'Uncertainty' by Jonathan Fields
'Uncertainty' by Jonathan Fields

I didn’t get a whole lot from this book. It’s supposed to be about how to navigate uncertain situations (e.g., starting a company), but in practice, this turns out to be a fairly standard business book. It covers all the generic advice I’ve read in a dozen other contexts: e.g., Google 20% time, treating willpower as a finite resource, following the lean methodology to create MVPs, following mindfulness and meditation practices, and so on.

I take copious notes when reading, but the only new insights I got while reading this book were:

  1. Establishing and following a routine throughout most aspects of your life—e.g., when you wake up, when you exercise, when you take time off, when you go to bed, etc—makes it easier to take risks and do crazy stuff in the few uncertain parts of your life (e.g., a job). It’s much easier to take excursions into unknown and uncharted parts of the world as long as you know you always have rituals and “certainty anchors” that you can return to.

  2. Life has no neutral. There is only “up” or “down.” That is, things either get better or worse; they rarely stay the same. For example, if your current job isn’t making you happy happy, if you take no action, 5 years from now, you won’t be in the same spot. Instead, you’ll likely be even more miserable than before. So when choosing between a risky/uncertain path (e.g., leave your cushy but unhappy job to start a company) and changing nothing (e.g., staying at your crappy job), realize that “changing nothing” isn’t a real choice. Instead, the real choice is to do the risky/uncertain thing or become steadily more and more miserable with status quo.

That’s… about it. I think every other thing in the entire book I had already learned before.

It’s not that this is a bad book, but if you’re an active reader of business books, there isn’t much new here. If you’re just starting your career, or considering a major change, and have read relatively little i this genre before, this is not a bad start. Just be aware that it’s a lot of generic advice that’s useful across a wide variety of business contexts, with relatively little that is uniquely helpful when dealing with uncertainty.

Rating: 3 stars