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The Upside of Uncertainty
book

The Upside of Uncertainty

by Nathan Furr, Susannah Harmon Furr
July 2022
Beginner
320 pages
7h 53m
English
Harvard Business Review Press
Content preview from The Upside of Uncertainty

Chapter 17

Don’t Force Machinery

When you feel the anxiety that comes with uncertainty, it can be tempting to grab at anything certain to escape the discomfort of the unknown. We instinctively want to figure things out as quickly as possible, but sometimes patience is precisely what is needed for an opportunity to emerge, an answer to surface, the path to become clear. An old idea from medicine, iatrogenics, teaches that sometimes the best treatment is doing nothing at all. Time can resolve injury, and uncertainty, sometimes better than action can, and research confirms that taking a little time can increase our willingness to take risks.1 The maxim “don’t force the machinery” comes from a friend’s grandfather, a master mechanic, who constantly ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781647823023