How to handle uncertainty (w/ Simone Stolzoff)

with Simonea Stills off about how to handle uncertainty. How do you make the right choice when you're not sure what the right choice is? What if you're not sure there even is a right choice at all? Simonea talks about these questions in his new book which is called How to Not Know, the value of uncertainty in a world that demands answers. Here's a clip from our conversation where Simonea is talking about what he means by the value of uncertainty. In the book I tell

a story about a couple who's wrestling with whether they want to get divorced or not and their couple's therapist was Esther Perrell, the sort of famed couple's therapist and Esther said something that's really stacked with me which is that trust is an active engagement with the unknown in order to be in a relationship or in order to start a company or a project or to put your creative

“work out into the world you need to cultivate some aspect of faith, not in sort of just a”

woo-woo spiritual sense but faith as in placing your heart on something, making a bet on something that you don't necessarily know can be proven with evidence quite yet. I think that is not only an incredibly important skill for an entrepreneur or someone that's deciding whether or not they want to stay married or someone who is about to embark on an unknown journey but for all of us in the face of this world that we currently live in we need both faith and we need to take action.

We're going to talk a lot more about uncertainty and not knowing but first I'm going to take a

very specific action and that is to reduce some podcast ads. We will be right back. I'm going to start a little curiosity into your routine with TED Talks daily. The podcast brings you a new TED Talk every weekday. In less than 15 minutes a day you'll go beyond the headlines and learn about the big ideas shaping your future. Coming up how AI will change the way we communicate, how to be a better leader and more. Listen to TED Talks daily wherever you get your podcast.

And we are back. Today on the show we're talking with Simone A Stoles Off about the value of uncertainty. Hello my name is Simone A Stoles Off. I am a journalist and an author. They have two

books. The first is called The Good and F job and my most recent is called How to Not Know. Let's

start by talking about what's your relationship with certainty? What has it been in the past and what is it like now after writing a book about uncertainty? Well the cliche among authors is that

“you write the book that you need to read and so I would characterize myself as a naturally doubting person.”

I am prone to be in fits of rumination. I'm a very good devil's advocate for my own decisions and the book itself actually began from a moment of indecision in my own life. I was working as a journalist and writing for the Atlantic and some other publications and I got a job offer from a completely different industry design firm called Idea. And so on one hand it's like, "Whoa, it's me, the agony of having to decide between two attractive job authors."

But on the other hand it really threw me for this existential loop. Maybe some of our listeners have been in a similar place where they sort of see two paths diverging and there was Simone A the journalist on one path and Simone A the designer on another path. And as I was trying to make up my mind I was completely inseparable. I talked about it with everyone I knew my Uber driver,

my yoga teacher, anyone who would listen I tried to get their opinion and I ultimately took the job

“of the design firm but I think thinking back to that moment the problem, the source of my”

angst and anxiety was I was looking for certainty where there was no certainty to be found. I was trying to find the right job before I had actually done either of the jobs and that sort of began my multi-year exploration in this topic of how we can get better at what we don't know. Okay so tell me more about that idea of I was trying to find certainty where no certainty could be found. Yeah I think so many of us have these decision point moments in our lives, these fucking paths.

And often we think that if we just bang our head against the wall at the right angle then clarity will emerge that there is one right decision to be made. But I think what makes a

case it would be an easy decision but with hard decisions often there are trade-offs. So for example

the design job paid more money. The journalism job felt more in line with my passion. The design job was based in my hometown of San Francisco. The journalism job was based in New York City. And so there are these different competing values that I had. And I was waiting to resolve all of them by just finding the one right choice, discounting my own ability to make that choice

“right. I think a lot of us whether it's deciding in a relationship whether you should stay or”

should go or whether to move, you're trying to find certainty. You want to know exactly what is the right college that you should attend. But it's impossible to have full certainty about anything

that happens in the future. And by driving ourselves towards looking for that certainty it can be a source

of our suffering or our dismay. Sometimes uncertainty can also be the world outside of our choices. Right? Like I don't know. I think a lot of people right now are feeling huge uncertainty. Like I don't know the value of my skills. I don't know if AI or technology is going to make my entire field disappear or all of a sudden be worthless. I don't know if I'll keep my job. I don't know if the country that I live will continue to be peaceful or whether it will be unstable and chaotic. I don't

know whether the money that I've been saving for retirement will be enough. Like all these outside questions. So how can we think about that kind of uncertainty? Or how do you think about that kind of uncertainty? Yeah. I'm ready to make that distinction. I think about it in two different ways. There's acute uncertainty. So that's, for example, not knowing whether you pass the bar exam or not knowing the results of a medical test that you went through. And then there's this more ambient uncertainty.

Questions like how will climate change affect my life or will I have a career in 10 years?

“And I think it's important to differentiate between the two. So we can start with acute uncertainty.”

If there is a question that will have an answer one day. There's some really interesting research that I quote in the book from the Swiss Surgeon in Kate Sweeney. And she specifically studies breast cancer patients and sort of the process and the journey of going through a cancer diagnosis. And one thing that she found was that the hardest part for the majority of the patients that she worked with was the period between getting a biopsy and getting the results of that biopsy.

That was harder than any sort of chemo or any sort of surgery. It was that not knowing exactly what was to come. There's backed up by another one of my favorite studies which was the researchers in the lab gave participants either 100% chance of receiving a painful electric shock or a 50% chance of receiving a painful electric shock. And those with the 50% chance were far more stressed than those with the 100% chance. We would somehow rather have a certain bad thing

happen to us and have to deal with the ambiguity of not knowing. And so I think in those cases

of sort of acute uncertainty, there's a few things that I would recommend. The first is to separate

what you can and what you can't control. If there are actions that you can take that can

“actually influence the outcome, then you should take them, you know, a few are...”

Don't sign up for the study, for example. You could say, hey, actually I'm declining to participate in this study. Yeah, I'll have that for now. But for example, say like you're applying for a job. You know, rather than just like throw your hands up and say, I don't know, if I'll get it or not, there are things that you can do at least to the outset, like read a great cover letter, like try and network with people on the hiring team. But once you've done all of the things that

you can control, the next step down, the flow chart, is to plan for different scenarios. Often, a lot of our discomfort with uncertainty comes from putting all of our eggs in one basket saying, okay, we need this job to work out, we need to get into the school, we need to have this specific outcome when that outcome is actually out of our control. So rather than saying, I am just going to plan for one outcome, planning for your different what I call contingency plans. So if this happens,

I'll do this. That happens, I'll do that. And then after that, it just a matter of being able to regulate your nervous system, to be able to cope with the not knowing that might mean getting into a flow state and distracting yourself through another activity, that might mean something like meditation that will help you get to a grounded place or trusting in your future self to be able to handle any sort of uncertainty that comes your way. So those are all

sort of for the acute category of you will get a piece of information. Is it your opinion that we are uncomfortable with uncertainty because we are like unrealistically poisoning our idea of the

feel like if things don't go out there are other options, why do we have that like depth of

“discomfort with uncertainty? Yeah, it's biological. It comes back to our roots as human beings. You can”

imagine one of your ancestors in the jungle and there's a rustling in the bushes and they're not sure the source of that rustling or they reach for a fruit that they don't know whether it's poison or not. That uncertainty can be lethal and so our brains are wired in a way for certainty to make us feel safe and secure and uncertainty to naturally see as a threat to put us into this sort of fight or flight response. But a few things that I learned through the research has really helped me

deal with those sorts of scenarios where you might think about the worst case scenario. One is that humans are really bad, I what's called effective forecasting. Effective forecasting is thinking about how we might feel about a future event. So there's this researcher from Harvard named Dan Gilbert and he's one of the sort of foremost researchers on happiness and one thing that he's found is that people, for example, that get left at the altar or people that didn't get that job that they

really wanted to get often with some benefit of hindsight can look back at that experience and see it

“as a blessing in disguise or maybe even the best thing that ever happened to them. So the first thing”

that I'd tell you is if you're really in this catastrophizing mindset to think back about past periods of uncertainty, we all know a friend who maybe went through a breakup and then saw that breakup as the thing that allowed them to meet their partner that they actually ended up with or maybe didn't get

that job that they thought they wanted and then ultimately got something that was even better.

Let's also talk about that other kind of uncertainty that's not the acute uncertainty. Yeah, so the sort of ambient uncertainty of the world. So if you're feeling that the world isn't incredibly uncertain right now, you are not alone between COVID and wars and Ukraine and Iran and terror policy, what have you. We live in this incredibly uncertain world and the other side of the coin is that our tolerance for uncertainty is in decline. So the rise of the internet and mobile

phones has created the expectation that answer should be readily available. I know that maybe 10 years ago, if I didn't know the name of a given actor, I might have been okay, but now I feel an almost involuntary need to reach into my pocket. The second thing that does is it robs us of the practice of sitting with what we don't know. We are not as good at tolerating that uncertainty

as we used to be. And so in terms of dealing with that ambient uncertainty, the first thing that I'll

say is that when we are certain about some aspects of our life, it makes it easier to hold uncertainty in others. So I give the advice of finding your anchors. What are the things in your life that will remain constant amidst all that is changing? Maybe it's a commitment to live in a particular city or to a particular person. If you're running a business, maybe it's your company values or your commitment to serve a particular customer. But when you are clear about the things in your

life that will be those sort of boulders amidst all the changing winds, it makes it easier to hold the uncertainty in other aspects of your life. I love that you brought that up because this was one of my favorite passages in the whole book about finding your anchors. You say this on page 1951, being certain about some aspects of our lives allows us to hold uncertainty in others. Certain deniers can be a routine ritual or unwavering relationship. But perhaps the most important

anchor is our values. In spite of the swirling winds around us, values are the steadfast boulders

that remain. I love that writing and I think that is such an incredible framing. I never thought of

it like that. And I found that to be really helpful and profound. Yeah, thanks for saying that. I'll give you one example from my own personal life. So my grandma recently passed away. She was 99 and a half years old. And I'm Jewish. And in the Jewish tradition,

“there is this ritual of what you should do in the seven days after someone passes away. It's called”

Shiva. And I think one thing that's really nice about it is amidst all of the uncertainty of not knowing what to do after you lose a loved one. Here is a list of instructions. On day one, you invite people over to the house to bring food. On day seven, you're going to walk in your neighborhood to show your face that you're still around to your neighbors. And I think having that process certainty can help us cope with or manage some of the emotional uncertainty that we may be feeling.

I know we were talking about, but the second way that we can deal with the ambient uncertainty. And I had taken a self on this attention on the first. No, I think it's a great segue. You know, we talked about finding our anchors. And the second thing I'll say is to focus on the next right action. So this is a concept from Buddhism often when we are thinking about an uncertain

earlier, where you might end up sleeping with four people on a love seat. But instead of thinking

about this leads to this leads to this leads to this, we can ground ourselves in the present moment and just think about one step at a time. So one example, in the book, I profile this crisis communications expert. So it gets brought in to companies at the worst part of their company journey. Maybe there's been some sort of tragedy or scandal. And she told me about this one time where she was in this boardroom full of lots of executives and everyone is freaking out about the next

thing to do after this big sort of company calamity. And she took a piece of butcher paper and she rolled the butcher paper out on the boardroom table. And she wrote down every single thing that

“needed to be done. You need to write a press release, you need to communicate with your employees,”

you need to communicate with your investors. And she had all of these things written out on a piece

of butcher paper. And she said, "What is the next right action? What is the one most important

step that we can take right now?" And by getting all of those things out of their heads and on to the page, they were able to start prioritizing and chipping away. And so I think we don't need a board room to necessarily do this in your own life. If you're overwhelmed by the process of writing a novel or applying to jobs or whatever, if you're able to just focus on that next right action with the great writer and the mat called going bird by bird, that will allow you to actually build

some momentum and take the sort of amorphous uncertainty that you might be feeling and make it a little bit more applied. Give yourself some control back over the universe. You can't see this because it's behind my camera. But I literally only have two things tacked up on the bulletin board that's behind my computer. And one is a note card that says, "Proceed as the way opens," which I learned a phrase I learned about from a friend who's

Quaker. And he told me this is a Quaker saying. And then the other one is just actually related to the other thing. It's just some things that I really value to do every

“day. So it's like, "You're stressed. Okay, here's the five things you need to be trying to think”

about." One is laugh hard, eat well, learn something, go outside, meet someone. I'm like, if I can do any of those, we're gonna have a good day. I love that. So you have your anchors on one side, and you have your reminder to focus on the next right action on the other side. I think the idea with like focusing on the next right action is particularly true with these big sort of uncertainties in our life. These existential uncertainties. And just quickly to round out the sort of ambient

uncertainties category. The last thing that I'll say is to choose curiosity over fear. So often when we think about uncertainty, we see it as a threat. We see it as that rustling in the bushes. And we think that it's necessarily going to be something bad. But one thing that I like to think about is that uncertainty is also the birthplace of possibility. So no groundbreaking

piece of art or inspiring company or scientific breakthrough has come without someone's willingness

to get to a place of uncertainty and to persist. I didn't think of the metaphor of like someone on a lake that shrouded in heavy fog. Like you might not be able to see very far in front of you or know exactly where you'll end up. But if you keep growing, then you'll eventually reach land. And so those are the three yets. Find your anchors, focus on the next right action, and then choose curiosity over fear. Okay, we're going to take a quick break, but we will be right back, so please

choose to keep listening.

“As a reminder and a reminder, you will be able to come quickly. Also, if you want to get a product market,”

then write your first big enterprise. With KaE, the development of the machine is also the task of the task of the task of the task. And that's before you go forward. The team, how security and compliance are really going to be. That's why there are a lot of data through the water and the water and the water is going on. And if it's going to be, it's still going to be right. There are many podcasts you can turn to for work advice. But on our show, fixable,

we help real people just like you tackle real workplace challenges fast. I'm CEO and bestselling author Ann Morris, and I'm Harvard Business School Professor Francis Fry, and we are the hosts of the TED Podcast, fixable. Whether you're lacking confidence at your new job, feeling burned out, or struggling to lead your team through a big change, we won't shy away from any problem. We bring our clear thinking, honest opinions, and expertise to solve your toughest workplace

issues through practical solutions. Here are new episodes of fixable every Monday wherever you get your podcasts. And we are back. I wonder if a part of this relationship with uncertainty that we have,

personal. I have an idea in my head sometimes that things are supposed to be easy. And that if they're not easy, it means that I'm doing something wrong. So I wonder if you can talk about that part of that relationship with like, if feeling wrong, but us needing to live in that to actually get past the scary uncertainty and into the good uncertainty. Yeah, so we're talking broadly about how do you build tolerance for uncertainty? How does uncertainty go from this thing that is incredibly uncomfortable

to something that you can collaborate, that you can manage in your day-to-day basis? And I'd say that in general, it's not too different from other phobias. So I talk to a lot of different psychologists for the book. And one of them is this guy named Mikhail Dugah. And he was the first one to link uncertainty intolerance to a lot of the anxiety and mental health problems that his patients feel and that many of us feel. And he equated uncertainty tolerance to something like exposure therapy,

if you were a scared of spiders, for example. You might not go toward reaching first spider right away, but maybe you'd start by researching some fun facts about spiders. And then maybe

“you get comfortable enough to sort of be in the same room as a spider. I think the same can be true”

with uncertainty. We can build our uncertainty tolerance by sort of micro-dosing uncertain moments, by consciously putting yourself in uncertain situations and safer controlled environments, you are training your brain to be more comfortable with uncertainty when you are, say, facing that job uncertainty or that medical diagnosis. And so we can learn to build more uncertainty

tolerance through exposure. The problem is modern life makes it very easy for us to stay in our

comfort zones. Whether it's our climate-controlled rooms that we're in or our filter bubbles that we consume online or even just like our neighborhood in our cities or our towns that we live in, it's really easy to just stay in that comfortable place. But discomfort is necessary in order to learn and to grow. And so in the same way that unlearning is a precursor to being able to learn new information, developing the ability to not know or maybe we can call it unknowing is a precursor

to being able to learn and to grow. I've never heard that before. What does that mean unlearning

“is a precursor to learning your information? I think it's a very popular idea and sort of education”

pedagogy about the necessary tool to trade some of our hubris, some of our assumption that we know best for humility. And whether that's updating or thinking about something that you once believe that's no longer true or opening your mind to receiving new information, one sign of a good learner, reclose our minds and narrows our scope. But when we are able to maintain that level of uncertainty of unknowing, we actually open our minds to what actually emerges.

We can maybe surprise ourselves by learning that their neighbor that voted for someone different than you actually has things to teach you. That is sort of the my goal of the book is to help breeders get more tolerant, more comfortable with uncertainty so that they can open their mind and choose to treat the future with a little bit more curiosity. I'm really interested in that specifically. I think that idea of intellectual humility and that idea that we maybe don't know

everything and it is one of the biggest things that I admire in people is when they say,

here's what I think. But I also am open to the idea that I could change my mind if you present

more information. But if you believe one thing and then you find out near information and change your mind,

“great. I want more of those people. I want people to flip flat from wrong to right. That's what”

we all should be aspiring to do. Totally. Yeah, we should be open to updating our world view, based on new information that we receive. For example, there's this professor named Phil Taplock and he was a professor of mine in college. He collated data from a decades worth of predictions from the smartest people in the world. So these are like economists, politicians, journalists, experts in different fields. Then he took those predictions and measured them against what actually

happened in the future. His big canonical finding was that the average expert was roughly as accurate as a dart throwing chimpanzee. As much as we want to know who's going to win the election or when the market is going to crash or how seductive some of those hot takes are on social media.

The truth is we're not very good at predicting and the people who are the best predictors

are the ones who update their worldview and update their forecasts as often as possible.

is this is what I believe today based on what I know now. And I'd like that sort of framing of ideas because inherent in this sort of construction is the idea that I might learn more later

“that might change what I believe in the future. And if we could trade some of that hubris”

or that certainty for humility, I think we would live in a much more connected, open, and generous world. You're from San Francisco. You have worked in a lot of tech adjacent industries. You're personal and professional interests have intersected with a lot of technology. I am curious about how artificial intelligence plays into these ideas because I'll just lay my own prejudices on the table. One of the things that I find the most unappealing about AI is that it presents in my

experience at least. It has always presented me with a definitive answer. And I think that is

something that makes me really deeply uncomfortable with it as the source of information for many people right now. But I would love for you to push in the spirit of intellectual humility. I would love for you to tell me that either I'm wrong and there's something I'm missing or that I'm right in that uncertainty plays in this way in some different way. So how do AI and uncertainty interact in your mind? Yeah, it's sort of two levels. They're sort of the question about how do we personally interact

with AI and how does that change the way that we see the world? And then they're sort of like the macro question about like how AI will impact jobs or careers moving forward. So let's take each of

them one at a time. The first one is, you know, I think their models are getting better at not hallucinating

which is to say that the information that they are presenting is more and more accurate. The problem is when like I was debating between these two jobs, we're looking for certainty where there is no certainty to be found. One thing that I think these LLMs and these chatbots do is create the expectation that answers should be readily available even for big questions in our lives that don't necessarily have definitive certain answers. The second thing they do is they take away the need for

us to wrestle with problems. So there's this idea that I was coined initially by the the writer Cal Newport which I really like and it's about cognitive fitness and so similar to the metaphor used earlier in order to get stronger and we have to lift weights we have to put our

“muscles under tension. That's what allows us to get stronger. Similarly cognitively with our thinking,”

we need time under tension in order to grow our brains in order to learn in order to think harder. And I think one thing that I does is it allows us to circumvent some of that time under tension because we can just ask the chatbot for the answer. And there's some really interesting studies from MIT recently, people who were given the opportunity to use AI to help assist them right papers.

And what they found is basically the papers were good but the writers of the paper did not

retain any of the information or the points that they were making. And so I think that's the real risk where we outsourced the hard thinking to AI in a way that detracts my own ability to actually learn and to grow. When it comes to sort of predictions about AI, I think we have this natural tendency to either lionize or villainize a technology to say, okay, AI is going to automate all wrote tasks and push us towards high level work and we're going to be in the subtopia of UBI

and being able to just focus on writing poetry or the other side of the spectrum which is this class warfare is imminent and the robots are going to show up at our doors with pink slips and there's going to be this massive disruption that's going to lead to this very dark age.

“And the truth is, you know, as seductive as both of these world views are,”

no one really knows. There was this great prediction about how people that looked at scans and doctors' offices. So whether they're cardiologists or people that are trying to analyze X-ray imagery, there was this very smart professor who said, by the end of 2025, there's going to be no more cardiologists and then there were more cardiologists at the end of 2025 than there were before the year began. And so this comes back to this parable which I'll just

share a brief version of which is, there's this farmer and his horse runs away from the small village and his neighbors come to his door and they say, "Oh, we're so sorry to hear about your horse, what a tragedy." And the farmer says, "Maybe yes, maybe now." When the next day the horse comes back and with it there are seven wild horses in tow and tow, seven in the farmers, livelihood depends on these horses. Now he has eight horses where he only had

one before. And his neighbors come to this door and I say, "Oh, he's so lucky. What great fortune!"

one of the horses and falls off the horse and breaks his leg. And again, the neighbors return and they say, "We're so sorry to hear about your son, what a bummer." And the farmer says, "Maybe yes, maybe now." The day after that, generals from the military come by to draft people into the war and because the son is Brooklyn's leg, he gets out of the draft. The neighbor say, "What great luck!" and the farmer says, "Maybe yes, maybe now." And so that's sort of my take on AI.

Like, yes, it's really seductive to make predictions about exactly what the world is going to look like in 10 years or the future of writers or the future of all of these different creative

“professions. But the truth is we don't quite know yet. And the more time we can remain in this space”

of not knowing the more receptive we can be to the actual information that presents itself, as opposed to expectations of what it's to come. So let's start with someone who is maybe a recent graduate or early in their career and they're just swimming in this pool of uncertainty. And they feel really helpless without answers. They have no idea what job or career path they want to take or even where to begin figuring it out. How can they begin to guide themselves through

that immense uncertainty or even to just view it in a way that allows them to start taking actions

and that just feel completely paralyzed by it? Yeah, first and foremost, I empathize with the

situation of new grads today. I don't want to sugarcoat the state of the job market or what it's like to be applying to jobs coming out of school. A few things I'll say. One is the fastest way to learn

“what you want to do with your life is to build, which is to say to get proximate to actually”

doing the work. I think this applies to people at any stage of their career. Often when we're trying to figure out what we want to do next, we get caught in these sort of thought experiments. And you say, oh, do I want to be a project manager or do I want to be an artist and you sort of get caught in your head thinking like what would be most fulfilling or what might allow you to pay the bills, etc. But the fastest way to learn whether either of those paths is actually something that is

sustainable or viable or feasible for you is to do it, which is to say, not wait for anyone to give you permission or to say, please, I want to commission you to pay this painting, but just to do it on your own terms. I, as a writer, get a lot of DMs and people asking for advice on how to become a writer and often the first question will ask them is what do you enjoy writing? What do you view written recently? And people often say, well, I haven't actually written anything, but I have

all these ideas of what I want to write. And to that I say, go out and try to do it. You know,

at idea this place that I used to work, we used to say, never come to a meeting without a prototype.

And so being able to prototype your career will be the quickest way to tell you whether or not it is actually something that is desirable to you. The other thing it will do is give you a sense of agency. Part of the reason why it's so hard to be in the job market right now is because all of these applicants are sending out their resumes and cover letters into the void and waiting for a hiring manager to take mercy on their solos. It feels like they don't have very much control.

And the way that you can take back control is by trying to build something on your own terms. It might not sound very optimistic at this point, but if you are curious about, say, building your own business or becoming a advertising art director or trying out your hand at coding,

“the best way to show your work is to actually do that work. And that skill of being able to learn”

through building is going to be one of the most important skills as we go from a more sort of

laddered version of what a career looks like into this more sort of me-andering path-age, this pathless path that we're all entering today. So build to learn and don't wait for anyone else to give you permission to start creating the work that you want to be creating. How did writing this new book change how you thought about everything you'd learned about jobs in the first book? Yeah, so the first book is about how work has come to be so central to

our identities. And I talked to many different workers from Michelin Star Chefs to Wall Street bankers to South London years at Google about how to think about their jobs. And the main argument of the book is about the value of diversifying your identity, rather than putting all of your eggs in one basket, if you're able to diversify the sources of identity, meaning, purpose in your life, then it is a much more sustainable way to think about work's role. I think it's also great advice

for how to deal with uncertainty. If all of your identity eggs are in your basket of being

fault of your own, then you can drive you towards an existential crisis. But if you have been able

to diversify to say, okay, I'm going to invest in my relationships over here. I have these hobbies that really bring a lot of meaning to me. I have work that is a source of meaning, but it's not the sole source of meaning. You're better equipped to deal with whatever slings or arrows the future

“holds. And so I think that is the link to me. You know, how to not know, you're never going to”

know with absolutely certainty what your career or your job might look like. But the more you diversify your source of identity, of meaning, of purpose, the wider foundation you will have, and even if one pillar of your identity were to crumble, you will remain standing tall. What if someone is in a job that they do not like? They feel like this is really unpleasant. I am not like you my day today. I'm dreading going to work on Mondays. But I don't have a clear next step.

I should I quit. Should I stay? How do you deal with that kind of uncertainty? I hear this a lot, especially these days, particularly in relation to burnout. And one of the things that I've learned from research that has been really helpful for me is that there are actually three at least three different types of burnout. There is over extension burnout, which is I have too much of my plate. I feel very strapped. There is depletion burnout, which is I don't feel like I am

having enough time to recharge. And then there is misalignment burnout, which is I feel this discrepancy between what I value and what I'm doing with my time. And often when people are not happy with their job, it's one of these three things. So when it comes to over extension burnout, maybe just a matter of doing less of trying to say no, set better boundaries, make sure that you have enough time to do deep work, the things that are maybe more fulfilling with your work.

If you're in a state of depletion burnout, you feel like you aren't adequately resting or recharging, I would recommend trying to find active forms of rest. So often we will go to work. We'll come home, we'll try to turn off our brain, turn on Netflix, but actually by investing in things like your local community, your hobbies, something like learning a new language or going on a weekly walk with your best friend. Those are the types of things that will help you adequately

adequately recharge so that you can be more present and productive when you're back on the clock. And lastly, if you're in a place of misalignment burnout, where there's this discrepancy between what you care about and what you're doing, maybe that means that you need to make a change. Maybe that means either changing your role within your company or leaving your company to try something else. But distinguishing between these three categories is often a good place to start

when you're having that sort of ambience-ensive. I'm not happy, but I'm not exactly sure why. As customers and customers want you for all of them, go to your product market, then in the next step or in your first big enterprise deal. With KaE, the development

always makes faster and further enhancements. And that's before you go.

The topic of security and compliance is really easy to do.

“That's why it's important for us. That's why there are a lot of startups in front of Wanda and Waksensicher.”

And when it's as audited, he's still in front of me. Everyone carries both profound experiences and untold stories worth exploring. Who is your greatest love and why did you fall in love with them? My greatest love was a man I met when I was 25 years old and the minute I saw him, I somehow knew that he was the love of my life. Hi, I'm on a cross brand on my podcast, stories from a stranger. I believe in approaching strangers with genuine curiosity.

Listen to stories from a stranger wherever you get your podcasts. What about in friendships? There is especially in the beginning of a new friendship. So much of the barrier I feel is the uncertainty. Do they actually like me? Do they want to hang out with me? Is it weird if I meet this person in the park and then say, hey, can I get your number so we can just hang out with friends? Or should I not do that? Like so much of what stops us from

actually making deeper social connections with friends is uncertain around what is or is not. Allow normal, wanted, desired. How can we think about or change our perspective on that kind of

“uncertainty? I think it's similar to romantic relationships in some way, which is the first thing”

that I always tell people if they're looking into me to partner or looking to make a new friend

with all the reasons why they probably are judging you and they don't want new friend anyways or

“this side of the other thing. So I'd start from that place, assume they want to connect.”

And the second thing I'll say is to be an initiator, which is to say that if you want more friends

in your life, be willing to make the first move. And then the third thing I'll say is give your friendship a reason for being as my friend and a Goldfarb likes to say, every friendship needs an about. It's not quite a complete sentence, especially as you're an older adult, to say, I'd want a new friend. Give yourself a reason to make that friend. I want a new friend to watch the game with. I want a new friend to read books with. I need want a new friend to talk about politics

or to think about my career with. And if that relationship has a reason for being, it's much more likely to be sustainable and to give the relationship itself a sense of purpose, rather than what happens so often, which is a sort of like, we should totally hang out sometime. Maybe you like

“hang out once, but you don't necessarily have that reason to come back again and again.”

Okay, and then my last hypothetical one is a personal one for you, which I imagine you have experienced many times on the other end, which is what if you are a person and you are meeting someone and you're not a hundred percent sure how to pronounce their name. You're not sure. Is it sign money? Is it Simone? Is it Simone A? You don't want to say it wrong. You don't want to be rude. How can you handle that uncertainty? As a person who I know has to think about this many times in

his life. It's a great note and it's the first question every single podcast has or substitute teacher of my life has ever asked me. Yesterday, I gave a talk at a company and a friend of mine was the person that brought me in. We were sort of like loose coworkers working at the same company at the same time. She said, "Why don't you come speak to my organization?" I give the talk. This morning I get an email from her and say, "I'm so sorry, this is so embarrassing, but do you pronounce

your name Simone A or Simone, sort of my nickname?" And as the recipient, I felt so grateful that she asked because she was willing to traverse some of the, you know, awkwardness or social faux pas of asking the question, even though we've known each other for a number of years because she cared enough to get it right. And as anyone who has sort of a Italian or harder to pronounce name out there will probably agree with, it means a lot when people try to get it right and I'm

never judging someone for getting it wrong if they show a genuine interest in who I am as a person.

Maybe that's a good note to end on. Simone, it's been such a pleasure talking to you. I knew I was, I will say I was certain that this would be a good conversation, but thank you for making it be a good conversation, and for helping us all to embrace someone's routine our lives. Thanks so much for having me. Cheers! That is it for today's episode of How to Be A Better Human. Thank you so much to our guests.

Simone A stoles off, his new book is called How to Not Know. My new book is called Humor Me, and you can find out more about me and my book at criss-duffycomedy.com. How to Be A Better Human is put together by a team that seems like they really do know. On the TED side, we've got the Masters of New Onts Complexity, Danielle Aballa, Rezo, Van Van Chen, Michelle Quint, Chloe Shasha, Brooks, Valentina Bohanini, Laney, Lat Tonsicason, Manivong, Antonio Lay and Joseph

D'Bride, Ryan Lash, knew how to edit this video, and the episode was fact checked by Mateo Salis, who is uncertain that we can say with certainty which times in history have been most uncertain. On the PRX side, they know how to make podcasts sound good and how to not make them sound bad. It's Morgan Flannery, Norgale, Patrick Grant and Jocelyn Gonzalez. Thanks to you for listening. In a world that demands answers, all that I demand is that you share this episode with someone who

you think would enjoy it. We will be back next week with even more how to be a better human. At least I think we will be back. There is no way for me to know where certainty is.

“You have to worry about it already. We are live on tour of his 2-goats, 26-26 these”

months and it is still one of the last tickets that you will not let go of the game.

We always want to live live live with his friends and friends. Then we should be happy.

And where can you find it? Of course you should say it. Our family. I just said that the family of Tamiya will be in the show. We are in Vienna, in Zurich, in Erlang, in Frankfurt, in Heidelberg and in Stuttgart. We are happy to see you again next week. Have a nice day. Have a nice day. Have a nice show.