#mental-model #rationality #idea # [Anonymous feedback](https://www.admonymous.co/louis030195) # [[Epistemic status]] #shower-thought Last modified date: 2023-01-17 Commit: 0 # Related - [[Philosophy/Rationality/Models/Exploration vs exploitation]] - [[Computing/Intelligence/Exploration vs exploitation]] - [[Biology/Evolution/Memetic/Evolution of exploration vs exploitation in human memetic]] - [[Business/Entrepreneurship/Exploration vs exploitation]] # Expansion & Contraction >Optimization and Refactoring are affected by the Critical Few as well—a few small changes can produce enormous results. After you’ve picked the “low-hanging fruit,” further Optimization can cost more in effort than you’ll reap in returns. That’s a good point to stop. Perfectionism is a trap for the unwary. Optimize and Refactor up to the point you start experiencing Diminishing Returns, then focus on doing something else. >~ [[Kaufman, Josh - The Personal MBA]] The idea of expansion and contraction can be applied to the concept of [[Philosophy/Rationality/Models/Exploration vs exploitation|exploration versus exploitation]]. Exploration involves taking risks and trying new things, while exploitation involves taking advantage of existing resources. In the same way that a rubber band can be stretched and released, businesses must balance their exploration and exploitation to achieve their goals. Exploration can help a company identify new opportunities, while exploitation can help them take advantage of the resources they already have. By understanding the cycle of expansion and contraction, businesses can craft a strategy that will allow them to explore new opportunities while also exploiting existing resources. When building a product, you want to explore new features and when the feature is mature enough, contract and focus on exploiting what is already working. Expansion and contraction can help you iterate through the process of exploring and exploiting to optimize for success. This cycle of expansion and contraction helps the company identify what works and what doesn’t, so that they can focus their energy and resources on what will bring the most success. ## [[Philosophy/Rationality/Models/Antifragility|Antifragility]] Life can become tough for the individual seeking to grow and play hard games, at some point you can reach the global minima of pain and that’s when you should contract again while taking away the learning you got on expansion process ## Book reading When I hear about a book interesting to me I put it on my Goodreads list. When I strongly want to read a book, I put it on my currently reading list, so when I go to goodreads I have a social pressure to read that book. In the end I often ends up with 10 currently reading books (**expansion**), sometimes I'm really reading 4-5 books in parallel depending on my mood (morning = hard, [[Science|scientific]], thing, night = easy, [[Metaphysical|metaphysical]], thing). So at some point I just put some books as paused (**contraction**) because I went into another space of interest or any other reason.