How to Live With Uncertainty

Disbelief Induced Inertia 

It can be agonizing to exist with a dual sense of desiring to do something and of feeling zero zeal to pick oneself to do anything. In such moments we exist in a cocoon of inertia—a tendency to do nothing. And in these moments of doing nothing, we are painfully aware of the almost tyrannical will of others, who are oblivious of (and sometimes uninterested in) our desire, that we do something. 

Much of who we are is judged by what we do. And when actions tend not to fall through from our lives others blind to the burning desires we feel can be quick to point out our ineptitude. Sometimes they call us lazy. To avoid being perceived as what we are not—lazy—we might resort to different tactics to get ourselves to do: We might bribe ourselves, say to ourselves, 'get up and write the report, and after doing so we'll go eat ice cream.’ Or we might threaten ourselves, say to ourselves, 'get up and go and write that report this instant, or else!’ But our tactics fail, often not because we are inept (0r lazy) but because of a disbelief that anything we do will carry us from where we are—perhaps on our comfortable bed on a cool morning—through the most times tedious activities demanded by getting (remarkable) things done, to a wonderful place of satisfaction.

Yet it lies within our capacity to arrest our agony from existing with a dual sense of desiring to do something and of feeling zero zeal to do anything. 

First we can start off from the obvious fact that we are prone to amplifying the attention others place on us. More often than not, 'others' whom we are so prone to hand our state of mind are too busy with their lives. They have everything but us in their minds. Because the contents of the mind of others lies beyond our reach, we can arrest our agony by leaving them out of ours. 

And because satisfaction in our lives is a direct result of the nature of the activities we engage, we can arrest our agony by developing an awareness of the features which directly feed our tendency to do nothing. 

This tendency, as described in a recent post, can be called Inertia. And as highlighted in the post, three features inform the makeup of this form of inertia:

1. Indecision – an inability to choose which activity to pay attention to and which are worthy of neglect
2. Disbelief – the uncertainty that an activity will lead to remarkable end.
3. Environment – the quality of internal and external space we occupy.

This BasicPulse entry will treat the second of the three features: Disbelief. 

A False Remedy 

We might find ourselves with a (daunting) task at hand—say raise  ₦100,000 to sponsor an ad campaign or come up with an outline for a book project which has its deadline looming close. All our desire to carry on with the task culminates in a kind of paralysis, because we are clueless about how to go about moving forward with the task. We become arrested and placed into a cocoon of inertia by the disbelief that the path of actions we come up with (or have at our disposal) will take us from where we are (with the task) to where want to be (with a completion of the task). Our tendency to do nothing rises out of the uncertainty that anything we do will take us to where we ought (and want) to be. 

One of the features about uncertainty is that it creates fertile ground for angst, an agonizing existential kind of anxiety which tends to highlight everything we can do while spelling out nothing to do. 

To combat our agony, make our lives angst free, and in so doing imbue our life with certainty and meaning and purpose we might come up with checkmarks and goals and milestones in a match towards getting (remarkable) things done. The promise which seduces us is that breaking our remarkable ends into doable chunks and setting out to do them will clear the cloud of uncertainty, lift the feelings of angst and combat our agonizing tendency to do nothing. 

But it takes modest achievements and a truck load of testimonies from achievers to realize coming up with checkmarks and reaching milestone does nothing to dispel certain existential agonies. 

• Tim Ferriss in 4HWW, for example, describes "making more that $40,000 per month instead of per year" yet goes on to describe this period of his life by saying, "the problem is that I hate my life."
  
• In my own life, to name another example, I was awarded for outstanding performance during a yearlong internship in a top-tier petrochemical firm and absorbed by the company to continue in a full time position. Also, I founded a blog which allows me create written content that in modest ways touch the lives of its readers. Yet I sometimes find myself gripped by a vague sense of not enough, that I should be doing more, being more; that I should be more productive.
  
• David Brooks, author of The Road To Character, explains that he "achieved far more career success than he ever thought', only to discover that 'the big fallacy of modern life is that career success leads to fulfilment."

From these examples, we can take away one useful insight: A distinction exists between our productive lives and the rest of our lives. As we will see, realizing the distinction can arrest our agony resulting from disbelief induced inertia. 

A Misguided View of (The Paradigm of) Productivity 

Being able to make $40,000 per month, as Tim Ferriss attests, will not guarantee love of life, and expecting productive ends of this kind to eradicate particular existential agonies is a doomed project. We can surmise that the way we view productivity can benefit from a reframing of perspective, which can offer us of a better view of the place of productivity in our lives. 

To gain proper perspective we must turn to a concept called paradigms.

Stephen Covey in his bestselling book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, describes a paradigm as the way we 'see' the world, not in a visual sense but in the sense of perceiving, understanding and interpreting. He goes on to propose that, our paradigms, the way(s) we see the world, are the determinants of who we are and how we behave. As he succinctly puts it, 'seeing' is 'being'.

Seeing life through the lens of productivity dictates that we act out every waking moment as an opportunity to produce, sometimes with vague descriptions (or awareness) of what it is we are to produce. This paradigm of productivity convolutes our perception of reality, in that much of what makes up the totality of life cannot be reduced into systems of productivity. We cannot as an example create a system which produces an accurate depiction of our future. The convolution created by placing productivity as the way we see life results in agony, which in turn arrests our tendency to devote ourselves to activities. It feeds ours tendency to do nothing. 

To combat agony we must shift the way we see productivity and put our productive lives in proper perspective. 

We Live in the Post-Productivity World 

A shift from the paradigm of productivity isn't novel. In 2011 Cal Newport penned an article describing a reason for the shift. In the article titled Welcome to the Post-Productivity World, Cal posited there is a distinction between being a disciple of productivity and having a work philosophy. We can have more enriching lives by having a work philosophy. A useful work philosophy is one founded on an awareness of the big picture, the totality of (living) life. 

The paradigm of productivity is misguided because it presents a myopic view of the totality of living life, where all that will distil within us a sense of unquestionable satisfaction is production through the accomplishment of remarkable ends. 

Productivity, of course, is important. The problem with the paradigm of productivity isn't that it presents an ineffective way of dealing with life and the problems life throws at us, it is that it keep us blind to much of what life is about. Outside its proper place thinking in terms productivity can have counterproductive effects. 

An Alternative View: The Paradigm of Functionality 

An awareness of what life is about, the big picture, takes in the requirement for what is needed for being productive: Our functionality. We say something is functional if it works, if it does what it is supposed to do. And the function of a (productive) person is to live. 

To bring clarity to the distinction between productivity and functionality it is helpful to note: The question posed by productivity is are you producing. And the question posed by the functionality is are you functioning. 

Now, this might seem anything but a big distinction at first, but it is critical. It changes everything—from what we consider work, to how we approach working, to how we plan and prioritize, to how we entertain possibilities and separate realities we brew from such possibilities into the important and the unimportant. The biggest impact of this reframe is on our mind-set. It shifts us from being people (trapped in a cocoon of inertia) deciding whether or not do something (which we are technically always doing) to being people biased towards the specific in matters of what to do, what to stop doing and what to do instead. It flips us from anxious to relaxed, from uncertain to curious—and that’s a mighty difference. 

The delivery of specificity the distinction creates cannot be overemphasized, because it is specificity which eradicates uncertainties and the subsequent agonizing existential kind of anxiety uncertainty brews. Swiss philosopher, Alain de Botton, said '[an agonizing existential kind of] anxiety is a garbled signal about what a part of us perceives as a danger. It both asks for worry while not clearly revealing the roots of its concerns.' We can arrest our agony by entertaining productivity only in areas of the specific. Specificity starves agony rising from disbelief induced inertia. 

Conclusion 

When we find ourselves with a dual sense of desiring to do something and of feeling zero zeal to do anything we can turn our attention to something specific: The lens through which we use to see the world, our paradigms. The wrong lens can be difference between unwarranted agony and the absence of it. 

A misguided view of the place of productivity in our lives can result in an agonizing existential kind of anxiety. We can shift our perspective to one which puts productivity in its proper place. We can adopt perspectives which account for the totality of life. We can look at life through the lens of (our) functionality. And the function of a (productive) person is to live. 

Our default position can be to live first, because how well we live determines how well we produce. Sometimes simply acknowledging the belief that we are alive is the most productive thing we can do—even when our acknowledging is done on our comfortable bed on a cool lazy morning. 

Enjoy!

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Post Author: P. W. Uduk 
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