May 13, 2026 • 24 mins
Simone Stolzoff, author of How to Not Know, shares tips for building our tolerance for uncertainty
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a slightly longer one part
of the series where I interview fascinating people about how
they take their days from great to awesome and any
(00:23):
advice they have for the rest of us. So today
I am delighted to welcome Simone stoles Off to Before Breakfast.
Simone is the author of The Good Enough Job and
also the author of the brand new book How Not
to Know the value of uncertainty in a world that
demands answers. So Simone, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Yeah, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit
about yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
I'm a journalist and an author. I wasn't always this
profession that I had sort of a meandering career. In college,
I studied poetry and economics, and so maybe you can
already see the tension between the pursuit of art and
the pursuit of commerce. But I like to think of
my as taking big swings at big questions, and so
my first book, The Good Enough Job, was about how
(01:05):
work has come to be so central to our identities,
and in the release and afterwards, I kept hearing questions
from listeners and readers about how they should think about
their career and the face of about the uncertainty in
the world and their careers and their lives. And so
my second book, How To Not Know, is sort of
response to that. It's an attempt to help you get
better at dealing with uncertainty, and God knows we all
(01:26):
need that right now.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Well, I would say, I mean, is life more uncertain
now or are we just more aware of various aspects
of the uncertainty.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
It's a little bit of both. And so there's been
some really good research that has come out. There's this
project called the Economic Policy Uncertainty Index that has tracked
global uncertainty over time, and since the study began in
the eighties, the five highest measurements of uncertainty have all
occurred in the last five years. So you think about
things like the COVID pandemic, the Warren Ukraine, Iran tariff policy.
(01:58):
We live in an incredibly uncertain world. Now. If you were
talking to someone who lived in Floorince during the bubonic plague,
they might think, Okay, maybe it's not that uncertain But
I think the biggest thing that's changed recently is that
our tolerance for uncertainty has declined, and so with the
rise of the Internet and mobile phones, it's done two things.
One is, it's created the expectation that answers should be
(02:20):
readily available, and so whereas maybe five years ago I
might have been fine not knowing the name of a
given actor, now I feel this almost involuntary need to
reach for my phone. And the second thing that's done
is it's taken all of the world's crises, all of
the uncertainty that might exist out there, and flattened it,
and it brought it right to our doorstep. And so
the world is incredibly uncertain, our tolerance for uncertainty is
(02:42):
in decline, and that leaves us so much of the
anxiety and fear that so many people are feeling today.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah, that is true about you know, be out at
dinner with people and somebody asked the question, what was
that guy who was in this? And you know, you're
all pulling out your phones to check its, like, well,
none of us actually needed to know that. We could
have continued our life and this dinner without that. But
you mentioned that we're less tolerant of uncertainty, then why
is it important for us to be tolerant of uncertainty?
Speaker 2 (03:10):
At the most basic level, the world is uncertain, especially
when you think about anything that happens in the future,
and so if you are intolerant of uncertainty, individuals tend
to be less creative, for example, because when they hit
a moment of discomfort or ambiguity, they tend to go
for the safest option, which isn't always the optimal choice.
(03:33):
Communities tend to be more cohesive and collaborative in the
face of higher levels of uncertainty tolerance, because they're able
to collaborate across differences, whereas if you're intolerant of uncertainty,
you might not want to speak to your neighbor, or
speak to a stranger, or speak to someone who voted
for someone differently than you. And as a society at large,
(03:56):
when we're intolerant of uncertainty, we tend to not be
very resilient or adaptive. Part of what it means to
live in the modern world is to be able to
face uncertainty and continue to make decisions, continue to persist,
and if we're intolerant, then we continue to close our
minds and not open our minds to the possibilities that
(04:17):
might be sitting on the other side of what we
don't know.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
So here's something I don't know, Simone is what the
wait times will be at Newark Airport, where I am
trying to go in the next few days. We're in
a period of time this will air later, but when
there's a lot of uncertainty about TSA staffing and things
like that. So I find myself scrolling around online a
(04:40):
lot trying to find anybody who claims to know anything
about the new airport wait times. Why am I doing that?
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I think it's an attempt to find control in that
situation that you might not necessarily have very much control.
So in the book, I talk about three different traps
that we often fall into. The first is comfort, our
desire to stay comfortable, which keeps us from exploring things
outside of our comfort zone. The second is hubris, our
tendency to think that we know best, which keeps us
(05:10):
from admitting what we don't know. And the last trap
that I talk about is control, our desire to plan
to know exactly what the future will hold, even when
we sometimes cannot. And so I think in the situation
like this with the New York airport, certainly it's good
to do some research to figure out if there's estimated
wait times, if maybe your airline can send you an estimate.
But there comes a point in any sort of decision
(05:32):
making process where gathering more information has diminishing returns. I'm
thinking specifically about one moment in my life where I
was deciding between two job offers, and I spoke to
everyone I could about it, my uber driver, my yoga teacher.
I was like insufferable as a friend and as a partner,
and I realized I was trying to control a situation
that I fundamentally could not. I wanted to know what
(05:55):
was the right job for me in the same way
that you might want to know exactly what time you
should arrive at work. And so I think for someone
in your situation, the most important thing is to separate
what you can and you can't control. You can control
for things like your method of getting to the airport,
trying to arrive with as much time as possible, but
there is a level of uncertainty that is inherent in
(06:16):
flying or making any sort of decision like that, And
I would say, to not opt on the full end
of the conservative spectrum and arrive six hours for your flight,
and then not opt for the sort of wishful thinking
line of the spectrum where you arrive forty five minutes
before your flight and think everything is going to be fine.
So gather information that you can plan, fritage different contingencies,
(06:39):
and then ultimately you have to be comfortable with not knowing.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
So I think that thing about trying to exert control
over things that also plays out in people maybe sometimes
sense that they are doing something by doing all this
additional research or reading, as it might be, clickbaity articles
on anything that is increasing their anxiety level. Does that
sort of keep us from maybe focusing on the things
(07:03):
that we can control. I mean, I think of all
the people who are reading some ragey article online and
thinking that that is activism as opposed to actually doing
something that has any effect on the topic that they
are reading about.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Yeah, A line that I like to think about a
lot is that action absorbs anxiety. And often when we're
gathering more information, it can be useful to a point,
but beyond that point, it often just fuels our anxiety.
That's why we live in this information age, and yet
access to more information has not necessarily made us any
wiser or less anxious. You can pour gasoline on the
(07:39):
fire of your anxiety by continuing to research, by continuing
to click through articles. I'm a new parent and I
think about this all the time. In relation to parenting.
You can read endless things about anything on the internet
about what might be happening with your kid. But at
a certain point that is getting in the way of
you actually being present with your kid and being able
to be responsive in the moment.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Absolutely, Well, We're going to take a quick ad break
and then I'll be back with more from Simoni Stolelof. Well,
I am back talking with Simonie Stolesov, who is the
author of the brand new book How Not to Know
the Value of Uncertainty in a world that demands answers.
(08:20):
So you say that we should you increase our tolerance
for uncertainty. And if somebody's listening to this, it's like, Okay,
I want the equivalent of exercises I can do, like
at the gym, to make myself more tolerant of uncertainty.
What would you suggest that they do?
Speaker 2 (08:38):
The first thing I always say is to find your anchors,
so research shows, and when we are certain about some
aspects of our life, it makes it easier to hold
uncertainty in others. I think about this in relation to
time management all the time. If you know, for example,
that you're going to exercise at a certain moment in
the day, or if you have a bed time at
a certain time, it'll make it easier to hold some
(09:00):
of the more amorphous and certainty throughout your day. So
for you, your anchors might be something like your values,
or where you know you want to live, or who
you know you want to be with, or where you
want to spend your time. Those anchors can be the
boulders amidst all the changing winds around you. The second
thing I'd say is to try to separate what you
(09:24):
can and can't control. That's what we were talking about earlier.
There is this great prayer that you may have heard
of before, called the serenity prayer, and it's very popular
in recovery communities. But it basically says, God, grant me
the serenity to separate what I can and I can't control,
and to know the difference. So often when we're dealing
(09:44):
with uncertainty, we spend lots of energy and effort on
things that we fundamentally can't control, So how can you
divert that energy towards things that you can? And the
third is I'd say choose curiosity over fear. I think
part of the problem uncertainty is so uncomfortable for us
is that we have a natural tendency to catastrophize, to
(10:06):
think about all the things that could go wrong, to
worry about arriving to the airport and there being a
five hour TSA line and you missing your flight. But
I think it's also important to think about what might
go right, so to frame the possibility as opposed to
just the threat of uncertainty. Certainly, every scientific breakthrough or
(10:28):
revolutionary company, or genre busting piece of art has come
from someone's willingness to get to a point where they
were uncertain and persist nonetheless. And so thinking about those
small steps that you can take to what I say,
row through the fog, to keep moving through the uncertainty
that you feel, that is both where clarity and growth
(10:49):
will emerge.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
All right, So we're gonna we're going to try and
proach these things that might produce anxiety with a little
bit more of a spirit of curiosity exactly than fear.
I love that. So you also have a phrase that
you say you want to trust in your future self
to solve your future problems. One of the things we'd
sometimes talk about on this show is people go over
(11:10):
the top of like preparing meals for the entire week,
or you know, packing everything for every day of the week,
you know, in their bag the night before or something
like that. And sometimes there's a reason to do that,
but it's also like, well, could Thursday me come up
with dinner? I bet Thursday me could figure out dinner Sunday.
(11:32):
Meat doesn't necessarily have to figure out dinner for Thursday.
I'm curious. What are some other ways where we should
trust in our future self to solve our future problems.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah, so the phrase comes from a friend of mine
named Emily, and she is a therapist. But before she
became this mental health professional, her mom was given a
terminal cancer diagnosis when she was in her early twenties
and she would spend days after days her side at
the hospital and one day a family friend of theirs
(12:03):
named Bill came by to see how Emily was doing,
and so he asked, you Emily, how are you holding up?
And she said, honestly, I am not doing very well.
I'm riding this roller coaster of anxiety and anticipatory grief,
and I'm not sure what I'll do if my mom
passes away. And Bill says, you know, Bill is an
oncology doctor, so he has a lot of experience dealing
(12:25):
with people at the end of their lives. And he said,
you know, Emily, the version of yourself that will deal
with that tragic event, if or when it happens, will
be born into existence in that moment, and that version
of you will have more context, more information, and will
be better equipped to deal than you are today. You
(12:46):
have to trust in your future self to solve your
future problems. Now. Obviously, in a case of Emily's life,
the stakes are incredibly high. You know, she's dealing with
her mom.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Yeah, that's a little bit worse than the dinner on Thursdays.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
A little bit worse than the dinner on Thursday. But
I think the wisdom still applies. And so often, when
faced with uncertainty, we have this natural tendency to rush
out and meet our suffering and say, oh, if you
know my mom dies, I'm not sure what I'm going
to do. I'm so worried and to really rush out
to meet that moment. And in Emily's case, her mom
ended up recovering and she's so grateful that she didn't
(13:20):
spend too much time in that dark place worrying about
something that hasn't yet come to be. I think, in
a more mundane practical sense, when we're too rigid to
our plans, it makes us less flexible and less adaptable.
And especially in a world that is rapidly changing, or
in a life that is incredibly busy that has lots
(13:41):
of variables in the air, if you're too fixed to
your one specific way of doing things, it makes it
very easy to really get thrown off kilter if something
were to change. And so I like the idea of
having intentions. As you like to say, doing something three
times a week makes it a habit, having a way
of knowing what's important to you, but being flexible enough
(14:04):
to change the scope or schedule if the week dictates you.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Adapt yep, because Thursday we might have a really fun
dinner outside if the weather is good or something like that. Somebody,
I actually want to ask you a little bit about
what is a good enough job. So your previous book,
a lot of people are hearing that are like, hmm,
what is a good enough job?
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yeah, So the title the good enough job is an
allusion to this theory that was devised by this British
pediatrician named Donald Wynicott, and you might have heard of
it. It was called the good enough mother or the good
enough parent. And Wenicott was observing how who's a doctor
in England in the mid twentieth century, how these parents
were trying to be the perfect parent. They were trying
(14:48):
to shield their kid from experiencing any sort of negative
emotion or harm. And then when the kid never really
felt frustrated or sad or angry, the parent would take
it extremely personally and so proposal alternative. He called it
the good enough parent, and he said, rather than striving
for perfection, if you strive for sufficiency. It benefits both
(15:09):
the child and the parent. The kid can learn how
to self soothe and take care of some of their
own issues, and the parent won't lose themselves in their
children's emotions. So in the book, I make the direct
allusion to the working world, where so often we talk
about the dream job and perfection and creates so much
room for disappointmentment underneath that sky high ideal. So I
(15:31):
define a good enough job as a job that allows
you to be the type of person that you want
to be. It's sufficiently vague, but I like that everyone
can define what a good enough job means for themselves.
Maybe for one person it's a job that allows them
to pick up their kid from elementary school, or another
person that's a job that allows them to go on
that afternoon bike ride that really makes their life meaningful.
(15:52):
And maybe for someone else it's a job that pays
a certain amount of money, or a job that has
a certain job title. But the truth is, we get
to define what good enough means to us. And once
you have your own definition of good enough, you can
divert some of that attention and energy that you might
be giving to questioning whether you found your perfect calling
towards other aspects of your life that might make your
(16:13):
life meaningful.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Yeah, because it turns out there is no perfect job,
just as probably there's no perfect person. There's no perfect future.
There's always some uncertainty involved in all of it.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Great I can't say better myself, and I think that's
sort of like the intersection of the two books, where
if we take table stakes the idea that there is
no perfect job out there, we must be willing to
trust our futureselves and understand. Okay, maybe AIS undermining my industry.
Maybe I don't know exactly what my ten yere plan
is going to be, but I have built my uncertainty
(16:46):
tolerance and I'm able to be resilient in the face
of all this change.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Absolutely. Well, We're going to take one more quick ad
break and then I'll be back with more from Simono
stalls Off. Well, I am back talking with Simona Stolzov,
who is the author of the brand new book How
Not To Know. We've also been talking about the Good
Enough Job, So I want to pivot to talk a
(17:10):
little bit about your schedule. Now, what does your schedule
look like these days?
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Well, as I mentioned earlier, I'm a new parent, so
my schedule is a little bit more in flux than
it used to be. And I'm grateful to say that
I work for myself. So for the last five years
or so, I've been independent author, trying to make it
as a full time author, living in San Francisco, one
of the most expensive cities in the world. But there
are some choices that we've made structurally to make that
(17:34):
more possible. One is, I live with my wife, my son,
my mom, and my stepdad, so we have this intergenerational home,
and I live my childhood home, the same house that
I grew up in, and having that level of support
provides some buffer both from a childcare perspective and from
a work perspective. And so there's this distinction that I
(17:55):
make in my first book between what are called integrators
and segmentors. Graters are people whose jobs integrate throughout their day.
They might do a little work in the morning, go
on a run, go to the grocery store, come back,
do a little work, hang out with their kids, have
some dinner, and do work after dinner, where as segment
arms are the people that want to log on at
nine am, log off at five, and then not open
(18:16):
the laptop. Ever. Again, I'm very much an integrator, so
I work in small pockets. I try to keep my
mornings reserved for creative work, so output like writing that
requires a little bit more of that deep work, and
do more of my administrative tasks in the afternoon. But
every day looks a little bit different for me. I
have some anchors. I always try to be home for dinner.
(18:37):
I always try and have breakfast with my wife and
my son. But the nice thing about being a solopreneur
is that no two days are exactly the same.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Well, let's talk a little bit about that morning. So
there's a family breakfast in the morning. Do you have
anything else that you do as a regular part of
your morning routine.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yeah. So one thing that actually has been a change
relatively recently is we've started listening to the radio and
good morning. This might not seem revolutionary, but in a
world of Spotify recommended songs and Apple Music AI generated playlists,
listening to the radio has been such a source of delight.
There's this radio station called k EXP that's based in
(19:14):
Seattle that recently started streaming in the Bay Area, and
it's just this little moment of serendipity each day. It's
sort of I think about it as like a college
radio station for adults, and so it's super eclectic, and
I'll play classical music and then hip hop and then
indie and then folk and having that little bit of
time between say seven forty five and eight thirty where
(19:34):
we're having breakfast together, we're listening to the radio has
been one of those anchors if nothing else in my
day is predictable. I know that I'll have k exp
in the morning.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Well that's predictable, but what they're playing is unpredictable, uncertainty,
whatever the DJs want to play. I love that idea.
And do you have any other strategies that like make
you more productive in your life?
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Yeah. I try to do a little bit of exercise
every morning, and it's as small as I possibly can
make it, so I do thirty push ups, I do
a few minutes of like plank and stretching, and then
a few sort of weights to lift. And what I
found is that having that small workout routine it takes
me about five minutes, makes it much easier for me
(20:18):
to be consistent. And consistency has always been the name
of the game for me with any sort of movement
or exercise. And now that I have a little bit
less free time with a crying one year old at home,
I can always think back to that moment in the
day where I got my movement in, I did something
for myself, and then the last thing that I do
that I think is really helpful, is I, like many
(20:38):
of us, have realized my addiction to my phone, and
so I've started using this device called a brick, which
you may have heard of before, to basically make my
phone not impotent. You know, it basically makes it not
very useful from nine thirty to four each day. And
so that's something that I have as like a schedule,
and it's really curbed my ability to focus on what matters.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Yeah, so during the time time that you're working, you
can't just go randomly surf the web and you know,
start looking at the Newark Airport your equivalent thereof Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
My guilty pleasures beyond social media are like ESPN dot
com and the New York Times. You know, I'll just
like swipe to refresh a million times a day if
I don't put some blockers on myself.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Very smart, very smart. So so mony I asked all
my guests, what is something you have done recently to
take a day from great to awesome? I mean, obviously
the listening to the music in the morning the radio
is certainly one of those things. I'm curious if you
have anything else you've done lately.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Yeah, I mean I think about like microdosing novelty a lot.
And one thing that my wife I've done and I
have done recently, is that we've taken up sausa dancing,
which might not seem like you know, as someone with
two left feet, I'm not the most natural dancer, but
I think it's been two things for us. One is
it's one night a week, every single week, where we
(21:54):
know that we're doing something for our relationship. And so
on Monday nights we go to this local sort of
bar dance studio in our neighborhood. We just go for
an hour and a half and we have that regular
date night. And the second thing it does is it
puts us back in that sort of beginner mindset where
we're on the steep part of the learning curve. And
a lot of my work and my wife's the teacher,
is about having confidence and speaking with conviction and just
(22:17):
a space in our weeks where we cannot be very
good at something. And it's been such a regular source
of joy, even in this past year of having this kid,
that I would recommend that everyone finds what they're saucea
dancing might be.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
I love it, and yeah, that makes a Monday night
a lot more interesting than a Monday night would otherwise
be for sure.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Amen to that sabout it.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yeah, I think the best way to find me these
days is just to go to how to Not Know
dot com. It has all of my social media. I
run a newsletter where I send out good articles every
other week, and that's the best place to find me.
I'm really proud of this book, not just because I
feel like the timing couldn't be better. You know, the
world it feels more uncertain by the day, But I
(23:03):
think it's this nice combination of narrative, of stories of
people dealing with uncertainty in their life. A couple deciding
whether or not they want to get divorced, an island
nation reckoning with the existential threat of climate change, someone
trying to predict the next economic crash, but also those
tips that will actually help you improve your relationship with uncertainty.
I feel like uncertainty is like that Lepanto the room.
(23:24):
It's the thing that is around us all the time
that we don't often have the words to talk about,
And hopefully this book will help you get a little
bit better at dealing with what you don't know.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Absolutely well, Simona, thank you so much for joining us,
and thank you to everyone for listening. If you have
feedback on this or any other episode, you can always
reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com and
in the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and
here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for
(23:59):
listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(24:22):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a slightly longer one part
of the series where I interview fascinating people about how
they take their days from great to awesome and any
(00:23):
advice they have for the rest of us. So today
I am delighted to welcome Simone stoles Off to Before Breakfast.
Simone is the author of The Good Enough Job and
also the author of the brand new book How Not
to Know the value of uncertainty in a world that
demands answers. So Simone, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Yeah, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit
about yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
I'm a journalist and an author. I wasn't always this
profession that I had sort of a meandering career. In college,
I studied poetry and economics, and so maybe you can
already see the tension between the pursuit of art and
the pursuit of commerce. But I like to think of
my as taking big swings at big questions, and so
my first book, The Good Enough Job, was about how
(01:05):
work has come to be so central to our identities,
and in the release and afterwards, I kept hearing questions
from listeners and readers about how they should think about
their career and the face of about the uncertainty in
the world and their careers and their lives. And so
my second book, How To Not Know, is sort of
response to that. It's an attempt to help you get
better at dealing with uncertainty, and God knows we all
(01:26):
need that right now.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Well, I would say, I mean, is life more uncertain
now or are we just more aware of various aspects
of the uncertainty.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
It's a little bit of both. And so there's been
some really good research that has come out. There's this
project called the Economic Policy Uncertainty Index that has tracked
global uncertainty over time, and since the study began in
the eighties, the five highest measurements of uncertainty have all
occurred in the last five years. So you think about
things like the COVID pandemic, the Warren Ukraine, Iran tariff policy.
(01:58):
We live in an incredibly uncertain world. Now. If you were
talking to someone who lived in Floorince during the bubonic plague,
they might think, Okay, maybe it's not that uncertain But
I think the biggest thing that's changed recently is that
our tolerance for uncertainty has declined, and so with the
rise of the Internet and mobile phones, it's done two things.
One is, it's created the expectation that answers should be
(02:20):
readily available, and so whereas maybe five years ago I
might have been fine not knowing the name of a
given actor, now I feel this almost involuntary need to
reach for my phone. And the second thing that's done
is it's taken all of the world's crises, all of
the uncertainty that might exist out there, and flattened it,
and it brought it right to our doorstep. And so
the world is incredibly uncertain, our tolerance for uncertainty is
(02:42):
in decline, and that leaves us so much of the
anxiety and fear that so many people are feeling today.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah, that is true about you know, be out at
dinner with people and somebody asked the question, what was
that guy who was in this? And you know, you're
all pulling out your phones to check its, like, well,
none of us actually needed to know that. We could
have continued our life and this dinner without that. But
you mentioned that we're less tolerant of uncertainty, then why
is it important for us to be tolerant of uncertainty?
Speaker 2 (03:10):
At the most basic level, the world is uncertain, especially
when you think about anything that happens in the future,
and so if you are intolerant of uncertainty, individuals tend
to be less creative, for example, because when they hit
a moment of discomfort or ambiguity, they tend to go
for the safest option, which isn't always the optimal choice.
(03:33):
Communities tend to be more cohesive and collaborative in the
face of higher levels of uncertainty tolerance, because they're able
to collaborate across differences, whereas if you're intolerant of uncertainty,
you might not want to speak to your neighbor, or
speak to a stranger, or speak to someone who voted
for someone differently than you. And as a society at large,
(03:56):
when we're intolerant of uncertainty, we tend to not be
very resilient or adaptive. Part of what it means to
live in the modern world is to be able to
face uncertainty and continue to make decisions, continue to persist,
and if we're intolerant, then we continue to close our
minds and not open our minds to the possibilities that
(04:17):
might be sitting on the other side of what we
don't know.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
So here's something I don't know, Simone is what the
wait times will be at Newark Airport, where I am
trying to go in the next few days. We're in
a period of time this will air later, but when
there's a lot of uncertainty about TSA staffing and things
like that. So I find myself scrolling around online a
(04:40):
lot trying to find anybody who claims to know anything
about the new airport wait times. Why am I doing that?
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I think it's an attempt to find control in that
situation that you might not necessarily have very much control.
So in the book, I talk about three different traps
that we often fall into. The first is comfort, our
desire to stay comfortable, which keeps us from exploring things
outside of our comfort zone. The second is hubris, our
tendency to think that we know best, which keeps us
(05:10):
from admitting what we don't know. And the last trap
that I talk about is control, our desire to plan
to know exactly what the future will hold, even when
we sometimes cannot. And so I think in the situation
like this with the New York airport, certainly it's good
to do some research to figure out if there's estimated
wait times, if maybe your airline can send you an estimate.
But there comes a point in any sort of decision
(05:32):
making process where gathering more information has diminishing returns. I'm
thinking specifically about one moment in my life where I
was deciding between two job offers, and I spoke to
everyone I could about it, my uber driver, my yoga teacher.
I was like insufferable as a friend and as a partner,
and I realized I was trying to control a situation
that I fundamentally could not. I wanted to know what
(05:55):
was the right job for me in the same way
that you might want to know exactly what time you
should arrive at work. And so I think for someone
in your situation, the most important thing is to separate
what you can and you can't control. You can control
for things like your method of getting to the airport,
trying to arrive with as much time as possible, but
there is a level of uncertainty that is inherent in
(06:16):
flying or making any sort of decision like that, And
I would say, to not opt on the full end
of the conservative spectrum and arrive six hours for your flight,
and then not opt for the sort of wishful thinking
line of the spectrum where you arrive forty five minutes
before your flight and think everything is going to be fine.
So gather information that you can plan, fritage different contingencies,
(06:39):
and then ultimately you have to be comfortable with not knowing.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
So I think that thing about trying to exert control
over things that also plays out in people maybe sometimes
sense that they are doing something by doing all this
additional research or reading, as it might be, clickbaity articles
on anything that is increasing their anxiety level. Does that
sort of keep us from maybe focusing on the things
(07:03):
that we can control. I mean, I think of all
the people who are reading some ragey article online and
thinking that that is activism as opposed to actually doing
something that has any effect on the topic that they
are reading about.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Yeah, A line that I like to think about a
lot is that action absorbs anxiety. And often when we're
gathering more information, it can be useful to a point,
but beyond that point, it often just fuels our anxiety.
That's why we live in this information age, and yet
access to more information has not necessarily made us any
wiser or less anxious. You can pour gasoline on the
(07:39):
fire of your anxiety by continuing to research, by continuing
to click through articles. I'm a new parent and I
think about this all the time. In relation to parenting.
You can read endless things about anything on the internet
about what might be happening with your kid. But at
a certain point that is getting in the way of
you actually being present with your kid and being able
to be responsive in the moment.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Absolutely, Well, We're going to take a quick ad break
and then I'll be back with more from Simoni Stolelof. Well,
I am back talking with Simonie Stolesov, who is the
author of the brand new book How Not to Know
the Value of Uncertainty in a world that demands answers.
(08:20):
So you say that we should you increase our tolerance
for uncertainty. And if somebody's listening to this, it's like, Okay,
I want the equivalent of exercises I can do, like
at the gym, to make myself more tolerant of uncertainty.
What would you suggest that they do?
Speaker 2 (08:38):
The first thing I always say is to find your anchors,
so research shows, and when we are certain about some
aspects of our life, it makes it easier to hold
uncertainty in others. I think about this in relation to
time management all the time. If you know, for example,
that you're going to exercise at a certain moment in
the day, or if you have a bed time at
a certain time, it'll make it easier to hold some
(09:00):
of the more amorphous and certainty throughout your day. So
for you, your anchors might be something like your values,
or where you know you want to live, or who
you know you want to be with, or where you
want to spend your time. Those anchors can be the
boulders amidst all the changing winds around you. The second
thing I'd say is to try to separate what you
(09:24):
can and can't control. That's what we were talking about earlier.
There is this great prayer that you may have heard
of before, called the serenity prayer, and it's very popular
in recovery communities. But it basically says, God, grant me
the serenity to separate what I can and I can't control,
and to know the difference. So often when we're dealing
(09:44):
with uncertainty, we spend lots of energy and effort on
things that we fundamentally can't control, So how can you
divert that energy towards things that you can? And the
third is I'd say choose curiosity over fear. I think
part of the problem uncertainty is so uncomfortable for us
is that we have a natural tendency to catastrophize, to
(10:06):
think about all the things that could go wrong, to
worry about arriving to the airport and there being a
five hour TSA line and you missing your flight. But
I think it's also important to think about what might
go right, so to frame the possibility as opposed to
just the threat of uncertainty. Certainly, every scientific breakthrough or
(10:28):
revolutionary company, or genre busting piece of art has come
from someone's willingness to get to a point where they
were uncertain and persist nonetheless. And so thinking about those
small steps that you can take to what I say,
row through the fog, to keep moving through the uncertainty
that you feel, that is both where clarity and growth
(10:49):
will emerge.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
All right, So we're gonna we're going to try and
proach these things that might produce anxiety with a little
bit more of a spirit of curiosity exactly than fear.
I love that. So you also have a phrase that
you say you want to trust in your future self
to solve your future problems. One of the things we'd
sometimes talk about on this show is people go over
(11:10):
the top of like preparing meals for the entire week,
or you know, packing everything for every day of the week,
you know, in their bag the night before or something
like that. And sometimes there's a reason to do that,
but it's also like, well, could Thursday me come up
with dinner? I bet Thursday me could figure out dinner Sunday.
(11:32):
Meat doesn't necessarily have to figure out dinner for Thursday.
I'm curious. What are some other ways where we should
trust in our future self to solve our future problems.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah, so the phrase comes from a friend of mine
named Emily, and she is a therapist. But before she
became this mental health professional, her mom was given a
terminal cancer diagnosis when she was in her early twenties
and she would spend days after days her side at
the hospital and one day a family friend of theirs
(12:03):
named Bill came by to see how Emily was doing,
and so he asked, you Emily, how are you holding up?
And she said, honestly, I am not doing very well.
I'm riding this roller coaster of anxiety and anticipatory grief,
and I'm not sure what I'll do if my mom
passes away. And Bill says, you know, Bill is an
oncology doctor, so he has a lot of experience dealing
(12:25):
with people at the end of their lives. And he said,
you know, Emily, the version of yourself that will deal
with that tragic event, if or when it happens, will
be born into existence in that moment, and that version
of you will have more context, more information, and will
be better equipped to deal than you are today. You
(12:46):
have to trust in your future self to solve your
future problems. Now. Obviously, in a case of Emily's life,
the stakes are incredibly high. You know, she's dealing with
her mom.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Yeah, that's a little bit worse than the dinner on Thursdays.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
A little bit worse than the dinner on Thursday. But
I think the wisdom still applies. And so often, when
faced with uncertainty, we have this natural tendency to rush
out and meet our suffering and say, oh, if you
know my mom dies, I'm not sure what I'm going
to do. I'm so worried and to really rush out
to meet that moment. And in Emily's case, her mom
ended up recovering and she's so grateful that she didn't
(13:20):
spend too much time in that dark place worrying about
something that hasn't yet come to be. I think, in
a more mundane practical sense, when we're too rigid to
our plans, it makes us less flexible and less adaptable.
And especially in a world that is rapidly changing, or
in a life that is incredibly busy that has lots
(13:41):
of variables in the air, if you're too fixed to
your one specific way of doing things, it makes it
very easy to really get thrown off kilter if something
were to change. And so I like the idea of
having intentions. As you like to say, doing something three
times a week makes it a habit, having a way
of knowing what's important to you, but being flexible enough
(14:04):
to change the scope or schedule if the week dictates you.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Adapt yep, because Thursday we might have a really fun
dinner outside if the weather is good or something like that. Somebody,
I actually want to ask you a little bit about
what is a good enough job. So your previous book,
a lot of people are hearing that are like, hmm,
what is a good enough job?
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yeah, So the title the good enough job is an
allusion to this theory that was devised by this British
pediatrician named Donald Wynicott, and you might have heard of
it. It was called the good enough mother or the good
enough parent. And Wenicott was observing how who's a doctor
in England in the mid twentieth century, how these parents
were trying to be the perfect parent. They were trying
(14:48):
to shield their kid from experiencing any sort of negative
emotion or harm. And then when the kid never really
felt frustrated or sad or angry, the parent would take
it extremely personally and so proposal alternative. He called it
the good enough parent, and he said, rather than striving
for perfection, if you strive for sufficiency. It benefits both
(15:09):
the child and the parent. The kid can learn how
to self soothe and take care of some of their
own issues, and the parent won't lose themselves in their
children's emotions. So in the book, I make the direct
allusion to the working world, where so often we talk
about the dream job and perfection and creates so much
room for disappointmentment underneath that sky high ideal. So I
(15:31):
define a good enough job as a job that allows
you to be the type of person that you want
to be. It's sufficiently vague, but I like that everyone
can define what a good enough job means for themselves.
Maybe for one person it's a job that allows them
to pick up their kid from elementary school, or another
person that's a job that allows them to go on
that afternoon bike ride that really makes their life meaningful.
(15:52):
And maybe for someone else it's a job that pays
a certain amount of money, or a job that has
a certain job title. But the truth is, we get
to define what good enough means to us. And once
you have your own definition of good enough, you can
divert some of that attention and energy that you might
be giving to questioning whether you found your perfect calling
towards other aspects of your life that might make your
(16:13):
life meaningful.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Yeah, because it turns out there is no perfect job,
just as probably there's no perfect person. There's no perfect future.
There's always some uncertainty involved in all of it.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Great I can't say better myself, and I think that's
sort of like the intersection of the two books, where
if we take table stakes the idea that there is
no perfect job out there, we must be willing to
trust our futureselves and understand. Okay, maybe AIS undermining my industry.
Maybe I don't know exactly what my ten yere plan
is going to be, but I have built my uncertainty
(16:46):
tolerance and I'm able to be resilient in the face
of all this change.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Absolutely. Well, We're going to take one more quick ad
break and then I'll be back with more from Simono
stalls Off. Well, I am back talking with Simona Stolzov,
who is the author of the brand new book How
Not To Know. We've also been talking about the Good
Enough Job, So I want to pivot to talk a
(17:10):
little bit about your schedule. Now, what does your schedule
look like these days?
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Well, as I mentioned earlier, I'm a new parent, so
my schedule is a little bit more in flux than
it used to be. And I'm grateful to say that
I work for myself. So for the last five years
or so, I've been independent author, trying to make it
as a full time author, living in San Francisco, one
of the most expensive cities in the world. But there
are some choices that we've made structurally to make that
(17:34):
more possible. One is, I live with my wife, my son,
my mom, and my stepdad, so we have this intergenerational home,
and I live my childhood home, the same house that
I grew up in, and having that level of support
provides some buffer both from a childcare perspective and from
a work perspective. And so there's this distinction that I
(17:55):
make in my first book between what are called integrators
and segmentors. Graters are people whose jobs integrate throughout their day.
They might do a little work in the morning, go
on a run, go to the grocery store, come back,
do a little work, hang out with their kids, have
some dinner, and do work after dinner, where as segment
arms are the people that want to log on at
nine am, log off at five, and then not open
(18:16):
the laptop. Ever. Again, I'm very much an integrator, so
I work in small pockets. I try to keep my
mornings reserved for creative work, so output like writing that
requires a little bit more of that deep work, and
do more of my administrative tasks in the afternoon. But
every day looks a little bit different for me. I
have some anchors. I always try to be home for dinner.
(18:37):
I always try and have breakfast with my wife and
my son. But the nice thing about being a solopreneur
is that no two days are exactly the same.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Well, let's talk a little bit about that morning. So
there's a family breakfast in the morning. Do you have
anything else that you do as a regular part of
your morning routine.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yeah. So one thing that actually has been a change
relatively recently is we've started listening to the radio and
good morning. This might not seem revolutionary, but in a
world of Spotify recommended songs and Apple Music AI generated playlists,
listening to the radio has been such a source of delight.
There's this radio station called k EXP that's based in
(19:14):
Seattle that recently started streaming in the Bay Area, and
it's just this little moment of serendipity each day. It's
sort of I think about it as like a college
radio station for adults, and so it's super eclectic, and
I'll play classical music and then hip hop and then
indie and then folk and having that little bit of
time between say seven forty five and eight thirty where
(19:34):
we're having breakfast together, we're listening to the radio has
been one of those anchors if nothing else in my
day is predictable. I know that I'll have k exp
in the morning.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Well that's predictable, but what they're playing is unpredictable, uncertainty,
whatever the DJs want to play. I love that idea.
And do you have any other strategies that like make
you more productive in your life?
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Yeah. I try to do a little bit of exercise
every morning, and it's as small as I possibly can
make it, so I do thirty push ups, I do
a few minutes of like plank and stretching, and then
a few sort of weights to lift. And what I
found is that having that small workout routine it takes
me about five minutes, makes it much easier for me
(20:18):
to be consistent. And consistency has always been the name
of the game for me with any sort of movement
or exercise. And now that I have a little bit
less free time with a crying one year old at home,
I can always think back to that moment in the
day where I got my movement in, I did something
for myself, and then the last thing that I do
that I think is really helpful, is I, like many
(20:38):
of us, have realized my addiction to my phone, and
so I've started using this device called a brick, which
you may have heard of before, to basically make my
phone not impotent. You know, it basically makes it not
very useful from nine thirty to four each day. And
so that's something that I have as like a schedule,
and it's really curbed my ability to focus on what matters.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
Yeah, so during the time time that you're working, you
can't just go randomly surf the web and you know,
start looking at the Newark Airport your equivalent thereof Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
My guilty pleasures beyond social media are like ESPN dot
com and the New York Times. You know, I'll just
like swipe to refresh a million times a day if
I don't put some blockers on myself.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Very smart, very smart. So so mony I asked all
my guests, what is something you have done recently to
take a day from great to awesome? I mean, obviously
the listening to the music in the morning the radio
is certainly one of those things. I'm curious if you
have anything else you've done lately.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Yeah, I mean I think about like microdosing novelty a lot.
And one thing that my wife I've done and I
have done recently, is that we've taken up sausa dancing,
which might not seem like you know, as someone with
two left feet, I'm not the most natural dancer, but
I think it's been two things for us. One is
it's one night a week, every single week, where we
(21:54):
know that we're doing something for our relationship. And so
on Monday nights we go to this local sort of
bar dance studio in our neighborhood. We just go for
an hour and a half and we have that regular
date night. And the second thing it does is it
puts us back in that sort of beginner mindset where
we're on the steep part of the learning curve. And
a lot of my work and my wife's the teacher,
is about having confidence and speaking with conviction and just
(22:17):
a space in our weeks where we cannot be very
good at something. And it's been such a regular source
of joy, even in this past year of having this kid,
that I would recommend that everyone finds what they're saucea
dancing might be.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
I love it, and yeah, that makes a Monday night
a lot more interesting than a Monday night would otherwise
be for sure.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Amen to that sabout it.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yeah, I think the best way to find me these
days is just to go to how to Not Know
dot com. It has all of my social media. I
run a newsletter where I send out good articles every
other week, and that's the best place to find me.
I'm really proud of this book, not just because I
feel like the timing couldn't be better. You know, the
world it feels more uncertain by the day, But I
(23:03):
think it's this nice combination of narrative, of stories of
people dealing with uncertainty in their life. A couple deciding
whether or not they want to get divorced, an island
nation reckoning with the existential threat of climate change, someone
trying to predict the next economic crash, but also those
tips that will actually help you improve your relationship with uncertainty.
I feel like uncertainty is like that Lepanto the room.
(23:24):
It's the thing that is around us all the time
that we don't often have the words to talk about,
And hopefully this book will help you get a little
bit better at dealing with what you don't know.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Absolutely well, Simona, thank you so much for joining us,
and thank you to everyone for listening. If you have
feedback on this or any other episode, you can always
reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com and
in the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and
here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for
(23:59):
listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(24:22):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Before Breakfast News
Host
Laura Vanderkam
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