Explore, but also maintain

I’ve noticed I’m always chasing novelty. New side projects, new technologies, new ideas, or lately, rapidly prototyping with AI. The simplest example: I love reading new books, preferably published this year. It satisfies my vanity of “books read +1” and gives me a sense of being on the cutting edge. The feeling of learning new knowledge and information, whether useful or not, is always addictive.

But I never enjoy organizing and reviewing notes.

Why? After some reflection, I realized: I see regular maintenance as a boring chore.

Think about it—in a company, if someone writes new features and someone else fixes bugs, who wants to be the bug fixer? At performance review time, “I fixed 200 bugs” just doesn’t have the same impact as “I developed entirely new features.” I want to be the person building new things, not the person fixing bugs.

But what happens to a product where no one fixes bugs? Obviously, it becomes terrible.

There’s another reason. We all have this illusion that many things don’t change. In fairy tales, once the prince and princess defeat the big villain, they get an eternal happily ever after ending. But anyone who’s married or had kids knows—the story and challenges are just beginning!

Life is impermanent. Everything and everyone is constantly changing, so almost everything in life requires regular maintenance:

• Electronic devices need periodic upgrades
• Managing teams requires weekly 1:1s and regular performance feedback
• Managing projects needs daily standups and retrospectives
• Maintaining codebases requires continuous refactoring and bug fixing
• Customer service needs timely responses to user questions and feedback
• Learning new knowledge requires spaced repetition to remember
• Marriages need regular dates and deep conversations
• Friendships need occasional check-ins and gatherings
• Physical health requires regular exercise and checkups
• Mental state needs deliberately scheduled relaxation and recharge time
• Living environment needs regular cleaning and decluttering
• Note-taking systems require continuous review and reorganization
• Financial situation needs monthly budget reviews and consistent investing

When I was a kid playing StarCraft, I loved choosing Protoss, then slowly building photon cannons outside my base, expanding territory step by step. Every time I pushed forward, I’d consolidate my defense first—that way the territory I captured could be held. Then I’d build all the way to the enemy’s base. So satisfying! (Later I learned only noobs play like this XD)

I should do the same in real life—not just rush to explore new things. Every step forward should include some consolidation of my territory.

Like watering plants: you don’t see growth every day, so it’s boring. But a consistently watered plant and a forgotten plant will show obvious differences after three months.

Or like building a house: you can keep adding new floors, but if the foundation isn’t solid, it’ll eventually collapse.

Exploration is certainly important, but exploration without maintenance is fragile. True growth might not be about how far you explore, but whether you’ve built a solid foundation, whether you water the plants daily, and whether you can hold the ground you’ve taken.

Less novelty-seeking, more regular maintenance. This might be the lesson I—with my impatient love of the new and dislike of the old—need to learn most.