The Mislead Quest for Certainty
These days, it seems like everyone’s caught up in endless planning — whether it’s in tech, teaching, or pretty much any other job. We’re all spending so much time strategizing that we barely get around to actually doing stuff.
It’s like we’re all scared to make a move unless we’re 100% sure it’ll work out perfectly.
The other day, I was chatting with a friend who is an entrepreneur. She was laughing about how banks still want these super-detailed business plans before they’ll give you a loan. In reality, hardly any of those carefully laid plans actually pan out the way they’re written. It’s kind of like we’re all playing pretend, holding onto this idea that we can predict the future.
And nowhere is this fear of uncertainty more obvious than in education. We’ve got these 12-year plans for kids that barely change, even though the world around us is moving at lightning speed.
We Built Ourselves into a Corner
So why are we all so freaked out by uncertainty? Sure, humans have always liked their routines — they helped us survive back in the day. But now? We’ve taken it to a whole new level.
We’ve built this bubble around ourselves where everything feels predictable and safe. We’ve simplified everything, trying to make life feel more manageable. Reality on the other hand paints a very different picture.
When it comes to jobs and career, we are trained on a narrow set of skills and expertise to specialize. Our environment pushes us to consider a career in a given field, and many aspire to a single job to carry them through their lives. In reality, many of the jobs we trained for will be obsolete in years, with some even questioning what will happen to the idea of a career.
Our homes yet again reflect this tendency towards absolute control. We’ve designed them to shut out nature completely — same temperature all year round, same lighting, same everything. No surprises allowed! We use considerable energy trying to create this space, without stopping to wonder how generations of the past managed to exist outside of this narrow comfort band.
Don’t even get me started on how we think about money and progress. We’ve convinced ourselves that everything should always go up and to the right. Stocks should always rise, progress should always move forward. Generations have banked on the myth of perpetual growth, and we struggle with imagining anything different. Furthermore, we live in perpetual fear that this notion will come to an end.
What We’re Missing Out On
Certainty comes with sacrifice — in trying to make everything so predictable, we’ve lost something pretty special: our ability to be amazed. You know that feeling you get when you see something so incredible it makes your jaw drop? That thing we call awe. It happens when we bump into something way bigger than ourselves, something that reminds us we’re just a tiny part of this huge, amazing world.
Want to know the easiest way to get that feeling back? Just spend some time outside. Nature’s got a way of showing us that life doesn’t always follow our carefully laid plans — and that’s actually pretty amazing.
From Fixed to Free
How do we get comfortable with not knowing everything, and grow organizations that work well with uncertainty?
For an individual, it’s pretty simple, really — get outside more. When you’re in nature, you can’t control everything. You’ve got to roll with whatever comes your way. And guess what? That’s exactly the kind of skill we need in today’s world.
In the world of education, ideas like Forest Schools are generating heat not in spite of their uncertainty, but because of their ability to embrace the unknown. School does not get cancelled because it rains, rather that is where learning to adapt and be prepared flourish.
While Forest Schools hold inherent qualities that keep them open to opportunities for awe and embracing the unknown, there are other ways as well. Systems that focus on tools like Project Based Learning remain more agile and adaptable than those where content is king. Any movement away from subject centred and grade based learning also can help in this quest.
Some forward-thinking organizations (such as those called Teal Organizations) are catching on to this. Instead of sticking to rigid plans, they’re learning to go with the flow and adapt as things change. It’s like they’re taking a page right out of nature’s playbook.
Maybe it’s time more of our schools and workplaces took such an approach. Instead of trying to force everything to fit some grand plan, we could learn to grow and change along with the world around us. After all, isn’t that what life’s really all about?
