There Is Never Any Certainty.
What a roller coaster taught me about making decisions without guarantees.
What would it take to get on a roller coaster that had no clear end in sight?
Not a coaster where you can trace the full track from the line. The kind where you can see where you board, where you return, and roughly what you’re in for.
I mean one where you get on, the ride starts and you have no idea where it ends.
My guess is that that coaster would have a very short line.
This is what I was wondering about yesterday while waiting in line for a roller coaster with my daughter at Canada’s Wonderland. It’s a theme park. Near Toronto. Where I live.
My visit to Wonderland coincided with a day on which I was also speaking with a coaching client of mine. A lovely, creative, entrepreneurial person who was facing a specific dilemma:
Do I embark on a new aspect of her business? One that will require considerable investment, and potentially, considerable rejection? And, even more significantly - failure?
Now, the classic advice is, the classic advice is, “nothing ventured, nothing gained.” Right?
And, it’s true. But, it’s also entirely unhelpful. Because it doesn't tell you what to do with the fear that nothing might be gained at all regardless of what chance you take.
Here’s what I’ve come to know: There is no certainty. Ever.
Consider the roller coaster again.
The track and the little house that you enter to get onto the train acts like a sort of permission structure. It lets you say yes to the fear because you can see where it ends. That doesn’t make the ride any less scary or fun - in fact, you can probably let loose more knowing where you are going to end up once the ride ends. But, it does make it that much easier to get on board the ride in the first place.
The problem for my client - and the rest of us, of course - is that our careers don’t have tracks or those cute little huts. The same thing goes for building a business, or really, for making any decision that matters at all. You just don’t get to see the ride play out before you commit.
And, that is often very frustrating. And paralyzing.
Because, what we are really looking for here is a certainty in outcome.
So, how can you continue to move forward while still not knowing how things will turn out?
You stop focusing on how things will turn out, and just focus on the decision instead.
Simone Stolzoff, in his new book How Not to Know, puts it this way: separate the quality of your decision from the quality of your outcome. They are not the same thing. A good decision can produce a bad outcome. A bad decision can get lucky. What you control is the former. Almost never the latter.
Why I like this approach is that it focuses you on what’s actually in front of you - the information you have, the values you’re acting from, the decision you can make right now - rather than a future you can’t see (and, even if you could, couldn’t guarantee anyway).
I’ll tell you how I used it today.
This article is a day late. It’s nowhere close to perfect (or even ideal). I’m not sure the roller coaster metaphor will land. I’m genuinely uncertain whether anyone reading this even has strong feelings about theme parks.
But I what I do know is this: writing it was the right decision. Not because of what it might produce (the readers, the reach, whatever business might follow). But because it was the honest, present, best-available-information thing to do today.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing. And, if my theory proves correct, if I just continue to make decisions this way, then everything will work out just fine.
Remember: You don’t get the certainty before you board. You get it - if you get it at all - only at the end.
Unsure what to do next? Looking for more certainty? Welcome to the club.
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