Dorie Clark

When we say, oh, I am so crazy busy,

What we're really saying is a societally accepted version of, I am so important.

I am so popular.

I am so in demand.

And the truth is, that feeling can be hard to give up, even if we say that we want to.

That's not the only reason, of course.

It turns out it is very hard for the human mind to deal with conditions of uncertainty.

And in modern life, there's a lot of it.

Sometimes we are given tasks or challenges

And the truth is, tactically, we just don't know how to do it.

Increase sales by 30 percent.

Well, how?

There's a lot of ways you could do it.

You're not sure how.

Sometimes it's easier, frankly, to just double down and keep doing more of what you're already doing.

That might not be the best answer, but it's an answer, and it removes uncertainty.

The picture gets even worse when we're talking about existential questions, when we're talking about uncomfortable matters that we might not actually really want to deal with.

That might be, am I in the right job?

It might be, am I in the right career?

Those are often questions, truth be told, we might not want the answer to.