Researchers began tracking global economic policy uncertainty in the 1980s. The five highest measurements they've ever recorded have all come in the past five years. Mentions of uncertainty in Glassdoor employee reviews are up 80% year over year. And the word itself appeared in 87% of public earnings statements in early 2025.
We have more information than any generation before us. And we are more anxious about the future than ever.
Simone Stolzoff wrote a whole book, How to Not Know, about why and what to do about it. He's a journalist, TED speaker, and former Design Lead at IDEO whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and National Geographic. In this episode of the Creative Confidence Podcast, he talks with host Mina Seetharaman about why certainty is so seductive, how our hunger for it quietly gets us into trouble, and what it looks like to build the skill of not knowing.
Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Article Summary
Why your brain treats uncertainty like a threat
How to build uncertainty tolerance
Why decisions feel like grief before progress
Why your brain treats uncertainty like a threat
We're biologically wired for certainty. When our ancestors heard a noise in the bushes, uncertainty could be lethal. That same wiring is still running today, and it's causing us to opt for the safe bet over the optimal one, the familiar over the original, the expected over the breakthrough.
Simone's reframe: uncertainty isn't the enemy. Our aversion to it is.
"Too often we only perceive uncertainty as a threat without thinking about the other side,” he said. “Uncertainty is also the birthplace of possibility. All of these new, novel, original opportunities lie on the other side of your discomfort."
He learned this partly from his time at IDEO, where embracing ambiguity is a core value. Being an innovator, he says, is like rowing a boat through a lake shrouded in heavy fog. You can't see where you're going. You can't know where you'll end up. But your job is to keep rowing and trust that eventually, you'll reach land.
The three certainty traps
Simone's book is organized around three ways our desire for certainty becomes a liability. Each one has a story.
Comfort: the pull toward the familiar. The status quo bias that says we've always done it this way, so why change? The cost is everything you don't discover when you stay put.
Hubris: projecting false certainty. AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton declared in 2016 that we should stop training radiologists immediately because the field would be obsolete within a decade. Ten years later, the Mayo Clinic employs 50% more radiologists than at the time of that prediction.
Control: the refusal to accept that the future is genuinely unknown. The antidote to control isn't surrender, it's adaptability. Stuart Butterfield shut down a successful gaming startup at its peak because he trusted his uncertainty over his apparent success. The internal tool his team had built to collaborate became Slack.
How to build uncertainty tolerance
Uncertainty tolerance is a skill. Like any skill, it atrophies when unused. Our phones are making it worse. It has never been easier to find a false sense of certainty, and we're losing the practice of sitting with not knowing.
Simone offers three ways to build it back.
Reflect on the uncertainty you've already survived. This track record can bolster confidence in your future self.
Find your certainty anchors. These are values, relationships, or commitments that remain steady when everything else shifts.
Build to learn, not to be certain. Small prototypes, small experiments, small exposures to the unknown can rewire the brain over time.
For the full framework, including the explore-exploit tradeoff and what Brian Chesky did at Airbnb when global travel shut down overnight, listen to the episode.
Why decisions feel like grief before progress
Every choice you make closes other doors. And the uncomfortable truth is that you feel the loss immediately. The paths you're not taking are visible right away. What you're gaining from the path you chose often takes much longer to reveal itself.
This asymmetry is why hard decisions feel so heavy. It's not that you chose wrong. It's that the cost shows up before the return does.
Simone borrows an image from author Cheryl Strayed to name this feeling: when you make a decision, you board a ship. A fleet of other ships departs alongside you, each one an option you didn’t choose. These are your ghost ships. Strayed's advice is to wave at them and keep sailing.
Put it into practice
Look back before you look forward. Think of three moments of uncertainty you've already made it through. That's evidence your future self can use.
Name your anchors. Identify two or three things that will remain true no matter how uncertain everything else feels. Use these anchors to counterbalance moments of uncertainty.
Microdose the unknown. This week, do one small thing outside your routine. Small exposures build tolerance for bigger ones.
Build something before you decide. The doing will tell you more than the deliberating.
Wave at your ghost ships. Name what you'd be giving up with each path, and let yourself acknowledge it rather than suppress it.
Explore More
Take a course
IDEO U's Leading for Creativity is built for leaders who want to create the conditions where great work (and the people doing it) can thrive.
Listen to more episodes
This conversation is part of an ongoing series on uncertainty. Subscribe to the Creative Confidence Podcast to catch the next ones as they're released.
Read the book
How to Not Know by Simone Stolzoff is available everywhere books are sold.
About the Guest
Simone Stolzoff
Author, Journalist, and TED Speaker
Simone Stolzoff is a journalist, author, and TED speaker whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and National Geographic. He is a former Design Lead at IDEO. His first book, The Good Enough Job (2023), examined how work became the center of our identities and what we lose when we build our sense of self around our jobs. His new book, How to Not Know, is out May 12, 2026.
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