Climbing the Wrong Hill
One of the biggest problems humans face is striking a balance between exploration and exploitation.
Do I continue moving up the ladder at my current job or quit to join this startup? Do I stay in the city I grew up in or move across the country and abandon everything I know to start fresh? Do I get a 4-year degree or pursue my passion as a developer and join the workforce early?
Life is full of these difficult choices. Chris Dixon outlines this conundrum with a simple yet illuminating metaphor — climbing hills:
“Imagine you are dropped at a random spot on a hilly terrain, where you can only see a few feet in each direction (assume it’s foggy or something). The goal is to get to the highest hill.
Consider the simplest algorithm. At any given moment, take a step in the direction that takes you higher. The risk with this method is if you happen to start near the lower hill, you’ll end up at the top of that lower hill, not the top of the tallest hill.
A more sophisticated version of this algorithm adds some randomness into your walk. You start out with lots of randomness and reduce the amount of randomness over time. This gives you a better chance of meandering near the bigger hill before you start your focused, non-random climb.
Another and generally better algorithm has you repeatedly drop yourself in random parts of the terrain, do simple hill climbing, and then after many such attempts step back and decide which of the hills were highest.
People early in their career should learn from computer science: meander some in your walk (especially early on), randomly drop yourself into new parts of the terrain, and when you find the highest hill, don’t waste any more time on the current hill no matter how much better the next step up might appear.”
Humans are naturally risk averse, leading most of us to favor exploitation at the expense of exploration. Many people are comfortable climbing the first hill they encounter, never giving thought to the taller hills that exist around them. It is risky to scale down one hill in pursuit of another, especially if you’ve invested significant time and resources into climbing the hill you are on.
The uncomfortable truth is that continuing up the current hill is usually the wrong answer. Often times the right answer is to run back down the hill you are on and charge up another. Exploration involves deviating from the pack; taking the risky, less sure route. Running down the hill you are on can be daunting, but odds are there is a taller hill nearby.
There is no telling whether the next hill you climb will be a disappointing bump or the tallest hill in the landscape. Sometimes you must take a risk, sprint down the hill you are on, and embrace the uncertainty surrounding your journey in pursuit of the tallest hill — even if you are destined to encounter a few bumps along the way.
-Bennie iii
Note: Chris Dixon’s article “Climbing the Wrong Hill” can be found here.