---
title: How are you responding to uncertainty ?
date: 2023-03-28T10:25:53.083Z
slug: 2023-03-28-uncertainty
author: Thomas Wilson

---
There's a one-two combo with some kind of hard problems: you have to ask "what do I need to do?" and then "how do I know if that worked?".

Surprise!  It's actually a three-punch combo (*pow!*).  It is _even harder_ if you do something, but won't quickly or easily see if you did the right thing.

Some big life examples are asking if you should buy property, move city/country, change careers, or marry a person.

The more mundane ones might be deciding what book to read next, if you need to learn the new Tech Toy *Du Jour*, what to wear to dinner, or what cocktail to order.

The eponymous *uncertainty* of this post is a greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts mix of not knowing about what you will do, what you have done, and what you could do.  It's sort of amazing we ever get anything done. 

I've seen a couple of archetypal responses to these problems:

1. Over-prepare: double check your working, pre-define success and failure, record the metrics and plan your responses; or
2. Do not prepare: treat the problem as though it was any problem and act as though it is not especially to un-do decisions.

These are extremes, and I don't think they're that interesting to talk about in specific.  In reality, people are a mixture.

I think it's more useful to recognise when being uncertain about something makes it hard for you to move even a centimetre closer to certainty.  It might be stopping you from trying something, or it might blind you to something you didn't think about.

Ask yourself (and people around you) what's uncertain, and how you're reacting to the uncertainty.

Fwiw, I don't think extreme above will strongly correlate with success or failure if you average it out over enough time.  From a self-awareness point, I fall far into the latter: I think you'll learn more by *doing* than by preparing to do.  But there are some things where you can't un-do or re-do easily, so better attention to detail and foresight will be a boon.