Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. Today on the show, we're talking with Simone Stolzhoff about how to handle uncertainty. How do you make the right choice when you're not sure what the right choice is? What if you're not sure there even is a right choice at all?
Chapter 2: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Simone talks about these questions in his new book, which is called How to Not Know the Value of Uncertainty in a World that Demands Answers. Here's a clip from our conversation where Simone is talking about what he means by the value of uncertainty.
In the book, I tell a story about a couple who's wrestling with whether they want to get divorced or not. And their couples therapist was Esther Perel, the sort of famed couples therapist. And Esther said something that's really stuck with me, which is that trust is an active engagement with the unknown.
Chapter 3: How can we make choices when we are uncertain?
In order to be in a relationship or in order to start a company or a project or to put your creative work out into the world, you need to cultivate some aspect of faith, not in sort of just a woo-woo spiritual sense, but faith as in placing your heart on something, making a bet on something that you don't necessarily know can be proven with evidence quite yet.
I think that is not only an incredibly important skill for an entrepreneur or someone that's deciding whether or not they want to stay married or someone who is about to embark on an unknown journey, but for all of us in the face of this world that we currently live in. We need both faith and we need to take action.
We're gonna talk a lot more about uncertainty and not knowing, but first I'm going to take a very specific action and that is to read you some podcast ads. We will be right back.
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Chapter 4: What is the value of uncertainty in decision-making?
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And I'm Harvard Business School professor, Frances Fry. And we are the hosts of the TED podcast, Fixable. Whether you're lacking confidence at your new job, feeling burned out, or struggling to lead your team through a big change, we won't shy away from any problem. We bring our clear thinking, honest opinions, and expertise to solve your toughest workplace issues through practical solutions.
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And we are back. Today on the show, we're talking with Simone Stolzow about the value of uncertainty.
Hello, my name is Simone Stolzoff. I am a journalist and an author. And I have two books. The first is called The Good Enough Job. And my most recent is called How to Not Know.
Let's start by talking about what's your relationship with certainty? What has it been in the past? And what is it like now after writing a book about uncertainty?
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Chapter 5: How do we cultivate faith in the face of uncertainty?
Well, the cliche among authors is that you write the book that you need to read. And so I would characterize myself as a naturally doubting person. I am prone to be in fits of rumination. I'm a very good devil's advocate for my own decisions. And the book itself actually began from a moment of indecision in my own life.
I was working as a journalist and writing for The Atlantic and some other publications. And I got a job offer from a completely different industry, a design firm called IDEO. And so on one hand, it's like, woe is me, the agony of having to decide between two attractive job offers. But on the other hand, it really threw me for this existential loop.
Maybe some of our listeners have been in a similar place where they sort of see two paths diverging. And there was Simone the journalist on one path and Simone the designer on another path. And as I was trying to make up my mind, I was completely insufferable. I talked about it with everyone I knew, my Uber driver, my yoga teacher, anyone who would listen. I tried to get their opinion.
And I ultimately took the job at the design firm. But I think thinking back to that moment. The problem, the source of my angst and anxiety was I was looking for certainty where there was no certainty to be found. I was trying to find the right job before I had actually done either of the jobs.
And that sort of began my multi-year exploration in this topic of how we can get better at what we don't know.
Okay, so tell me more about that idea of us trying to find certainty where no certainty could be found.
Yeah, I think so many of us have these decision point moments in our lives, these forking paths. And often we think that if we just bang our head against the wall at the right angle, then clarity will emerge, that there is one right decision to be made. But I think what makes a hard decision hard is that neither option is better than the other one overall.
If that were the case, it would be an easy decision. But with hard decisions, often there are trade-offs. So for example, the design job paid more money. The journalism job felt more in line with my passion. The design job was based in my hometown of San Francisco. The journalism job was based in New York City. And so there are these different competing values that I had.
And I was waiting to resolve all of them by just finding the one right choice, discounting my own ability to make that choice right. I think a lot of us, whether it's deciding in a relationship whether you should stay or should go or whether to move, you're trying to find certainty. You want to know exactly what is the, say, right college that you should attend.
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Chapter 6: What are the different types of uncertainty we experience?
Questions like, how will climate change affect my life? Or will I have a career in 10 years? And I think it's important to differentiate between the two. So we can start with acute uncertainty. If there is a question that will have an answer one day. There's some really interesting research that I quote in the book from this researcher named Kate Sweeney.
And she specifically studies breast cancer patients and sort of the process and the journey of going through a cancer diagnosis. And one thing that she found was that the hardest part for the majority of the patients that she worked with was the period between getting a biopsy and getting the results of that biopsy. That was harder than any sort of chemo or any sort of surgery.
It was that not knowing exactly what was to come. This is backed up by another one of my favorite studies, which was the researchers in the lab gave participants either 100% chance of receiving a painful electric shock or a 50% chance of receiving a painful electric shock. And those with the 50% chance were far more stressed than those with the 100% chance.
We would somehow rather have a certain bad thing happen to us than have to deal with the ambiguity of not knowing. And so I think in those cases of acute uncertainty, there's a few things that I would recommend. The first is to separate what you can and what you can't control. If there are actions that you can take that can actually influence the outcome, then you should take them.
Don't sign up for the study, for example, if they say, we're going to shock you. You could say, hey, actually, I'm declining to participate in this study.
Yeah, I'll opt out for now. But for example, say you're applying for a job. Rather than just throw your hands up and say, I don't know if I'll get it or not. There are things that you can do, at least at the outset, like write a great cover letter, like try and network with people on the hiring team.
But once you've done all of the things that you can control, the next step down the flow chart is to plan for different scenarios. Often a lot of our discomfort with uncertainty comes from putting all of our eggs in one basket, saying, okay, we need this job to work out. We need to get into the school. We need to have this specific outcome when that outcome is actually out of our control.
So rather than saying, I am just going to plan for one outcome, planning for different what I call contingency plans. So if this happens, I'll do this. If that happens, I'll do that. And then after that, it's just a matter of being able to regulate your nervous system, to be able to cope with the not knowing.
That might mean getting into a flow state and distracting yourself through another activity. That might mean something like meditation that will help you get to a grounded place or trusting in your future self to be able to handle any sort of uncertainty that comes your way. So those are all sort of for the acute category of you will get a piece of information.
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