Simone Stoltzoff

Wait, this is true?

Yeah, and that's why I think so many people are feeling anxious and unmoored.

I am a journalist and author, and I just published the new book, How to Not Know the Value of Uncertainty in a World that Demands Answers.

When we are certain about some facets of our life, it makes it easier to hold uncertainty in others.

The implication here is that if you find your anchors, find the things that will hold true amid all that is changing around you, it becomes easier to hold the uncertainty as well.

When we look at uncertainty,

We are biologically wired to fear it, to make it cause discomfort.

But that isn't the full story.

Uncertainty can also be the birthplace of possibility.

It can be where new opportunities arise from.

I like to think about like an artist or a entrepreneur or a scientist.

Anyone who is creating revolutionary work has to be comfortable getting to the threshold of what they know and persist nonetheless.

Yeah, I mean, Max is a fascinating character.

So he studied computer science and art in college and then got his dream job at Google and moved out to the Bay Area and had been working for a few years and then started feeling this maybe familiar feeling, which is that his life started feeling like a series of rinse and repeat days, like he was acting out a script again and again and again.

And so in order to get outside of his bubble, outside of his comfort zone, he did something rather extreme, which is he started designing different algorithms to infuse randomness in his life.

The first thing that he did was he designed an algorithm that would call an Uber to his house and bring him to a random location in the city that he didn't know.

And at the most extreme example, he quit his job and designed an algorithm to choose where he lived.

I think it worked to a certain extent, but there were also diminishing returns.

So I spoke to this psychologist about Max's situation.

The psychologist's name is Michael Dugas.