Book “Uncertain - The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure”:
Transcript:
Agile FM radio for the agile community.
[00:00:05] Joe Krebs: Thank you for tuning into another episode of Agile FM. Today I have Maggie Jackson with me. She wrote a book called Uncertain the Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure. She also has published a book Distracted you might be very familiar with because it has been published a few years ago. Maggie is an award winning author, journalist.
She writes about social events. In particular about technology. She's a contributor to the Boston Globe. She wrote for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and she has been featured on media around the world, including MSNBC, Wire. com, and the Sunday Times. And now she is on Agile FM. So thank you so much for being here and sharing some thoughts on the latest release, Uncertain, with the Agile FM listeners.
[00:00:54] Maggie Jackson: My pleasure. Great to be with you.
[00:00:56] Joe Krebs: Yeah, that's awesome. You have some really good endorsements and praise here from people like Daniel Pink, Gretchen Rubin and Sherry Turkle on your book. This is it's really amazing. You you have written this book. This was recently released in 2024. So this is a new publication.
What drove you to writing this book? Uncertain. What was your motivation of approaching this project, this book?
[00:01:24] Maggie Jackson: Yes, sure. Especially because uncertainty seems so foggy and monolithic and negative. And I, after I wrote the book Distracted, which is about, the gains and costs that we have in a split focus world wanting to write a book about thinking, so if you have a moment somewhere, focus, or you have the skill to focus, what do you do with it?
And of course, thinking well is our challenge as we move forward in this world, in this day and age. And so the first chapter of the new book was about uncertainty, and it became in a classic way, the whole book, because first of all, because I discovered, veins of or explosions of new research in so many different fields from medicine to business to psychology, a lot of new research about uncertainty.
And it hadn't been a very well studied topic, believe it or not before. And by that, Epistemic or psychological uncertainty, which is the human response to the unknown. So I'm really writing about our human response to the unknown and the basically the idea that when you meet something new and unexpected, Your response is to understand that you've reached the limits of your knowledge that you don't know that it could be this way.
It could be that way. So that's how I fell into writing the book and I discovered as well that uncertainty is highly misunderstood. It's maligned and yet it's far. It's not weakness. It's not inertia. It's not the negative that we all assume it to be today in this efficiency oriented society.
[00:03:03] Joe Krebs: Yeah that's true. We probably have some listeners here at Agile FM that are maybe in the corporate world and they are building products and or executing projects of some sort. And and we see the desire of being certain. We see the desire of running and having a plan, even if the plan is very short and maybe only a few weeks long.
Uncertainty is always present, isn't it?
[00:03:29] Maggie Jackson: Exactly. And again there are these two kinds of uncertainty. There will always be unpredictability there. Life will always take twists and turns. And we might have the data and the models and the plan. And yet, there's so much we can't know.
Despite this incredible probabilistic weather models that we have, you don't know if the snowstorm will dump one or two inches on your backyard next week. So there's so much we can't know. We don't know, but what we can do is control our response to the unknown. We can get skillful at understanding how to manage not knowing or what we don't know and what we want, what we're not sure about.
And that's where the, that's where the news is fantastic. There's so much now that relates to how uncertainty basically is very highly connected to. Cognitive skills like curiosity and agility and resilience, which are exactly the kind of cognitive skills we need now on. So I think you're right.
And another point I'd make is that we always will need resolution. We always know we'll need an answer. And of course, we want a plan and a kind of security. And yet. By, over predicting or clinging to a plan when it's out of date. That's where we lose the agility. So what I'm talking about is opening up the space between question and answer.
Uncertainty is really that middle ground. It's basically. The brain's way of telling itself that there's something to be learned here when you're meeting something new, you have a kind of stress response, which is really, that's where the unease and the discomfort of uncertainty comes from. It's a stress response.
But now we're beginning to find out scientifically that unease is actually highly beneficial because, as I mentioned, the brain is, more receptive to new data when you're unsure. Your working memory actually improves when you're don't know when you meet something new and your focus expands.
Scientists call this curious eyes. So this is the human response to the unknown. That's really the good stress and wakefulness of uncertainty. And in fact, one study, which I really found very illuminating. is a longitudinal study of executives in Europe. This was around 2009, when the European Union was doubling in size, basically, the markets were expanding, it was the opposite of Brexit, basically, but very controversial.
And executives were, really had many different reactions to this proposed change. Two business school professors interviewed 100 CEOs in Europe at the time, and quite a number of them were quite sure of what was going to happen, they airtight kind of predictions. It'll be good for my company.
Many said. Oh, it'll be terrible for my company, this new market explosion. But then actually the business school professors were surprised that there was a third group in the mix. They were actually surprised that there were ambivalent CEOs. And a year later, after the expansion, it occurred. Low and behold, it was the ambivalent CEOs who had actually were more resourceful, inventive, and inclusive.
They listened to multiple perspectives, and they actually went out and did innovative things, whereas the sure CEOs tended to do, stick to the status quo and basically almost do nothing at all. And that tells you so much about what unsureness does. It opens up the space of possibilities. Very important.
[00:07:19] Joe Krebs: Very important. You just mentioned in these stress moments, right? Positive kind of things are happening. How did you, did your research, did you find anything interesting about. Creativity, innovation in the, in those moments of stress, I would be curious because there's focus, right?
And, but maybe there's also innovation coming out of those moments of Uncertainty.
[00:07:42] Maggie Jackson: Yes. I think that the the uncertainty mindset the good stress of uncertainty first of all helps us attune to our environment. So many studies about learning in dynamic environments find that the people who have this positive.
response and positive attitude toward the unknown are the ones that are more accurate, better performers. So it's really helping you pick up on what's going on. If you walk into a meeting thinking, ah, more of the same, blah, blah, blah, then you're not, you, it makes sense. You're not going to be picking up on the mood in the room or in seeing the facial expression.
So I think this good stress of uncertainty, Does help us be attuned to what's to the change. And that's the starting point. But as I mentioned, the CEOs in this in the European market expansion, we're highly resourceful. So how does this agility or this uncertainty, this good stress of uncertainty help us be creative?
There are many different ways in which first of all, in order to be creative, We have to set step away from the known. So very often the human loves the familiar and the routine. And we actually operate in life using something called predictive processing, which is using your mental models and the heuristics that you've built up based on your experience in the past to expect and assume, the doctor hears chest pains and then thinks heart attacks or, a certain kind of client will evoke an assumption or expectation when they walk into the meeting about what their demands are going to be. We expect so much, but we operate so much into the routine That it's really important that we break from this routine in order to be creative.
That's what innovation is. It's working at the edge. And so that's also what uncertainty helps you do. It makes, it helps you. Studies of divergent thinkers are highly creative with idea generation. Show that they have a kind of cognitive flexibility that they're more able to remain, make unusual connections in their life.
These are the type of people who are, again, more able to operate within the space of uncertainty. And in fact, divergent thinking is actually highly related. It's based on the same brain networks as daydreaming which is a form of, daydreams. What if questionings that they actually remove us from the here and now and they allow us to operate in what one scientist called transcendent thinking mode.
That's basically just asking what if questions and daydreams are actually 50 percent of daydreams are future oriented. So I'd say one of the ways in which we can Manage uncertainty. Is to step back from that need to be productive in a very narrow way and allow ourselves time to muse just for a minute or two.
I interviewed one phenomenal genius scientist who's He's extremely innovative. A MacArthur winner. He's, he's been done. He's, he just, his laboratory just found the first new antibiotic in 35 years. He's, and he spends at least an hour a day daydreaming and it a coherent thought experiment.
But this is not what we. usually consider successful behavior.
[00:11:14] Joe Krebs: Yeah. In the Agile Kata series which I had in the first 10 weeks of 2024 year on Agile FM, we explored the pattern of discovering or dealing with uncertainty as a pattern. So this has been interesting for everybody.
Listening to this here right now to say okay, first and foremost, it's a positive thing. It's a thing we have to deal with. It's uncertainty. Now you're adding even daydreaming as a positive thing to the mix. If somebody in a corporate world listens to this right now, it's we'll book very different.
We work very efficient. And now we're saying like these kind of evidences we see out there of working in different ways could be very productive and creative. And innovative. What's your recommendation on around cultural change? That obviously goes along with this trust, for example, like between employees and the organization to work with an uncertainty mindset.
[00:12:11] Maggie Jackson: Yes, it's really important. And I think, as you mentioned, we live in a society that, whether or not it's in schools, but also particularly in the workplace, operates from an outcome orientation. We don't really pay much attention to process and uncertainty is process. It literally is, as I mentioned, the space between question and answer.
We think of efficiency and it being the, being a one. We think of ourselves as being successful if we're operating at one tempo, speedy. And we think, and also we our ways of knowing, our very definition of what it means to know is being changed by technology, which is constantly offering us a steady diet of neat, pat, instant answers.
That's not how the world works. The mind works. That's not how the flourishing human works. So what can we do to push back on that? I think one of the things that leaders can do in the Agile Kata world is to change their vocabulary in and around words like maybe for instance, expressing, we can actually express.
Express and operate in uncertainty without appearing weak if we're willing to accept its benefits. So words like maybe and sometimes are called hedge words. Now they're often assumed to be signs of weakness, but actually linguistics shows that they do two things. If you say, maybe you're actually signaling that you're receiving.
And then secondly, you're also signaling that there's something more to know, which is very important because most group discussions literally focus on what everyone already knows, And what gets left off the table is something called a hidden profile of individual diverse information. And that's how groups progress.
That's how groups are literally more creative. And so studies out of Harvard show that the use of these words may be sometimes, instead of you're wrong or therefore, which closed down the discussion. These hedge words are actually seen by others during difficult conversations as making a person look more professional and is if they're a better teammate.
That flies in the face of our assumptions. We think of certainty as being successful when the science shows that it, that's not right. And I don't mean that we can never be sure. We, I don't mean that we're not striving for answers. That we need to. Inject more uncertainty into our lives in, and we will as an investment in getting the better answer, not just the first answer.
[00:14:46] Joe Krebs: It could be a second valid answer, right? It could be one, but it could be a second or a third. And so that could lead us to that. Now, I do want to ask you a question. This is really fascinating stuff here. Did you, while writing this book and doing your research everybody's talking about uncertain times and everything.
Did you find anything that we are actually living in times that are more uncertain? Then let's say a hundred years ago. Or is this just a perception of the, in the media we're receiving or anything like that? I'm just trying to find out, I'll be actually living in more uncertain times.
[00:15:25] Maggie Jackson: I think I'd offer a qualified yes.
It's very difficult to compare across vast time periods. 100 years ago was the advent of the industrial age. And I studied that quite a bit for distracted and I'd say it's really hard to make these cross epic comparison. But what I will say is that many studies show in various fields. That yes, unpredictability is rising.
For instance, work hours on average for more people are more volatile. With a 24 7 economy, more people are having, just in time scheduling, which throws their household and their work and etc., leads to stress and frustration. Weather patterns are obviously, due to climate change, becoming more volatile and more erratic.
And so that adds more uncertainty into our days. Geopolitics are, happen to be in a time right now when, with between war and the rise of authoritarian regimes, et cetera. You can see this as not, I think part is, this is not just a perception, there is a reality that the unknowns are rising.
And part of this culturally, I will say is because I think that. Humans are become better at not hiding behind as much as our we expect certainty there. There's a lot of evidence now that old certainties are rumbling. It used to be that the constellations were seen as set in stone. Even just 10 years, the brain was seen as set in stone by adulthood.
And now we know neurogenesis occurs throughout. From cradle to grave. And so now we're faced with the unveiling or the revealing of the fact that we don't know. And that's why I call this a crossroads in human history. I think we're actually at the cusp or the tipping point where the human approach to not knowing Is changing and I think we have to seize this opportunity to understand first to understand and then to actually live lives in which we're more honest about our uncertainty and we gain skill in being right.
[00:17:45] Joe Krebs: You hit on some topics here in terms of changes and that your study found that we are. Living in, in times that are more uncertain, we are recording this here in March, 2024. And there was one topic that is all over the business world and that is currently AI.
And there's probably a lot of uncertainty about this topic right now. What kind of I, just while you were talking, I was like there was the uncertainty about what is going to happen about AI, right? We don't know, right? I think we can say that, but then also saying, I don't know, which is, I think is a positive thing, right?
Based on your explanation. Isn't it also the danger that AI did that answer might even be less acceptable because we should know now, right? Because there is AI, we can ask AI. And I do say that obviously in a more provocative way here. What's your, do you have any advice for people that are possibly thinking that the uncertain times ahead of them because of AI, how to deal with a situation like that based on your research a profession that might, everybody might be talking about, AI is going to replace that or reduce that or have an impact on them, makes them, makes people a learner again Give any advice.
[00:19:07] Maggie Jackson: Yeah, I think that it's a really important front and center. It's it. This AI has gone from a back burner issue, a kind of specialist niche issue to something that's in every workplace. And it's in our lives, whether or not we're. Getting a a mammogram as a woman, or we're driving down the road in a semi autonomous car that isn't even self driving yet.
We, AI is infused, woven into our days, and we should wake up to its implications. I think there are two levels to your question. One is the individual response to technology that's becoming more infused with data. With AI and it's really important, I believe, to become better thinkers in a world in which we will be working more alongside and maybe under the thumb of or, AI.
So AI generated responses will be very tempting to accept, but we have to remain extraordinarily vigilant. And when we can way we can do so is through allowing ourselves to be better thinkers. Uncertainty strengthens thinking, whether it's the surgeon deliberating the operium. Operating room, or the creative product designer who wants to use a little and then gain access to a world of not knowing in so many ways.
Uncertainty strengthens our thinking, and that's couldn't be more crucial today. So that's our individual response. And I would say as well that. Putting down, putting away, gaining distance, gaining perspectives on our devices is also important to this goal of being humans because one of the most on an, again, as an, on a personal individual basis, we as humans have fallen into the trap of continuing to use outdated language revolving around The brain, the mind, no neuroscientist would agree with the language that the public uses about uploading, downloading memories or programming ourselves.
The brain is not a deficient computer and that's really important to teach our children and to keep in mind. Actually, the mind is everything. It's an organic, networked, constantly evolving and highly, a process in itself. And that's why AI is actually trying to emulate this work. We do ourselves a huge disservice by thinking of the mind as the machine, but then on the actual, to finally answer your point about AI in our society.
I did a deep dive into uncertainty in AI, and I'm really heartened by a new movement by some of AI's top top leaders. The world class leaders in AI are actually working feverishly to inject uncertainty in robots and models. Now, what does that mean in a nutshell? Basically, all of AI has been created since the 1950s with one.
definition of intelligence, that in an intelligent being achieves its goals, no matter the cost. That's a very rational view of intelligence. What we have now, to put it really briefly, our AI it models and robots that achieve a goal with less and less human input now by allowing using the same sort of probabilistic reasoning to have AI that can be unsure in its aims, not just unsure about what to do if a human's in its path or unsure as in how does it deal with the noise and its data?
That's how AI operates in the world. But now to have it unsure in its aims. So the robot, AI housekeeper will, instead of just being programmed or designed to fetch you a coffee based on the cheapest way or the fastest way or whoever that, whatever the designer originated that it w it's now teachable.
It's stoppable. I beta tested a AI robot arm that could be used for people with handicaps or in manufacturing. This robot arm. Would actually really, inflate these armbands as it was drawing a line, a welding sort of thing across a table. It would ask me where I wanted the line to be, how close, etc.
It was working with me in a way that traditional classic AI. Cannot do. And the second most important thing about uncertain AI, I call it the rise of the I don't know robot is that it's more transparent. So when people are working with medical models to find the new protein to deal with the new antigen or antibody, they can actually see AI that will take multiple paths toward a solution.
Rather than one path as in the classic rationalist view, and they also can the robots behavior is more transparent. So it's actually more intelligent to users, studies show. So I find this incredibly heartening and, when and if this comes to a store near you we should be. We should be, as humans, really interested in the idea that, it's very ironic, uncertainty in AI can actually allow us controllability, to be control, to control the robot, to work with the robot through AI.
And the last point I'll make about that is that a rise of uncertainty as a way of re imagining AI It proves to me how just as I mentioned at the beginning uncertainty is being seen as a strength of mind in medicine. It's now being now there are efforts to have doctors trained in tolerating uncertainty, admitting it, expressing it in order to avoid burnout and over testing in education.
Uncertainty is being seen as a really important skill to equip children and young adults so that they are more resilient. There are actually interventions going on with this. It, in the business world, uncertain people are waking up to uncertainty. The ambivalent CEO that I mentioned, and now in AI, this is a yet another way in which we are finally understanding that an island of unbending knowledge is a very. weak place to be when it comes to an unpredictable world, if you and I,
[00:25:51] Joe Krebs: There's a lot to digest. Maggie there is so much, there's so much wealth of information. And I feel like listeners will get an idea of what kind of wealth of information is in the book, Uncertain that is available now.
To the end of our conversation sorry, I put you here on the spot in terms of self reflection on your book. Was there anything you approached while writing the book where you learned something about uncertainty, the book writing itself, yourself? as the author. Is there anything, maybe you have a story where you was like, I use, you learn something in the writing process.
I don't know. I haven't asked you how long was the writing process or overall, when did you start? And when did it?
[00:26:33] Maggie Jackson: Oh, it took a number of years. I was a little, it was a little bit of an off and on process, but it took a number of years as you can see from the many footnotes and the adventures I had in I was out in the field.
It wasn't just, book research in the operating rooms, in the AI labs, in the homeless shelters, activist campaigns. I really had a lot of adventures and there were also a lot of surprises. I learned so much about other ways of knowledge and how expecting the world to be predictable, which is a little bit how, people operate, we really do sometimes live our lives as if we hope, pray, think, assume that life will be predictable. And the more you can dismantle that assumption. The more you're actually liberated because you are again, agile, you are able to be open to life's changes. So I find that uncertainty, the more I let it in, the more I operate that way, the more I'm not indecisive of the point of inaction, but I am harnessing uncertainty to go forward in a better way.
The more I can do that, the more I feel stronger and more able. And in fact, studies show that to be the case, that when we can dismantle the fear, it's the fear of the unknown that holds us back, not the unknown itself. So I find that this has helped me not only in relationships with other people.
It's helped me in my writing where the frustration of a long process of figuring something out is not to me now a weakness or a deficiency. But actually a strength and just part of a natural part of the process of going deep and understanding the change. So I feel as though I'm having more fun in life.
[00:28:26] Joe Krebs: Yeah. And there are some people and you can see those are the fun people, right? It's who are naturally navigating that way through life and versus the alternative. Yeah. Maggie, I want to thank you so much for coming on Agile FM. I have the book link. I have references how people can get in touch with your work with your books in touch with you on the show page on agile. fm. I want to thank you for spending some time here with the Agile FM listeners and good luck to you with the book launch and everything that is associated with all of those things in the coming months.
[00:29:02] Maggie Jackson: Oh, thank you so much. It was a pleasure. Great conversation.