KF #3. Manages Ambiguity Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Krista, welcome!

Krista Stepney
Thank you so much, Pete. I’m honored to be here today.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to talk about your insights for overthinkers, perfectionists, and almost-starters. I’ve seen myself in those roles numerous times. Could you kick us off with a particularly surprising and fascinating discovery you’ve made while working with these folks?

Krista Stepney
I’m happy to share. So a lot of times when people think about these different categories of overthinking, perfectionism, or almost-starting, you start to identify as one of those personas. In actuality, there’s a recent study that came out last year from the University of Northern Colorado’s social research lab that says that within the workforce, 93% of respondents identify in some way of perfectionism that shows up at work.

So when we think about the fact that we spend the majority of our time usually at work, that’s usually the biggest place that we see overthinking and perfectionism showing up and impacting the way we think, act, and even perform in our everyday jobs.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so can you help us get our arms around what is overthinking and what is just good, thorough thinking? And what is perfectionism versus just having a good high standard?

Krista Stepney
I get asked this question a lot, Pete, so let’s unpack overthinking first. Overthinking is when you are in decision paralysis, where you have recreated that presentation deck or you’ve prepared that pitch for that client over and over again, and you thought about every possible scenario before you actually do something about it. You’re questioning what might go wrong, and not in a way that helps you to prepare to launch, but to just continue to circle.

The same is true in a different way with perfectionism. It’s almost this idea of overplanning. It’s this idea of polishing until it gets to be perfect, and, in the same way, we never start. We over-critique. We wait for things to be just right, but there’s usually no such thing. And when you think about that, you’re really creating this facade or this false narrative of what it looks like to actually get started.

And so overthinking might look like coming up with different perspectives that haven’t really been addressed before, whereas, perfectionism could look like not wanting to launch something new because you’re worried that people might critique it if it’s not ready yet.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, perfectionism and concern for critique, boy, those things seem to have a nice relationship there because just about everything, even the most excellently wondrous, are subject to valid critique.

Krista Stepney
True, but it’s when that critique keeps us from moving forward. So, sometimes, I tell people, just start with what you have, and then you can edit and critique from there, but at least you’ve launched something. And a lot of times, Pete, perfectionism comes from this idea of comparison. We’re usually looking at somebody else’s path or how someone else has maybe done something similar, and we are comparing what we’re trying to do to what they’ve done.

And because of that, it causes us to withhold launching our brand new idea or doing something different in the workplace because we are wanting it to be as good as what we see for someone else. When, really, if you put your thing out there, it can be a different variation or iteration without it having to be perfect.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you share with us a fun story of someone who was finding himself doing some overthinking, some perfectionizing, some almost-starting, and then saw a nice transformation?

Krista Stepney
Sure, I’ll give you an example of a recent leader that I worked with, one of my former clients. He was concerned that a new project that he had to present to his boss was not ready for prime time. And what that meant was he was delaying the deadline of when he was supposed to give his presentation. He wanted to pull in more research articles, more statistics to really kind of add to credibility in an area that he didn’t feel as confident in.

Well, with him pushing that deadline, Pete, his boss, without communicating the reason why, his boss was concerned that he wasn’t really up for the job, that he wasn’t managing his time well. And what we had to do was actually pause and walk through some of the steps in the framework that I call bold.

The first is to block out comparison. I had to explain to my client, “I want you to block out any noise of how others have done this in the past, this presentation.” And then the O is to outline your past wins, “Where have you been successful related to this topic before? How can you draw from that energy of a win to use that as momentum now?”

And then the L is for list your next two steps. And we identified, “What are two things that you can do that readily get you closer to the finish line for this project?” And D is the most important part, is to decide to act. And so recognizing that what he had for that presentation was good enough to actually share with his boss.

What we did was reframe his thinking about how overthinking was keeping him stuck, if you would, and not being able to perform. But walking through those four steps of my framework, we were able to not only rebuild his confidence, but to help him to see where decision paralysis was showing up.

The success from that was he was able to have a strong showing in his presentation with his boss, get some valuable insight and feedback to make it better, but to add back that credibility with his boss that he was aware of the assignment and what he needed to do. And it wasn’t a time management thing, but it was a confidence and overthinking issue that he had to be transparent and open about.

So that’s just one example of where I see that show up sometimes in the workplace.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So let’s just go through this B-O-L-D again. So, first, we block out…

Krista Stepney
Comparison. So that shuts out all the noise of how it’s been done before so that you’re not using different paths from other people to try to create what you’re doing. The O is for outline your past wins or successes so it gives people a reminder, Pete, of how to remember that feeling of victory again, to think about some of those past wins no matter how small and to teach your brain that you’ve done it before, “Let’s pull from that same energy and momentum to do it now, to do it again.” It’s a confidence boost.

And then the L is for list your next two steps. And I intentionally encourage people to focus on two steps because sometimes we think that there are so many tasks that we have to complete before we get started. But if you focus on two, it’s more palatable. And I tell people one step is a choice, two steps, that’s chosen movement, right? And so you actually change the position of where you started in the beginning.

And the D is to decide to act. That means you actually have to do something from all the preparation and work that you’ve done in the first three steps of the framework.

Pete Mockaitis
Now what I like a lot about listing the next two steps is that, I’m thinking about David Allen, Getting Things Done. He’s been a guest on the show. It’s all about the next action, the next action, the next action. And so he’s fine with one and, yeah, that’ll get you in motion. But what’s fun about two is that they can really connect with each other and you can be a little bit choosy, what you feel like doing first versus second.

And I like what you’re having to say there in terms of like the two steps, it really is like you’re in a different place, like, literally, if I’m a human being, a bipedal two legged organism, right?

Krista Stepney
Exactly that.

Pete Mockaitis
And I take one step, I guess in basketball, they call that a pivot, right? You haven’t even moved, yeah, one step, one foot still in there, but you do two things. You really do feel like you have some momentum. And I think those two things can really be pretty tiny in terms of, “I’m going to email a guy and ask him when we can have a meeting. And then I’m going to see if there’s someone who’s done this before on YouTube and see what pro tips they got for me.” One, two, and we’re off to the races.

Krista Stepney
Exactly. And, Pete, the great thing about that is there’s neuroscience research that actually talks about how changing your position with those two steps teaches your brain that you actually can accomplish something. And imagine what type of confidence boost that has for someone who’s been stuck for a long time and trying to figure out how to get moving. And I tell people, just focus on two steps, two steps at a time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now the blocking out comparison point seems like it might be easier said than done when it comes to this emotionally fraught territory. Any pro tips here?

Krista Stepney
There’s something that I call a five-day social detox. And it’s literally disconnecting and detaching from areas where you’re consuming the things that are feeding and fueling that comparison. So, for some people, it might be detaching from social media for about five days. It might be disconnecting from that person that you always go to for advice because you are so enamored with how they’ve done it versus listening to your own voice and coming up with your own insights.

So I give people a prompt of different things they can walk through within those five days of a detox to get more in tune with their inner voice and thoughts versus looking for external opinions and insights that are fueling comparison.

The second pro tip that I would give, Pete, is one that’s tied to an activity that I call Mirror Mirror. And it’s really this activity where I encourage people to either do like a selfie style with their phone or to actually stand in front of an actual mirror and to ask questions about where they’ve actually allowed the opinions or path of others to impact how they think about themselves or the thing that they’re working on.

And it might sound goofy at first to stand in front of a mirror or to talk it to yourself in a selfie style, but you’re literally bringing those ideas that might be swirling in your head out in the open, and getting that out so that you can identify where that comparison is showing up.

And then the second part of that activity is speaking back affirmations into yourself. So identifying that you are enough, that you do have what it takes to get this done, that you are capable of the work that you want to produce. And that’s the lasting image and thought that that person has as they begin to do that work and start to block out comparisons in real time.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And the mirror stuff, there’s some wild research about the impact of looking at yourself in the mirror in different contexts. Like, we eat less food or more healthfully, I believe, study shows, if we’re looking at a mirror while we’re eating a meal, like who’d have guessed?

Krista Stepney
There’s so much. Because you can’t deny it. It’s right in front of you at that point.

Pete Mockaitis
Totally. Okay. Well, now you’ve got a concept called micro boldness. What’s that all about?

Krista Stepney
So a lot of times people misconstrue that boldness is a personality trait. But I believe, and tied to research that I’ve done, that boldness actually starts in your brain first. And boldness is a neurological skill that can be trained, developed, and evolved.

That means it’s accessible to everyone. So it doesn’t mean that only the extroverts get to be bold, right? It means that anyone that has a brain and believes that neurological skills can be trained can actually do this work.

And so instead of thinking about traditional boldness where it’s big and flashy and these giant leaps, right, that sometimes feel a little bit scary, I encourage people to prescribe to an idea around micro-boldness. And that goes back to what I shared about the two steps.

It’s the iterative, continuous, smaller steps that happen over time that retrain your brain that there’s safety even in uncertainty. And it creates muscle memory that, “Okay, if I took two steps before, I can do two more steps.”

And what it does is, over time, you’re building that neurological skill of boldness. You’re creating an atmosphere where boldness doesn’t have to be lofty or uncertain or scary, but it could be a part of your daily practice.

So micro boldness is the concept that I really try to lean into and practice and teach to help people to understand that these continuous movements and steps can show up in your everyday activities.

Pete Mockaitis
So when you say it’s a neurological skill, I’m curious, if we zoom right into the moment of, “Huh, I kind of want to do this, but I’m kind of scared,” what do you recommend we do right away? Because, tell me if I’m thinking about this right when you say neurological skill. I’m thinking almost like Pavlov’s dogs, like we got these associations and these patterns and these grooves and we just kind of roll with them.

And so if you have a neurological skill, pattern, groove, pathway, such that when you are scared and imagining uncertain spooky scenarios, you freeze up and do nothing, then that can get reinforced. So, I’m curious, with the two steps or micro boldness, what does that look like immediately in terms of, “Here I am, I’m at my desk. I’m feeling the things. What now?”

Krista Stepney
Yeah, Pete, you’re spot on. It is exactly that image you just mentioned about research. There’s associations and loops. I mean, there’s literally research that I did with a neurologist that talks about how people struggle with quitting smoking based on the associations of when they smoke and the patterns that they have, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Krista Stepney
And so the same can be true when you think about fear or uncertainty. So part of it is you have to first unpack why or what’s been associated with that fear. Has something happened in the past, right? Write that down. Get that out. But to your point of, like, “How do you address getting unstuck right in the moment?” there’s a psychological study that talks about the start-anyway script.

And there’s literally a psychologist that says, “If you use this script and literally talk about how you can break this cycle of the associations that you’ve had in the past, it gets your brain thinking that it’s safe to move forward.”

So, for example, the start-anyway script could say, “Even though this makes me nervous, on Tuesday, at three o’clock, when I sit down to check my emails, I’m going to write the email that I’ve been putting off for a week.” And what you’ve done is you’ve associated where you’re going to do it, when you’re going to do it, and what the action will be.

And so, literally, that type of start-anyway script gives your brain a chance to say, “Even if fear, uncertainty, or doubt are present, I am giving myself an action to push forward.” Right? And so then, you set that alarm for three o’clock, and when you sit down at the computer to check your email, you go ahead and send the other email.

Now, this does not mean that it’s a bait-and-switch and automatically it will happen that day, but you’re creating those different changes and association pathways within your brain that allow you to say it’s safe to move forward. There are so many studies tied to the start-anyway script where people have seen so much progress and being able to push past some of that decision paralysis.

Pete Mockaitis
And what’s really fun about that start-anyway script, it reminds me a little bit of the social psychology research about implementation intentions, which we think is the term. And it’s sort of, like, “I plan to work out and, therefore, I’m going to put my shoes here and my clothes there. I’m going to go to the gym at this time. If something comes up, this is my backup time.”

And so we’ve just sort of taken a little bit of time to think through some of the particulars, the specifics, the when, where, how of the matter. And then they got some good data, which suggests, “Hey, sure enough, people go to the gym more when they do that.”

What’s fun about what you’re saying here is you’re acknowledging the emotional tricky bit way early and upfront and in advance. And so it’s almost like when you get there, it’s like, “Ooh, I feel kind of scared.” It’s like, “Yes, we’ve already discussed this.” You know?

Krista Stepney
Right? Calling it right out.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And it could be things like, “I don’t feel like it because this is really boring,” or, “This is tricky because I’m going to get really mad about this thing.” It’s, like, you can sort of address, I imagine, any underlying tricky emotion associated with doing the thing.

Krista Stepney
Correct. And think about it, Pete, how many times when we actually face that scary thing where we say, “Oh, that wasn’t so bad,” or, “That wasn’t as… what I thought it would be.” It’s the same thing. The start-anyway script helps us to push past that so that we can get on the other side of it and realize, “Oh, okay, I was scared and I was nervous, and I acknowledged it, but here are some other things that helped me to push past it and realize there’s still a safety on the other side.”

Your brain is really rewiring itself to know that the next time you face that same type of uncertainty, you can push forward again.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that a lot. And so we’re talking a bit about starting. What about maintaining and persisting and finishing? Any pro tips there?

Krista Stepney
Yeah, I think the biggest piece is going back to the concept of micro boldness being a constant and consistent practice, right? There is no finish line to getting to it. Recognizing that it’s important to always go back to where you are starting to see yourself erode or maybe move a lot slower around things.

There’s a practice that I have called the wall of wins. And I talk about this in my book where I encourage people to actually use sticky notes to post on a wall somewhere all of the different triumphs or success that they’ve had in addressing that, because that’s the way that you maintain this sense of microboldness, this sense of pushing past staying stuck, because you, literally, can come back to a memorial of where you’ve done it before.

I tell people, whether it’s personal or professional, we’re going to always have a measure of fear or doubt, especially as we evolve and have new experiences, so going back to the things that you know work. Sometimes we look for something new and novel and the next flashy thing when, go back to the thing that was working and that gave you the progress before as ways to show that this can be an iterative practice that can still serve you on day 31 as it did on day one.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that a lot, that notion of collecting the evidence and, even more so, you’re suggesting putting it front and center with the Post-it notes. I’ve done this before in a notebook, but then, you know, it’s buried and you look at it maybe four times a year when you really desperately need all the help you can get, so why let it get to that part? Go ahead and post that for you front and center. Super.

Krista Stepney
I have some teams, Pete, where they have done this collectively as a team in the workplace. And it was interesting to see so many of them with their individual wall of wins because, as you’re starting to write out certain Post-it notes, you think of more things and other things.

And, literally, it became the place where they had some of their most innovative and creative team meetings afterwards because they could come back to this place of saying, “We created things before. We’ve done hard work before.” And so to know that it wasn’t just about their individual success, but the collective success that they could all stand in front of.

And I love that that was just a way for them to honor not only their past success, but a way for them to honor that this was where they would think about creativity and innovation as a team moving forward.

Pete Mockaitis
And, Krista, we had a nice chat right at the beginning about how do we distinguish between, “Hey, I’m being thorough. I’m being high standard,” versus, “I’m overthinking. I’m being perfectionistic.”

I’m thinking about a guest and friend of the show, Kwame Christian, who said, it really stuck with me. He said, “Fear masquerades in many forms.” And that struck me because I think we can do some things and we don’t even realize that it’s fear-driven. And you highlighted it a couple at the beginning.

I’m curious, are there any other sneaky ways we might think we’re being sensible but we’re actually being run by fears you can shine a light on?

Krista Stepney
Happy to, Pete. So, each of the three personas that we talked about, overthinking, perfectionism, and almost-starting are all what I would say are iterations of fear in some form. So this idea of, “Well, I’ll just wait on this side and the familiar,” versus recognizing that if we actually launch something, that’s new territory.

And so the fear of, “What do I do with new? What if I’m not ready for new?” This idea with perfectionism is really this idea of we think we’re waiting to polish something and waiting for the perfect moment when, really, we’re just protecting ourselves from the opinions and perspectives of others once we launch and put something out there.

The same is true for almost-starting. We will lean on this idea that procrastination just means that we’re not motivated, when, really, there’s a fear of what type of time and energy and responsibility comes with actually doing something and making an effort.

And so all of those personas are just different iterations of fear. The word fear can just feel so provocative and toxic for so many people. So we love ideas of like, “Well, I’m just a perfectionist.” That’s an iteration of fear and doubt.

And so the things that I just shared with you, Pete, are how I know that these are things that I think are the tentacles of fear. And as someone who has lived through almost each of one of these personas, I recognize that fear does not stay in one place. And if you do not address it, it grows and shows up in almost every area of your life if you’re not willing to do something about it soon.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and that really gets me thinking. With that specific concern you mentioned, it’s like, “Oh, this is going to be a lot of time and effort and commitment to do the thing, so I don’t want to start,” I’ve absolutely been there. I think this very podcast would have launched maybe two years earlier had I addressed that concern more head on and more quickly.

In a way, there are some validity there. It’s like, “Yeah, this is substantial.” Some things really are a substantial ongoing commitment. And it’s probably good to go in eyes wide open as opposed to, like, “Sure, I’ll run that marathon. No big deal. Let’s buy the flights. Let’s buy the shoes. Let’s sign up for the race.” It’s like, “Oh, shoot, perhaps I should have counted the cost before I went here.”

But I think that’s a really strong one in terms of, “Ugh, all the activity associated with this thing just seems so big that it’s overwhelming and exhausting.”

Krista Stepney
And, Pete, when people are saying that, they’re essentially talking about the cost of the new thing, right? And so, whether it’s the cost of time, the cost of energy, the cost of new attention, I counter with, “What’s the cost of the inaction?” Right?

So if you’re counting up the cost of what it will take to do this new thing, what’s the cost of the inaction? What is it costing you not to do anything? What is that inner tension that you know you still sit with that’s costing you on this side? And then when you look at the cost of inaction versus the cost of what it would take to move forward, I tell people sometimes that decision becomes a lot clearer on moving forward versus staying stuck.

And a lot of times we’re not willing to count up the cost of inaction because we’re so focused on what it will cost us to do something new and different and to actually get started.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a really great perspective, the cost of inaction. We might assume that because we’re living it, it’s free, but it ain’t.

Krista Stepney
Nope.

Pete Mockaitis
Could you share with us a fun story of someone you worked with in considering these things and how that resulted in some cool breakthrough insights? No pressure.

Krista Stepney
So… I love it. I love it because, actually, each of the personas that I wrote about are either a compilation of different people that I know or just everyday conversations. But Alex is actually a person that I used to work with.

And this is a person that I managed who was probably the most creative and innovative person you would meet. I mean, literally the ideas and the talent that this person had was just unmatched, but they were an almost-starter. Great ideas, but then they would falter, not really get started and move forward.

And so when we had to have the conversation of the cost of inaction, there was a direct correlation to what that meant about performance review, what that meant for the opportunity of advancement for her, but more importantly, what it meant for her being able to evolve and to just really rise to her potential beyond even the workplace.

And so there was a lot of tough conversations around building a performance improvement plan that helped her to actually figure out how to get started. We actually walked through a lot of the different strategies to put a plan in place that didn’t require her to circle the drain of overthinking or waiting for things to be polished.

And here’s the thing, talking to her, maybe a year after we went through a really tough season of her having to address why she was an almost starter, the success now means that her benefits, not the costs, were tied to not only seeing her move forward in the organization, but to actually start her own company.

That gave her the momentum to be able to see that her creativity was really just being boxed in in the organization, where now she had a greater platform within her own company to do far greater things. But now she had the discipline not to just have ideas that swirled, but to actually have tangible results, new clients, new customers, new products that she could actually bring to the market. And the biggest piece is the new joy of knowing that she was able to master and overcoming what perfectionism and procrastination had been her stalemates for so many times.

And so I give you that example, Pete, because, again, going back to that cost of inaction, she would have never even realized additional revenue or opportunities to just work in her expertise, or zone of genius, had we not gone through that tough season of actually talking through what not starting was costing her personally and professionally.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Thank you. Well, Krista, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Krista Stepney
I encourage people to think about the fact that overthinking and perfectionism and almost-starting can be big lofty personas. But the more we actually look at where we are today and see where we sit in those personas, Pete, it gives us an understanding on where we’re actually holding ourselves back within our jobs.

Like, if it’s holding you back from that stretch assignment that you know you should take on or going after that promotion even if you don’t feel qualified yet. And I share this because I have these conversations in everyday discussions, even with family and friends, and this is the piece that I feel so indebted to work through, Pete, it’s like, “How do we get unstuck?”

There’s so much waiting on the other side for us to move forward. And so I encourage people to do that self-inventory and to see where they might be sitting, and to think about how they might use some of those strategies that we’ve been talking about today to move forward and get out of their own way.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Krista Stepney
So Mark Cuban would be one person that I usually pull a lot of great quotes from. I love his sense of perspective around business, but also entrepreneurship. And he has a quote that basically says, “When you’ve got 10,000 people trying to do the same thing, why would you be number 10,001?”

So when I think about doing something different, whether it’s starting a podcast or a new business or a new idea within your company, don’t be the 10,001 person doing the same thing. Step outside the grain of how we’ve always done it and do something different.

And then the second thing I would say is any quote or paragraph in the book by Luvvie Ajayi Jones, she wrote a book called the Professional Troublemaker, one of my absolute favorite books. And she has so many great insights about how you really address doubt, fear, and uncertainty in the workplace, and how being a professional troublemaker really helps you to align with your passion and really thinking about not only the change that you want to see, but the change that we know that this world needs.

So any quote from that book would probably be one of my favorites, too.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Krista Stepney
There’s something that I call a stretch space. And it’s, literally, picking a day out of the week, 30 minutes only, to do something that feels uncomfortable. So it could be like drawing with your non-dominant writing hand. It could be like singing a song in public.

And this sounds a little funny, but I use this as a way to, like, remind myself to do things that feel uncomfortable. And it’s a way for me to actually lean in when there’s not as many consequences of failure, but I use this stretch space as a reminder to say, “Krista, like, where are you pushing the needle on things that make you uncomfortable in your job? And how are you using that opportunity to be more innovative or creative in ways that you haven’t been in the past?”

So the stretch space is probably one of my favorite tools that I lean on a lot.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Krista Stepney
Starting the day with affirmations. So this is something that I do with friends, with family, with my partner. We will usually share affirmations that we want to set the intention for the day and just to remind ourselves of who we are despite what might be waiting for us throughout the day.

Pete Mockaitis
Any key affirmations that are doing a lot of the good lifting there?

Krista Stepney
One of my favorites right now is, “I am enough,” and recognizing that there are so many people in circumstances right now that try to contradict that statement, but I am enough. I am enough.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that folks really love and quote back to you often?

Krista Stepney
“Move Anyway,” the title of my book. Literally, I have so many people who will say that back to me, like, “I was really scared, but I told myself, ‘I’ve just got to move anyway.’”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Krista Stepney
So on my social media channels, with your TikTok and Instagram and YouTube, you can follow me at Krista D Stepney. And then my website is my first and last name, KristaStepney.com.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Krista Stepney
Move anyway. In the moments where it feels comfortable to be stuck, I want you to consider the cost of inaction. I want you to use two steps to map up things that you can do right now to get out of your own way and to start moving forward for the progress that you know that you’re entitled to have.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Krista, thank you.

Krista Stepney
My pleasure. Thank you so much for the invitation, Pete. Excited to be here with you.

Pete Mockaitis
Frederik, welcome!

Frederik Pferdt
Thank you so much for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m excited to have you. I could tell that you are a big thinker, and you think about things a little bit differently, so no pressure, but I have a feeling we’re going to get into lots of fun, fresh perspectives from you.

Frederik Pferdt
Wonderful, yeah. But, you’re right, I hope to think differently about many things, and that gives many people, hopefully, a different perspective.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, could you kick us off with maybe an extra fascinating and surprising discovery you’ve made as you were researching and putting together your book, What’s Next is Now?

Frederik Pferdt
The one thing that I really took away is that the future is not something that happens to us, but the future is something that we create. And so, actually, the starting point of my book was that I left probably one of the best jobs that you can have in a very fascinating company and organization, to really dive into the unexpected and to the unknown.

And so, I wanted to actually practice myself, really, how to live future-ready and that whatever comes next is actually mostly in your control, and that you can choose what you’re going to engage in moving forward. And so, that was, for me, something I really try to focus on and that led me to some interesting discoveries.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s very intriguing. Let’s dig in. That’s kind of a provocative assertion there in terms of we have much control over what our future is. And so, some might say, “Well, hey, Frederick, I have no control over whether AI, robots, go and are marching in the streets and doing all kinds of activities, or whether we interact with 3D hologram future things instead of a platform like a Zoom or whatever right now.” So, what do you mean exactly in terms of we shape the future?

Frederik Pferdt
So, you’re absolutely right. All the things you just mentioned might happen or might not happen, but that’s a future that you just imagined. That has a lot to do with robots and AI and technology, and probably most of these things being out of your control. But what’s in your control is how you are going to be in that future. Are you going to be a Pete that is more curious, more kind, more open, more empathetic, more loving?

And we can go on using specific qualities that you probably want to see happening in your future, and that’s totally in your control. I can show up tomorrow, in my future, being more kind. I can show up the next year with my partner, my family, my community, my colleagues, whatever it is, be more open, more curious. And I think that’s what I feel is also the future, and it’s mostly your future. So, again, what I want to do is help people to move away from these descriptions of the future which is mostly the outside world.

That is trends or it’s events or it’s technologies, whatever that is, and moving towards the future that is inside us, which is the qualities that we actually want to see happening in our lives. Because there’s also one interesting thing is that, whenever our life will end, what will others remember about you, about the Pete they got to know? And it’s mostly probably these qualities that you’ve built over the years, over your life, and how you showed up every time with other people. So that’s the future I want to talk about.

Pete Mockaitis
And is it fair to say, with regard to these interior qualities and experiences, that in some ways, we will have and experience those things regardless of what technologies do or don’t proliferate in our midst?

Frederik Pferdt
Absolutely. So, if you show up more open and more curious and like to experiment tomorrow in regards to, let’s say, AI or a technology, then what I can guarantee is that you’re going to see more opportunities. You’re going to see an opportunity to find something out, to learn something, to grow in some form or some way. So that’s what I think is in your control. You’re not controlling the AI or the technology, right, that is built by a company or by a team of people or by someone else. That technology is, again, what I consider the outer world, and that is something you can respond to.

But you can respond in a way to these, let’s say, technologies, where you show up being curious, ask questions about it. You can show up and experiment with it, give it a try and see what you can learn from it, and that’s totally in your control. And I think that’s something where I want to help people to shift their focus on and think maybe differently about.

Pete Mockaitis
That sounds lovely. Well, tell us, is that how you would articulate the main idea or core thesis of your book What’s Next Is Now or is that but one facet of it?

Frederik Pferdt
It’s one facet of it, yes. And the general idea about What’s Next Is Now is that the future is not something that happens to us, it’s something we make happen. Where I want to argue that when we embrace qualities like optimism, openness, curiosity, experimentation, empathy, which are, for me, dimensions of a what I call a future-ready mind state, when we embrace these qualities, we can navigate uncertainty and turn it into an opportunity.

What it means that when we try to really approach the future in a way that we don’t ask “What will the future bring?” and have a passive stance, but have a more active stance and say, like, “What is the future that I want to create?” we can embrace those deeply human qualities, show up more optimistic, more open, more curious, and so forth, to really see more opportunities in the future as well. And what it does is it gives you more opportunities. And who doesn’t like more opportunities? And the second thing, what it gives you, a little bit more control over your future.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, let’s run through this lineup here, this mindset – optimistic, open, curious. What else composes this future-ready mindset?

Frederik Pferdt
The first thing is that it’s not a mindset, it’s a mind state, which is maybe for some, small, but for me it’s a big distinction. I love the work that has been done around mindsets. I think it’s a very important message that Carol Dweck and her team put out into the world around a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. I think we are mostly familiar with that. 

What’s interesting is that people refer to a mindset as something that is based on their belief system, on their values, on their past experiences, and it’s something deeply ingrained in us. But how often, to be honest, Pete, if I would ask you, “Hey, change your mindset to an entrepreneurial mindset, a success mindset, a future mindset,” whatever it is, how often could you actually change that mindset? It’s probably not that often because it’s really hard to change.

And so, I wanted to help people to have access to something that is more short-term, that is actually something they have control over, and that is more dynamic. That’s a mind state for me. So, it’s the moment-to-moment perception that you have around how you experience the present. And that is something that you totally can control and change and shift from time to time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. So, a mind state is maybe more analogous to a mood or groove or headspace zone that you’re in in a given moment.

Frederik Pferdt
I like the words that you’re using to describe that, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, within the mind state, what were those ingredients that you suggest are future-ready?

Frederik Pferdt
So, the dimensions that help you to see more opportunities in your future are optimism, openness, curiosity, experimentation, and empathy, and there’s a sixth dimension which is called dimension X. So, it’s not a framework and it’s not like a theory where you have to either apply those to your life one by one throughout the day. It’s more, like, what I want to help people to realize is that the good news is that we all have these deeply human qualities.

We are sometimes open, we are sometimes curious and ask questions, and, yeah, sometimes even we like to experiment with something new. What I want to help people to understand is, like, as soon as we dial those up, that we are radically optimistic, unreserved open, compulsive curious, that means that we actually see more opportunities, and we are able to, again, control that. We can train our minds to do those things more often, and that is something very powerful that really leads to what I would consider a better future for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and that adds up and it really feels so right in terms of my own experience. Like, there are times and days and moments where I am all of those things. And there are times when I’m the opposite, and it’s like, “It’s all bull crap!” And it’s like, “What’s the use?” is just kind of the opposite of that mind state. And, sure enough, being in the former state is more conducive to identifying opportunities than being in the latter state.

So, tell us then, if that sounds nice, we would like to have more of these things. I mean, they just feel better anyway, it’s just a more enjoyable place to be, to have these things going on internally, how might we do a shift if we’re having one of those days where we’re not too curious, and we’re not too empathetic, we’re not too optimistic? How do we conjure or drum that up or get to that spot?

Frederik Pferdt
First of all, I like that you label them as being nice. It’s a nice to have.

Pete Mockaitis
It feels great, yeah.

Frederik Pferdt
And that they feel great. I think it’s more than that. It’s essential. It’s something that, really, when you are in that state and saying, like, you wake up and you feel like the future is out of your control, and you feel negative, and you even have fear or anxiety that sometimes show up because, again, our minds tend to dislike uncertainty, and the future by definition is uncertain.

So, our minds try to protect us and go towards finding all the reasons why you should not get out of bed in the first place, why you probably should make a plan, or be negative about something, or not pursue an opportunity or open a door to something new that you haven’t explored, or ask a question. All of those things are usually not what your mind recommends you.

But I think we can overcome that, and we can trick our mind to say, “Hey, what about if I’m now curious and just ask a question to my co-worker, my colleague, my CEO, whoever that might be, or even my partner or my children? And I follow that curiosity maybe with a practice around asking five whys to go to the root cause of something that I want to find out.” That also immediately opens up opportunities for you.

And there’s many more practices that we can do that really helps you to overcome this first initial reaction that we usually have to new situations or towards the future, which is being a little bit more negative, being a little bit more closed, not being curious, and definitely not experimenting with anything new. And then empathy, we’re just going to throw out of the window because we want to focus on ourselves first.

So, what I want to help people to do is overcome these to really, as you said, see more opportunities. And who doesn’t like to see more opportunities in their future so that we move away from this relationship that most people have now with a future that is, or it’s going to be decided by someone else, it’s not going to be great, and “I don’t have any control over it and I have fear or anxiety about the future”?

Which is, when you ask most people why they actually want to stay with the status quo or even bring the past back, and that is something fascinating that I had in so many conversations where people said like, “Yeah, Frederik, you’re talking just about the future, never about the past.” And I said, “Yeah, because the past is something you can’t change, it already happened. And I think, and I have a deep belief that the future is going to be better. And why not then focus purely on the future and trying to discover what you can actually control about it?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love to dig into some of the particulars of these practices, like the five whys. But maybe, first, could you share with us a story of someone who was able to make some of these shifts, they were feeling not so optimistic, open, curious, experiment-y, empathetic, and then they took some actions and saw something of a transformation?

Frederik Pferdt
Yes, there’s many stories. I actually feature 14 people in the book, I call them future-readies. It’s people I’ve been able to coach, train, and work with at Google over the years, and those people have just built some remarkable futures for themselves, not in terms of materialistic. Most people think like, “Oh, it’s the billionaire,” or whatever it is. No, it’s people who live a happy life, who have impact in what they’re doing, who feel that they contribute to society in a very meaningful way. And I think those are things that we all can achieve.

So, I share stories about those people and how they show up more optimistic again and they live a very open life. For example, Adam Leonard, a wonderful human being, who practices something in his life that I think we can all draw some inspiration from. And he does what he calls improv hiking trips, and it’s inspired by improv theater. Improv theater is something where you basically, you know, you open up, and whatever is going to be thrown at you, you’re trying to accept and build on.

So, he goes on extended hiking trips, like three or four months without any plan, without any set schedule, any journey where he wants to go, he basically just starts, he starts somewhere. And what he reports back all the time is that, by being open and purely open, where he doesn’t have a plan, no reservations, just his pure curiosity and openness to whatever the journey brings, he comes back with wonderful stories and things that not just happened to him but, also, he could have made happen.

And I think that’s an approach that we all can use, not just in our life but in our work, in how we do vacations, and so forth. And inspired by that, I’m actually taking my family all the time on road trips where we don’t have a plan. There is only one rule that we couldn’t go back to the same place twice, and it’s really hard in the beginning to convince the family members to go on that trip because you don’t know where you’re going to end up. So, it’s really hard to sell.

But whenever we do it, whenever we come back, everybody is super happy and super satisfied because everybody discovered something new. Everybody was growing in a beautiful way. So that’s just one of the stories of a future-ready that I’d like to share.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And so then, thinking about being awesome at your job, I mean, that sounds fun. We go on trips just to see what happens, and what do you know? We have some surprising, delightful things that unfolded as a result. Can you draw the link, the connection, from that to “And now we are flourishing in our careers as well”?

Frederik Pferdt
Absolutely. I think that’s an approach that you can also take into your work, being a little bit more open around perspectives other people are having or ideas that are presented to you. Instead of going with a clear no in the first place, and saying, like, “Whatever idea is going to be shared with me, I’m just going to say no because that’s the safest thing to do. I don’t have to get engaged. I don’t have to do something with that idea,” and so forth.

Try to go with a “Yes” or even a “Yes, and.” That helps you to engage in an idea or a perspective and helps you to build on it and make it bigger, better, faster, whatever it is, and give it a try and then see what happens. And most of the time what happens is that there’s a new opportunity actually arising in your work or in a project or in your job.

And so, to give you an example, when you consider how most organizations probably operate, is that there is a manager or a boss in some form or some way, who maybe sits in an office, and then the team or the employees, they sometimes have ideas, great ideas that they want to share with their boss or their manager to ask for permission to pursue this idea.

And then most of the time what happens immediately is that the manager’s brain starts to generate all these reasons why we should not pursue this idea, “It’s too expensive,” “We don’t have time,” “We don’t have the resources for it,” “We don’t know if it’s going to work out, if it’s going to get to the results that we want to see happening,” and so forth.

So, the manager will actually share as many reasons as possible to not pursue this idea, the safest thing to do, because then you don’t take any risk. What happens with the employee is that they are a little bit disappointed maybe, they leave the office, and what they do is they tell everybody else, like, “Don’t go into this office because your idea is going to be crushed. There’s going to be only arguments why your idea would not work.”

So, what you could do instead is try a “Yes” approach, a “Yes, and” approach. As a manager, whatever idea you’re listening to, accept it, build on it, make it bigger, better, and faster, and say like, “Fantastic! I like your idea. Here are some reasons why we should do it. Here are 30 days you have, some resources in terms of like another team member that might work with you on this idea. Go try it out.”

And what happens then is the employee leaves very happy, the office, tells everyone like, “In this office, the ideas will grow,” and, at the same time, they will try this idea and try to make it work to then maybe come back after 30 days with two options. The first one is they will report back and say, “Sorry, didn’t work out. Total failure.” Or they come back and say like, “Yeah, it worked out. We have a new technology, new process, new customer base,” whatever it is.

And the managers respond, should be in both scenarios, to say, “Fantastic! Thank you. What did you learn?” Because what just happened now is that they helped to learn something new, that the individual, the employee grew, the organization grew by these learnings and so forth. And I think that’s one of the examples where you can apply this principle of being open, saying yes, trying to build on other people’s ideas that really will drive towards more opportunities and to better results as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that perspective a lot. And I think that takes a little bit of a practice and discipline because our default reaction is, “Oh, no! What happened? Why? Ahh.” It’s not the most natural, intuitive response to say “Fantastic!” when the result is not that which you had hoped for.

Frederik Pferdt
Exactly, because the only result that we want to see is that people are learning and growing because that leads to whatever success you want to see happening, and it leads to progress. And so, it’s just a simple shift that you need to make from “No, but” to “Yes, and” from “Oh, no, this project screwed up,” or, “You screwed up the project,” to “Fantastic! What did you learn?” to that curiosity that really leads to understand what actually happened, and what others can learn from that, too.

And these are small shifts that everybody can, I think, apply and use not just in their work but also in their lives. And just imagine if you say yes to more ideas that are presented to you in your life, I think you’re going to see more and more opportunities that are happening.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we got the “Yes, and,” we’ve got the taking trips with no plan, seeing what happens, the “Fantastic! What did you learn?” response. Any other top practices that you think make a world of difference in becoming future-ready?

Frederik Pferdt
One of the biggest one for me, I think, is reframing. And reframing is such a powerful way to live your life. Where, to give you an example, like when the pandemic hit, I was tasked to lead a project called Project Reimagine for Google, where we try to reimagine how we work as an organization. And I gathered about 26 leaders for about six weeks, and what we tried to do is to reframe. How can we reframe, for example, that employees said that they now have to work from home, towards “I can work from home”?

That is a simple reframe that, for a lot of people, did something magical, because then they felt like, “Oh, I’m not forced because of the pandemic to work from home, but I see this as an opportunity now. I see this as an opportunity to be able to work from home.” And that slight reframe helps you to, again, see more opportunities in maybe working from home. And you can go beyond that where you say, like, “I can work from home, but I also can work from anywhere.”

This is another reframe that helps you to open up towards the possibilities that a pandemic might actually bring to you. Where in the first place, you only see the negative, you only see the constraints, you only see the things that you’re not able to do anymore, but with a reframe you turn towards the opportunities. And reframing is such a powerful way that, again, you can do with a reframe from a “No, but” to a “Yes, and”, but you also can do from a “I cannot” or “I have to work from home” towards “I can work from home,” which is a reframe around your work.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is lovely because you see where that opens up for people. Some folks said, “Well, hey, guess what? Now I am doing my work on a boat and the family is on a boat. That’s what we’re doing.” Or, “Now we are in a little RV and we are camping all over the United States. Woo-hoo!” And it seems almost wild, like, “What?” It’s almost like it didn’t even occur to us that that was possible or allowed to do that. It’s like, “Oh, I guess we could all do that. Huh, how about it?”

Frederik Pferdt
Absolutely, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
I see. Okay, reframing. All right, keep them coming. Frederik, what else we got?

Frederik Pferdt
Let’s consider empathy, right, as something where we always thought like empathy is something that drains me. I have to put myself into other people’s shoes and really understand what they need, and sometimes that’s hard, absolutely. But what I’m arguing for is expansive empathy. For example, that you also can have empathy towards your future self, which for me is a fascinating concept.

If we imagine ourselves in the future, most of us would go to that picture of having a nicer car, a bigger house, a better relationship, being successful at work, whatever it is. But for me, empathizing with your future self means, first, that you’re trying to imagine how you want to be in the future, and then we’re coming back to these qualities around “Hey, I want to be more kind, for example, in the future.”

And if I am imagining myself being more kind in the workplace, in my family, with my friends and so forth, and you’re picturing that future, and you’re trying to make that visual really vivid and come alive every day, you’re guaranteed to actually move towards that future. And there’s some fascinating research going on at Stanford University where they actually showed some students pictures of their older versions of themselves.

So, they put VR headsets on the students, they projected their older versions of themselves, let’s say, like in 20 or 30 years from today, and they helped them to really empathize with their future selves, to really understand, “Hey, how do I feel in this future? How do I look? Who am I going to be surrounded by?” and so forth. And the more that people empathized with their future selves, the more they change their behavior in the right here and right now.

Which meant that most students reported back that they will actually put twice the amount into their retirement funds right now, plus they will start to live a more healthier lifestyle right now. Which means that, as soon as you create a clear vision of your future self, you actually change your behavior in the right here and right now. And, for me, that’s something very powerful when we think about empathy, not just about empathy for others, but empathy for our future selves.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, now you said the word “interact” and VR headsets, so I mean I’ve seen how you can sort of age, progress a photo. It’s like, “Oh, that’s what I might look like when I’m 70. Okay.” But when you say “interact” in VR headset, so it’s like is the age itself speaking back to me?

Frederik Pferdt
The beautiful thing is that we don’t need any technology for that. We have a mind that is capable of imagining, and if we’re using it in a way that we imagine our future selves, not just, again, in these ways that we’d say like, “Oh, I want to be more successful,” or, “I want to have more money or a bigger house,” whatever it is, but imagining your future selves as with these deeper human qualities, then doing that more often is a practice. It’s something we can train ourselves in.

And the research is very clear. The better we get at it, the more changes we will make to our life and lifestyle right here, right now. And I think that’s very compelling, because everybody wants probably to live a healthier lifestyle. They want to probably live a better life in the future and so forth. But don’t start with the materialistic things or the things that are out of your control. Start with what’s in your control, which is the deeply human qualities that you want to develop and grow towards.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful. I’m also thinking about Peter Attia’s book, Outlive, in this context in which he says, “I’m training for the centenarian decathlon,” which is a lot of syllables, but just the notion of, “When I’m a hundred years old, or in the last years of my life, what would I like to still be able to do? And, oh, if that is what I want to still be able to do, then I better build some strength right now, knowing that some of it will fade in my final years.”

So, it’s intriguing. So just as imagining that leads to, “Oh, I better do some more retirement saving, okay” it may also lead to, “Oh, I better do some more exercising.” And then any number of positive things that need to unfold starting now for then.

Frederik Pferdt
Absolutely. So, what would be something for you, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, it’s funny, I’m thinking about, well, I was thinking about exercise in particular. And so, just thinking about, as I have some family who’s aging and experiencing some health things. It’s clear that this comes for all of us. And so, to the extent we want to have truly good mobility and functionality, like there’s just some physical stuff to be done in terms of strength and cardio stuff.

And so, that’s just very, in a way that’s a little bit shallow, it’s like, “Yep, that’s just biological reality, true.” But when you talk about kindness, you know, that’s intriguing because there’s not as clear or well-researched a path and protocol that I’m aware of that is like, “This is the tried-and-true means of getting kindness gains the way there is muscle gains.”

And so, we could do a loving-kindness meditation, we could engage in prayer and spiritual practices and connecting with a source of eternal, infinite love. That sounds like a winning move, but in some ways, it’s a big question that I was like, “How does one, in fact, cultivate these traits we would like our future selves to have?” And there’s many, many potential options, and perhaps less of a prescriptive “This is known science knowledge base to draw from.” Or maybe I’m underestimating what’s already available in the research base. Frederik, lay it on me.

Frederik Pferdt
Yes, I think there’s many things that we can learn from, and it could be simpler things around kindness practices that are not just leaving you on a path, or leading you on a path towards maybe happiness. But it’s also interesting that if you show up more kind to other people, you’re building your community of friends.

And there’s fascinating research now from Harvard around the longest study of happiness and longevity, which basically just tells you that the more friends and the better friends you have, the longer and the more happier life you have. So that means the quantity and the quality of your connections really matters.

And so, for me, it comes down to the question, “How do you build more relationships and better relationships?” And kindness is probably a great way to start. If you start with anger and, like, hatred, I’m not sure if that’s going to increase your friendships and if it’s going to be making your friendships even stronger. I think it’s the opposite.

So, starting with a couple of kind things that you can do to your friends or to strangers will actually increase your community. And so, the more friends you have and the better these relationships are, the longer you live and the happier life you live. And I think that’s very compelling research that is building on something you said, which is like we can physically train ourselves for the future to be physically fit, but we can also mentally train ourselves to be mentally fit for the future.

And then we can also train ourselves to be what’s probably like more towards the heart and spirit around the future. And I think all three are very important, but we sometimes just neglect all of those, and we are focusing on the futures that we think are going to be dictated by robots and technology and other things that are shared in the news, and mostly with dystopian future images that are shared around globally and widely.

And it’s fascinating for me that our brains just love to see those dystopian futures, again, like to protect us, and say like, “Oh, I don’t want to have that future happening.” I think it’s going to be a wonderful future. It’s going to be a better future if you’re going to engage in training your mind, training your body, but also training your soul for the future.

And there’s very easy things that we can all do moment by moment on a daily basis that really come back to these notions of being more optimistic, more open, more curious, experiment a little bit more with different approaches but also show empathy, not just for others but of ourselves as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful. Thank you, Frederik. Now tell me about some of your favorite things. Could you give us a favorite quote?

Frederik Pferdt
One I really find profound for myself that really influenced my thinking is from Anais Nin, who said, “We don’t see the world as it is. We see the world as we are.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Frederik Pferdt
I don’t know if it’s a tool, but I found that meditation, for me, is a practice that is so fascinating because just experimenting with it and giving it a try has a profound impact on my life and who I am, and so I want that others explore that too.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks?

Frederik Pferdt
The future is something that you create, and it starts with your choices, and it starts in your mind. So that’s one of the core principles that I want to help people to understand, that the future is not decided by something else or someone else.

It’s created by you in every moment, and it starts with the choices you make, and it starts in your mind. And you have influence over your choices and you have influence over your mind. And so, I think the powerful message here is that everybody has the ability to really shape the future they want to see happening.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Frederik Pferdt
Yeah, you can find me anywhere on your favorite platforms. I also have what I call a NextLetter that helps you to engage in experiments, and I share stories of individuals that live future-ready, and it comes every second Friday. It’s for free and you can sign up. You can find it with my name and NextLetter. Feel free to join that community.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome about their jobs?

Frederik Pferdt
The next time you feel like a “No” or a “Yes, but” to something that is an idea or perspective of someone, try to reframe that towards a “Yes” or a “Yes, and” and see what it does to you. 

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Frederik, thank you. This has been fun. I wish you much good stuff next.

Frederik Pferdt
Thank you so much, Pete. Yes, see you in the future.

Pete Mockaitis
Maggie, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Maggie Jackson
Oh, wonderful to be with you, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to hear about your wisdom you’ve put forth in your book, Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure. But first, I need to hear about you swimming in the Atlantic Ocean almost every day. What’s the story here?

Maggie Jackson
Well, it’s a pandemic story. I used to be a pool swimmer, and I’ve increasingly loved swimming the older I’ve gotten. And then I moved out to the countryside in Rhode Island from New York City during the pandemic, and got kind of really into swimming all the time in the ocean, increasingly in the fall, and then all winter, and spring. I absolutely love it. Being there at dawn, it’s beautiful and feels a whole exercise you can’t beat.

But then it’s sort of interesting because it also offers a great deal, kind of a daily dose of uncertainty. So, I finally began to realize that part of the joy and the daunting nature of what I’m doing is that swimming is never the same twice. When you’re open water, four seasons swimming, it’s never the same twice. So, it’s a great little lesson in uncertainty.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. That’s cool. And I have recently been getting into cold water immersion. Fun things. And I’m thinking, wow, fall and winter, you’re getting that in spades. You know what the temperature in the water is like during these times?

Maggie Jackson
Oh, yes. Yes, we all keep track of the temperature quite carefully because I do wear some gear, so I adjust my gear. But the temperature is about the low is 36 Fahrenheit.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Maggie Jackson
And a lot depends on it could be 20 Fahrenheit in air, and it can be the wind, and then you can be in the snow. It’s all really beautiful and it’s just so much fun. And they’re now doing studies, trying to augment people’s kind of understanding or capability with uncertainty in order to boost resilience. So, we could talk about that. But that, I feel as though, I’ve gained resilience by doing this.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, is it your experience, as it is mine, that just the sheer cold alone is invigorating and mood-boosting over the long term?

Maggie Jackson
Exactly. I find that the colder it is, the more joyful it is. The deep dark winter when my little band of swimmers is going at it, we’re actually laughing out loud and sort of hooting and hollering, and I find that the summer is beautiful, it’s relaxing, it’s wonderful, but it’s not quite as exhilarating. So, it completely represents what we might call good stress.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Well, now let’s hear a little bit about uncertainty in your book Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure. Have you encountered any particularly surprising, or extra-fascinating, or counterintuitive discoveries about us humans and uncertainty while putting this together?

Maggie Jackson
Sure. A long list of surprising discoveries related to uncertainty. We mostly think of uncertainty as being, what psychologists call aversive. We don’t like it. Humans don’t like it. And there’s a reason for that. We’re naturally made to survive by getting answers. Like, we can’t exist in the state of not knowing. However, it’s really interesting because when humans encounter something new, it might be your first day at the job, it might be a six-month roadblock on your highway and you got to adjust, you actually undergo all of these kinds of stress changes in your body.

You might sweat a little, your heart might race, but at the same time, there are changes in the brain that are extremely beneficial when you are in this uncertain, this unsettling state of uncertainty. Actually, your working memory is bolstered, your focus broadens, the brain is more receptive to new information, so you’re basically on your toes. So, what seems unsettling and sort of this uncertainty that we dislike is actually priming us to be able to learn.

So, as one neuroscientist told me, “When you’re in that moment of so-called arousal due to uncertainty, the brain is telling itself there’s something to be learned here.” And so, I think it’s really important on the job, or on the restive life, not to squander that moment. Move forward into uncertainty. Don’t run from it or deny it or hide it. I think it’s really important that we don’t cut short that opportunity to learn that uncertainty offers.

Pete Mockaitis
So, we are more able to learn with these sorts of emotional stress response things going on, and that just sort of fits. It makes sense because, well, yes, there’s something that needs learning here because, by definition, it’s uncertain what’s going on.

Maggie Jackson
Yup, you walk into the meeting and there’s a surprise, or your boss hands you a project you didn’t really think you’re going to have to do. And it’s not emotion, really. It’s cognition. So, your brain is actually going on alert. It’s being aroused, as scientists say. And that puts you in a state where you can take advantage of that.

And so, I think the myth-busting one we have to do first about uncertainty is to realize that uncertainty is unsettling, yes, but that is its precise gift. It bumps us off the routine. It’s telling us. When you’re uncertain, that’s basically your brain telling you that you have to stop your automatic behavior. The status quo doesn’t work anymore. You’ve got to be ready to update your understanding of the world.

Pete Mockaitis
And what’s interesting is you say that we tend to not like uncertainty, and yet there are some contexts where we, humans, proactively go for it. We want to play card games, or videogames, or go to the casino, and that’s the whole draw of these things, is we don’t quite know how things are going to turn out. There’s an element of chance.

Maggie Jackson
Oh, I think that’s a very, very good point. It’s sort of uncertainty by another name. We might call it suspense, or just the kind of not knowing that’s playful or entertainment form that, I think, as uncertainty has grown, or I would say unpredictability in the world has grown, and, really, studies do show that economics, business world, climate, etc., there are a lot of aspects of the life that are more volatile. Uncertainty has become kind of a lament. You see it in the headlines. You hear people talk about it.

People just equate uncertainty with something bad. And that’s not moving us forward. That’s actually keeping us. Uncertainty is not the paralysis that we think. The human uncertainty, the unsureness, the not knowing, it’s not that all, as research shows. It’s actually something that’s highly dynamic and active, and something that moves us forward. Uncertainty is a lot more than we know.

And, actually, for decades and decades, this state of mind, it’s a mindset, basically, wasn’t studied. It wasn’t studied even in psychology because the onus and the emphasis was on what the human can do, what’s the task that you accomplish. It’s not sort of in between time when people are pausing and unsure, or they don’t know what to do. The scientists wanted to study what they could get accomplished.

And so, I think this puts human thinking, and even what it means to know what it means to be successful, it puts it in a whole new plane because if we can add not knowing to our skillset, as well as knowing, well, we’re suddenly really opening up to the world in ways that we weren’t.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. So, not knowing as a skillset that benefits us. Could you perhaps give us a story, an example, of someone who upgraded that skill and saw cool results as a result?

Maggie Jackson
Yeah, I’ll give you a couple of stories, but one little story came from a friend of mine who was calling me up, and saying, “Oh, there’s a merger and acquisition at my pharmaceutical company,” and she’s a scientist, and she was moaning and groaning. And in the next breath, she was talking about how she’s brushing up her resume, and she’s looking around for an internal job.

And I was sort of amused inside, having been steeped in uncertainty research, so I realized that she was actually doing precisely what, through her uncertainty, she was actually taking hold of the situation, and she was propelled to investigate further. And you can see this in many, many great figures. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech was basically borne of uncertainty. He was a leader who was very humble. He wasn’t opposed to saying, “I don’t know,” and he really led the movement through conviction but also with adaptability.

And when it came to that incredibly important speech that day in 1963, The March on Washington, first of all, he had asked for opinions from many, many advisers. The night of the speech, he didn’t know quite what he would say. He had elements but he didn’t really know. He was actually still working on the speech right up on the podium that day.

And what that shows is that he was in tuned with a very divisive, very difficult moment in history. He was wakeful to all the different influences and patterns and sort of things that were going on in that moment, and he, of course, pulled off one of the greatest speeches of all time.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Let’s have another example.

Maggie Jackson
Well, I would say a more modern example is I’ve been studying the work style of the new Nobel Prize winner in medicine, the co-winner, Kati Kariko, who was originally from Hungary, and she worked for decades on mRNA, which, of course, was the sort of her work on mRNA led to the breakthrough that gave us the COVID vaccines and saved hundreds of millions of lives perhaps.

And she was incredibly dogged and incredibly persistent, and she saw the capacity of this aspect of biology when no one else was. She was terminated from UPenn, but this is not just a story of persistence. As she puts it in one Nobel Prize interview, one of her coworkers said, “Oh, Kati, you’re always zigzagging.” In other words, she didn’t always work in a straight line. And she said, “By zigzagging, I learned so much.”

And this is what it means to inhabit uncertainty. You’re not shutting down on that space of possibility that uncertainty is. And one of the most interesting things about curiosity is that scientists have been finally studying this topic, too, and they’re beginning to kind of understand that one of the most key components of curiosity, of the curious disposition, is the ability to work with or tolerate the stress of inhabiting the unknown.

So, when you’re curious about something, anything, painting or what you’re curious about, something you’re doing at work, or curious about what this Nobel Prize winner did, you are actually having to kind of understand, or withstand, or kind of leverage that uncertainty in order to get to the answer. And that she really represents that. She really does. She spent so much energy on doing things that were denigrated, devalued in every sense of the word. She kept going and she basically exemplifies the willingness to stay in that liminal space, which is to not know, to not know in order to get the better answer.

If she had raced to the first answer, well, she might’ve discovered something but she never would’ve put the pieces together. She had to go down a lot of dead ends, and that, to me, is that entirely what uncertainty is about, productive uncertainty.

Pete Mockaitis
And could you elaborate on the distinction between working in a zigzag fashion versus linear fashion? What are those different modes look, sound, feel like by contrast?

Maggie Jackson
Well, I would say that the linear fashion         of working would be to work from one logical point to another, to be focused on outcome. Outcome orientation is a really hot topic in business circles today. Whereas, a zigzag, a nonlinear, that is something that Leonardo da Vinci was famous for. “Confusion rouses the mind to invention,” he once said.

And the zigzagging that she was referring to would be the dead ends. Many times, mRNA was actually toxic to the body when introduced in mice, etc. It didn’t do them any good. And so, basically, she could’ve quit there but instead she zagged, or zigged, over to a different type of thing. So, that’s what I mean.

Eighty percent of strategic business decisions are made after considering just one option. And, yet, if people actually go to the root of the problem and consider multiple reasons for the problem, multiple roots of the problem, then they’re actually four times more likely to have a successful decision.

So, again and again, we hear that we should widen our options but the other point of that is what I call widening and deepening, and that is testing and evaluating. So, again, that’s where you’re leveraging uncertainty. This is leveraging what Kahneman calls the slow mind. It’s what I also call take two. Rather than just leap to a solution, or go to what’s obvious, or try to shoot for that outcome, you’re willing to explore many avenues, and not forever.

Sometimes this can happen just in a few minutes in the operating room with a surgeon in crisis. They just take a minute to do take two, or to dwell in uncertainty, and then they find the better answer, or the hidden answer. And so, that’s what I mean by zigzag.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Thank you. And so, if folks do have this attitude or fear of uncertainty, do you have any recommended first steps in terms of, “Hey, if that’s where you’re at right now, here’s what I recommend you do or think about”?

Maggie Jackson
Yes, that’s a great question. And it’s really important, and I get asked that all the time now, “How can I get better at dealing with uncertainty?” And, actually, I’ll talk a little bit about what I found, but also there’s some new research on this, a great deal of research. There are scientists now planning a new study, an intervention, in Columbus, Ohio, to help stressed high schoolers gain resilience by teaching them how to better tolerate, which is not such a great word, but to manage uncertainty, to actually, it means lean into uncertainty. That’s the term I prefer.

And how are they doing that? Well, scientists, clinical psychologists, and others were developing these interventions, are now, they’re basically importing some lessons from exposure to therapy, so that makes sense. If you are fearful of uncertainty, if you’re the type who’s intolerant of surprises, you need to overprepare for the presentation, you need to pack not just your bag for the family vacation but the entire family’s bag because you don’t trust them to do it, those are kind of signs that you might be a little bit intolerant of uncertainty.

And so, trying new things, trying to, in effect, seek a little bit of surprise in your life, will show you not that it’s always the perfect solution. You might delegate at work, and it might not actually work out better every single time. But, at the same time, if you never delegate at work, you will never know the other possibilities that that person, that the hidden talents of that person shows. The person who works for you might show hidden talents when you allow them to work on that project a little more than before.

So, what you’re doing is expanding your perspectives, expanding your range of experience, and one of the ways in which clinical psychologists are now teaching people, especially people with anxiety, to get better at handling uncertainty, to stop denying and avoiding it, are tiny little things like, for instance, “Answer your cellphone without caller ID.” And that seems so simple but, at the same time, it’s just injecting a little bit of mystery.

And some scientists actually surmised that phones, because they provide instant answers all the time, and we’re checking 150 times a day, that’s what they call certainty-seeking behavior. So, some part of this is just sort of lifting up your head and kind of contending with what’s happening, not trying to control every little bit.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s fun. This reminds me of a recent camping trip in which we were…I don’t even remember what we’re talking about but it was some sort of factual question that could be readily Googled, and we weren’t sure, it’s like, “Oh, I think it’s this way.” “Well, no, I think it might be this because what about that?” And it was funny, we’re like, “Huh, here we are all not being quite sure about this thing,” which, on ordinary circumstances, when we had cellphone reception, someone would’ve Googled it within about five seconds, and then that would be that.

Maggie Jackson
Right. And, actually, what you were doing, by collectively or individually kind of cogitating, you were reaching into your memory, which is not something we do when we’re turned to the phone all the time. You’re actually reaching deep into your memory. And even if you don’t come up with the answer, it strengthens your brain to do so.

It’s really quite amazing but just searching around in your memory, something that we just don’t do today, is actually great for the brain. And why is that? Because, say, you’re trying to think of a painter. I’m trying madly to think of Degas, and all I can think of is Monet. And, really, if you’re looking around in your brain, internally searching, in other words, you’re looking through different knowledge networks because our minds and our experiences, they’re varied associations. They’re networked. They say they’re branching trees of knowledge.

And what you’re doing is going along those paths, and you’re saying, “Oh, well, maybe an impressionist, or I guess French,” so you’re strengthening by utilizing those synapses, you’re strengthening other areas of the brain, and that’s really great for greater wisdom. Our minds are not computers, information is not downloadable and upload-able. It’s really sort of an organic shifting thing. And that’s another reason why not knowing is really important because it kind of blows away that idea that our minds are computers.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, these are fun practices. Tell me, Maggie, anymore?

Maggie Jackson
Yes. Well, I would say one very, very important practice is it involves teamwork. So, uncertainty has a social side to it. And the upshot is that, basically, one of the best fuels of collaboration is conflict, and I mean judicious, mild, respectful conflict. But study after study shows that teams and groups that have mutual criticism, conflict, dissent are better performing. They actually have deeper discussions, they’re more creative, they surface hidden information that isn’t usually discussed, etc. Now, why is that?

Well, a lot of people think that, basically, when you have a disagreement or even when you just have diversity on a team, diversity of opinions, that diverse or dissenting opinion is just giving you the right answer, but that’s not true because a dissenting opinion, even if wrong, also bolsters performance. Why is it? It’s because uncertainty has rousted you from that kind of complacency of being in agreement. And the neuroscience on that is pretty amazing. The brain in agreement is a really lazy animal, believe me.

So, basically, if you can keep cultivating disagreement, then you get on what I call uncommon ground. It’s really important to be uncertain, and then you can do a whole host of things. You’re basically finding out what the team doesn’t know, which is really important for growth. You basically deepen and intensify the discussion. Now, studies have shown this in supreme courts, in the Supreme Courts, in juries, in financial trading, even on Mount Everest.

They did studies where teams that were very diverse, had a lot of different kinds of knowledge on climbing Mount Everest, but who emphasized all for one kind of mentality, so a kind of collective mentality, actually were more likely to have a depth on the team, and that’s really serious business. So, one flexible work consultant told me a wonderful story to illustrate this.

Cali Williams Yost was at a law firm where she was helping the firm institute flexible work for the legal team. I’m sorry, it was the legal team of an energy company. So, the legal team was all set to go, the bosses were on board, they were going to work remotely part time, etc. Well, one executive stood up and said he was completely opposed, at a meeting, and there was going to be a lot of knowledge left on the table because people weren’t meeting in the morning to coffee clap, etc.

Well, the bosses were angry, and everyone was shocked, they were all set. And what Cali Williams Yost wisely told me is that, basically, he was wrong to oppose flexible work but he was right, something was missing. And so, his dissent actually sparked a younger person in the room to, later in the afternoon, stand up, and say, “Well, I can create a virtual knowledge platform, and we can go remote and still have that time to coffee clap, so to speak.” So, that’s a perfect example of how dissent threw everyone into uncertainty, and then they were able to actually kind of find a third way to meet the problem.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s funny how, as I imagine that scene, the emotional reaction is just as you’ve described, it’s like folks are annoyed, like, “Oh, come on, man. Just, like, shut up and get in line. We’re almost done. Why you gotta be difficult and cause problems, and not be a team player?” Like, all of these negative associations. And yet, it really is an asset to have folks who have unique perspective and the courage to share it and go against the grain, it really does enrich the whole team, and yet so rarely do we say, “Thank you, dear colleague, for disagreeing with all of us. This is very helpful.”

Maggie Jackson
Oh, you’re so right. And you put it so well, and I’m so glad you used that word courage because I was just thinking of a quote by William James, a great psychology philosopher in the 19th century, who talked about the courage of a maybe. He basically talked about how no human achievement can be created without the “courage of a maybe.” And that’s exactly what’s happening.

I think one tip for people who want to try this, and I would advise, throw in a no, a gentle no, or maybe just a maybe. And what you’re doing with the word maybe is actually using something called hedge words. And so, those are really, really important. Hedge words are maybe, sometimes, those sorts of words, as opposed to more…there’s no alternative word for hedge words, but anyhow, non-hedge words, which are, “You’re wrong,” or, “Therefore.” Those are not hedge words.

And what hedge words do is signal your receptiveness to another opinion. They also signal that there’s something that’s not known. So, if you say, “Maybe we should consider something,” or, “Maybe we haven’t thought of…” etc., you’re actually smoothing the way for others to pick up on that. And it’s a wonderful kind of linguistic flag that you’re waving, saying, “Hey, maybe we shouldn’t be so sure,” and that’s where then the disagreement can be fueled, and the uncertainty. And then people can be in the space of uncommon ground, and then go deeper and explore multiple perspectives.

Another study I really loved, which brings this all to life, was basically a CEO who’s in Europe, a few years ago when the European Union was being widely expanded, so quite a bit of Eastern Europe was being inducted into the EU. And so, it was a time of great unknowns for business leaders on that continent. And so, two professors, one in Germany, one in the US, went and studied German CEOs for an entire year, and they asked them whether they’re for this expansion or were they against it, and what would happen, was it good for their company or was it bad for their company.

Well, when they got the results back, they found this third group. To their surprise, 25% or more of the CEOs were ambivalent, they didn’t really know, “Well, we’re not really sure this is going to expand the markets. Is it going to take our customers away? We’re not sure.” And it’s amazing to me that the professors were surprised.

Well, a year later, fast forward, the result was the people who were sure that it would be either good for their company or bad for their company, basically didn’t do very much. Those who were ambivalent were more resourceful, they came up with more products, they opened new factories, they actually were more inclusive, they asked for different opinions. They weren’t sure so that propelled them to do more.

And I think there was an award-winning study, and it just perfectly underscores not just what we’re talking about, about dissent, but also about the power of uncertainty. And it certainly is an overlooked unsung power.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I like that a lot. They’re not sure and, thusly, they do more. They’re not sure, so it was like, “Uh-oh, I don’t know so I better hustle. I better figure it out and do the research, do the work, do the investigation, talk to people, and get the info.” And this reminds me of, I don’t know if this has been coined somewhere before, but I might’ve made this up. I call it second time syndrome.

Like, the second time you do something, you might get worse results than the first time because you’re more confident, like, “Oh, I know how this goes,” versus the first time, you’re like, “Oh, boy, I’m a little scared, a little intimidated, a little overwhelmed. I better really hustle and figure this out.” Like, I remember, I was, at one point, a leadership seminar chair, or HOBY daddy for these HOBY, Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership event, so there’s a bunch of folks assembled for a three-day thing, and I’m kind of like the guy in charge of everything.

And so, the first time, I was like, “Wow, this is intimidating. I really want to make sure I’m on top of everything,” and it went very well. And the second time, I thought, “Oh, we got this. It’s fine.” And it was still good but it was not as excellent as the first one. I could see this event now years later. And it’s because I was more certain and more comfortable and less effortful the second time around.

Maggie Jackson
I think that’s so true and that’s such a good point. Because uncertainty, and confronting something new, is actually putting you at the edge of your knowledge, and that’s exactly when we want to retreat. There’s a term called the routine expert. The routine expert is someone, we’ve seen it everywhere. We see it in medicine. We see it in accounting. We see it in reporting. I’m a journalist. But people who have accrued years of experience, they’re really good at what they do, but everything has become routine. They have this sort of honed automaticity, so the heuristic thinking, “Chest pain equals heart attack” that is predominant.

But when the routine expert hits something that’s really new, they just retreat into the same old solutions, and they’re then not doing well. They fail. Whereas, adaptive experts are the people who can utilize that uncertainty, to do the kind of deliberative work, and also to be flexible about using their knowledge. And so, adaptive experts are nimble. And that’s exactly what we want.

When something goes wrong in the operating room, I witnessed multiple operations up in Toronto while researching this book, and one of the senior surgeons who epitomizes our ideal of the expert, he was quick, he was sure, really sure, well, he then, in a moment, in a terrifying moment in the operating room, he thought he had done something nearly lethal to the patient during a liver operation. Everything fell silent, there was sweat on his cap.

Well, he was just too sure. He carried his certainty into that operation like a badge of honor. And then he was able to, “It was not a lethal error,” but, at the same time, he epitomizes what we loved in experts. And we really are venerating the wrong type of experts. What we want to really emulate and respect the people who ask the questions, the people who say, “I don’t know,” whether it’s medicine or not, and the leaders who are willing to pause and deliberate.

And other study shows that those leaders, who when confronting a new problem, actually, are deemed in experimental studies anyhow as being less influential. But we’ve got it all wrong. We’ve got it all wrong. We need to be really promoting people who ask questions, who don’t mind hesitating for productive uses, who don’t mind being unsure.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s beautiful. Indeed, we tend to favor, like, trust the confident-sounding voice but there are studies that reveal that there is almost no correlation between the confidence someone exerts and how right or good they are at the thing, so that’s dangerous and some ways it’s like we’d be better off if we trusted or valued more the nuanced person, it’s like, “Well, you know, under these circumstances, it’s probably best for A, but, however, given the variables X, Y, Z, I’m leaning towards B.”

Like, that doesn’t sound as commanding and inspiring, like, “Yes, you know what you’re doing. I’ll follow you unto death” That doesn’t give you the that emotional charge. And yet, it’s likely much closer to true, and there’s much higher probability, it seems, of finding great wisdom there worth following.

Maggie Jackson
Exactly. Adaptive wisdom, the kind of person who sees the world as it is, not as they wish it to be or assume it to be. And that takes time, it takes effort, it takes unease, etc. but it’s really important that we change our views on what a leader is, that we change our views on what a student or a pundit or a presidential candidate is, because the cost of our certainty are certainly rising, and we can see it everywhere in terms of the polarization, narrowmindedness, etc., the anxiety levels.

I see that uncertainty, if we begin to understand it, to study it, to learn how to use it skillfully, can really change humanity, and give me great hope. They’re even trying to, there’s a movement by leaders in AI today to instill uncertainty in models, in robots, that is to make AI unsure. Now, there is some uncertainty in a robot. It couldn’t traverse the factory floor without some degree of being open to what’s unpredictable in its environment.

But what they’re trying to do, and this is picking up steam, and it’s really quite important, is to make on a robot that’s unsure in its aims. So, say, you have a housekeeper robot, and it’s fetching your coffee, well, today’s AI is built to carry out a task because the rationalist’s definition of intelligence is fulfilling your goals no matter what. And, therefore, that’s both the danger and the wisdom of today’s AI.

Well, an unsure robot, and what I call the “I don’t know” robot, will actually ask you how you want your coffee, or which room across the kitchen, or, “Do you want something?” It’s teachable and it’s more honest. It’s not just doing what it was initially programmed to do. It’s more flexible. And in that very vision of “I don’t know” robot, we can see something a little bit that we should be striving for, too.

Pete Mockaitis
The quote that comes to mind thinking about these notions of certainty is this quote, I come back to it again and again, I just got to have him on the show. Robert Rubin said, “Some people are more certain of everything than I am of anything.” And I can totally relate, it’s like, “Are you sure?” And I think about all these scenarios when the experts tell me the opposite of each other, and they do so very confidently.

Like, roofers. You get multiple bids on a roof project, it’s like, “Wow, that guy said we had to tear it off, and the other guy said we could just put another layer on. And they were both very sure. And they’re the roof experts, and I’m not. What the heck am I supposed to do here?” And I think that if most of us took the time to solicit multiple perspectives from multiple angles, we would see a lot of that, “Wow, these people are very certain of the exact opposite thing. Well, now I have to do some hard thinking.”

Maggie Jackson
Exactly. And we think of uncertainty as being sort of lost, adrift, etc., some of the metaphors used with uncertainty or lostness and wandering, etc., but it’s a form of exploration. It’s kind of a wonderful way to buy time, in a sense, so that you can explore the possibilities and uncover the complexities that are already there.

You’re not creating complexities when you do a little bit more pondering. You’re actually uncovering what’s already there. And it’s not that it’s an endless kind of pursuit but it has its place, and we haven’t given enough due to being unsure.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Maggie, tell me, any final things you want to share before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Maggie Jackson
No, I think we covered a lot of great ground.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Maggie Jackson
Yeah, it’s actually a quote from my book, and there are many but I’ll start the quote, “’I know’ seems to describe a state of affairs which guarantees what is known, guarantees it as a fact. One always forgets the expression, ‘I thought I knew.’” That’s Ludwig Wittgenstein, the philosopher.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And could you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Maggie Jackson
Well, there are lots. Yeah, I’ll tell one little one. And you probably heard of the candle problem. This was a psychological experiment developed in the 1920s in which people were asked to tack a candle to the wall using just a box of matches, some thumbtacks, and then just the candle. Well, people made a real mess of it, and they tried to melt the candle, glue it to the wall, etc.

Well, the answer lies in making a platform out of the matchbox. But the point of this story is that people only see what an object is meant to do, not what it can do, because they’re so sure that matchboxes are there just to hold the matches. They cannot see any further. And what’s wonderful about this study is that if you take a bunch of five-year-olds and give them a similar study, but without the matches, with toys on a shelf, the five-year-olds don’t have any problem with this. Their knowledge doesn’t get in their way of their problem-solving.

Whereas, at age seven and up, they’re beginning to act like adults. They only see what it’s made to do. They don’t ask what it can do. And that’s a miniature example of the beauty of being unsure. And uncertainty is basically another word for open-mindedness.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Maggie Jackson
I would have to say Pride and Prejudice, kind of an old classic but it’s really about two people, Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet, whose certainty got in the way of their love. And, finally, when they were a little bit less sure, they were able to get together and understand one another despite their differences. I already loved that book before I became an uncertainty junkie, so to speak. But now I kind of see it through the prism of uncertainty.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Maggie Jackson
It definitely has to be just plain old paper pad. I’m completely adoring of the technology of paper. By writing, I don’t write everything in the longhand, but I do drafts of what I work on that I call sketches, literally, because I can draw arrows and make circles out of what it is. It’s all over the map. And I find that, by putting something immediately onto a computer, I’m forcing my thoughts onto the template of another person’s design. And so, I find that the legal pads, I go through so many, and they’ve been a huge help to me in my writing.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Maggie Jackson
Well, in order to get in the focus that I need, there’s a kind of boundary-making, focuses literally a boundary-making, a type of attention that creates boundaries around what you want to be doing, I use alarm clocks and I use distance from my phone. So, if I really have to concentrate, I’ll put my phone on another level of my office, downstairs, basically. If I’m able to take a phone call, it’ll be nearer to me, but it changes how you think, etc. So, I really curate where the phone is.

I also use alarm clocks. So, if I have an appointment in an hour, I’ll put the alarm clock on, and then I don’t have to spend my mental resources thinking about when I have to do this. I then am able to drift off, inhabit the uncertainty, focus on what I need to do, and completely within the new you of what I need to think about.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Maggie Jackson
I’d say that the quote from my book that resonates most with people is “Uncertainty is unsettling, and that is its gift.”

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Maggie Jackson
I would say my website would be a great one to stop and shop. I’m also on Twitter, LinkedIn, but the website is a great resource for my articles, my events, etc., what’s going on with my books.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Maggie Jackson
I think that if you realized that at any one moment you might not know, you’ll be giving yourself the power of an open mind.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Maggie, this has been a treat. Well, Maggie, thank you for this. I wish you much fun uncertainty in the years to come.

Maggie Jackson
Thank you, Pete. It’s been a pleasure. You, too.