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KEITAD FOR AFRICA

*Research: A Bird In The Hand Is NOT Better Than Two In The Bush*
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The most consequential decision we make about our career is how we spend our time. And, I personally believe that the most fundamental time management question is this….

How should we split the time between learning & immediate productivity?
For example, if you spend two hours today on learning, your productivity for the day will plummet. However, if you spend your entire career just doing and not learning, you will have a lower long-term productivity.

I call this situation the *Discover-Develop Dilemma* (named by I and I Itai Mawere). Although, it is academically known as the *Explore-Exploit Tradeoff.*

The tradeoff in a nutshell is this…

Time is limited.
If you explore, you may get insights that help you be more effective. But, you also risk getting no new valuable information. Or you risk not giving yourself enough time to leverage what you’ve learned.
If you exploit what you already know works, you’re likely to get good, but not optimal results.
Doing one means that you’re taking away time from the other.
Once you see the *Discover-Develop Dilemma* in one place. You start to see it everywhere...

*Friendships*. Should you spend time with your closest friends or spend time making new friends?
*Books*. My wife Dezzlyne Gezzy brilliantly captures the dilemma with reading: “I had reached a juncture in my reading life that is familiar to those who have been there: in the allotted time left to me on earth, should I read more and more new books, or should I cease with that vain consumption—vain because it is endless—and begin to reread those books that had given me the intensest pleasure in my past.”
*Business.* Should you spend time optimizing your existing products, systems, and marketing or should you try something completely new?
*Food*. Should you search for a new restaurant you’ve never been to or eat at your favorite one?

You even see it in this famous quote fr