artist left you with a drawing. A Map on a nearly dissolved piece of paper. Sweat stains obscuring what little words there are. More like a suggestion than a Map. More questions than answers.

What the Artist did convey was his enthusiasm for the Map. His excitement jumped into your brain. His vision for what was ahead is tantalizing. And close. You can almost reach out and feel it.

It’s your job now to turn those feelings into a polished path. To reach that vision. To build that vision. To execute.

You follow the impressions the Artist laid out. You move slowly. Building the path ahead of you before stepping onto it. Progress is slower than what the Artist had promised. He forgot, or didn’t, mention how rough the path was. Tools, products, systems all need to be created to create the path.

But that is okay. Tools, products, system are byproducts of traveling the path. Being on the path and progressing toward the vision is the reward. To know that you are building something to allow others to enter the vision. To share in the beauty. And looking back those things you created will bring you joy and pride as they are an expression of your craft. A chance to practice, hone, and acquire expertise.

Eventually, you will meet back up with the Artist. You will discuss and scheme the next portion of the path. Or possibly pursue an entirely new vision.

And so it goes. Down the path. Becoming the Artist to explore. The Engineer to execute. The Artist runs ahead. The Engineer follows to refine.

Exploration and execution provides an expansion and contraction of focus. Exploring allows focus to expand. Whatever seems exciting at the moment and be pursued. There isn’t a next step to reach. Only an interest to pursue. To find out if it is even worth purusing further. Or to learn something. Or to observer something.

Widening focus doesn’t mean sacrificing attention to detail. Opposite in fact. Broadening focus means giving space to amplify attention. More opportunity to understand yourself and the world. More space to find those ground-shaking insights.

Execution pulls that focus in. Execution means to hyperfocus on one subject. Consuming it as sustinence. Survival depends on it. To pick up on subtler patterns by narrowing the field of view. To incorporate that curiosity, energy, and understanding into sculpting the path. Execution broadens what is known and what other can do.

But your journey must start somewhere. In fact, you are already on it.

Your journey starts with exploration. Grade schools, curriculums, extra-curriculars. Specially designed environments for exploration. Our youngerselves are a bit naive. Rather than diving straight into some specialization, a bit of exposure is necessary. Necessary to find a higher purpose and deeper meaning. To isolate passions and interests. Exposure to what even exists in the world.

At least in the United States, parents try to remove as much burden and responsibility from their children as possible to allow them more time for schooling and preparation. Usually for the prospect of providing for themselves. A better life. Lightening the burdens of the world on the shoulders of a child allows them to explore their environment and begin to understand themselves through exposure to the world.

In some sense, the culture expects a certain time of exploration. Following that, there is a timeline for the exploration. It must eventually move into execution. A stable job, a career. Where we would tell those grown children that they are not children anymore and have responsibilities. Experimentation is replaced with productivity.

Experimentation and productivity are complementary skills. Without experimentation, what are you being productive towards? Without productivity, what is the usefulness of the experiments? Innovation without implementation is useless.

Our culture provides a slow-moving framework for exploration and execution. One that seems to discourage moving back to exploration once reaching the execution phase. That motion can be sped up. That motion can accelerate you to escape velocity. That motion, from exploration to execution and back again, can help you create meaningful change and purpose.

Your journey starts with exploration. A big bubble to float out around in. One day you find a passion. You run outward with it. It becomes your reason.

Passion wanes. Perhaps you became an expert. Or a new technology replaced the old. Or your hobby is no longer fun. You must go back to exploring.

Exploration becomes a playground. You find that book you always wanted to read. That pottery class has an opening. A week at Disneyland. You prototype an idea for a software service you had.

At this point, purpose does not need to be present. It can be. But doing anything that perks your senses can be pursued. The goal is to build and reinforce a creative habit. Doing so will extend your skillset and feel exciting. Those will benefit you in unexpected ways in the future.

Then, you find an idea you want to develop further or are given a project at work. Again. And again. And again.

Such is The Path.

I can’t help you clear a path, define your goals, or principles. Those are yours to uncover. To dig out of the ground, wipe clean, and keep or discard. But through the process of exploration and execution, with the Artist and the Engineer, you will make those discoveries.

Always remember that life is complex. Only in hindsight with the path look clear.