Exploration and Execution

I would imagine most of us spend our days focusing on execution--not the guillotine kind, but the "getting things done" kind. Ultimately, our days are about whether we accomplished all the tasks, whether we did what we needed to for everyone (co-workers, bosses, children), whether we went to the bank, made the phone calls, generated enough widgets (or whatever it is we generate).
 
Yet, every so often, in the midst of days of execution, there is a day of exploration--when life (by choice or by chance) is more about finding out things--learning a new program, just because you're curious, following a link, just because you still want to know something, cooking a new dish, even if doing so makes dinner later or awful or necessary to take out, meeting new people, not because you need something from them, but just because they seem interesting.
 
Often, you get to the end of an exploration day a little self-conscious about all the things you haven't done. After all, we are well-programmed to value the completion of tasks more than the random acquisition of knowledge. It can be hard to see what you've done all day if your exploration didn't allow you to check off any "to-do" boxes, so mostly, we stick with the execution days.
 
At the end of today, I found myself discouraged about how much I hadn't done. I didn't have a string of emails or a long list of edited clips or even a particularly clean kitchen to show for myself. But when I stepped back and realized how many things I had explored, I felt a little better. There will be many execution days. We might as well appreciate the exploration days when we can.