The Upside of Uncertainty: A Guide to Finding Possibility in the Unknown

Watch Gabe Polsky’s documentary In Search of Greatness

Every brilliant insight, choice, act, and innovation comes only after a phase of uncertainty. And the uncertainty brought about by every mistake, setback, discouragement, and even disaster carries possibility within it.

Although they can be scary or intimidating, “you can only do your best work when you are at the frontier,” he argues. “You have to be at the frontier if you want to do something new.”

Adjacent possibles also reveal themselves when we look thoughtfully at problems we face.

Uncertainty is here to stay. Learning to face the unknown well is critical to our ability to survive and thrive.

We are all wired to fear the downsides of uncertainty, but we forget that change, creation, transformation, and innovation rarely show up without some measure of it.

Adjacent possibles reveal themselves, too, when we purposefully recombine things.

A frontier is really any boundary between where we feel comfortable and where we don’t. And there are an infinite number of frontiers available to each of us, because every aspect of our lives includes a comfort zone that we have taken as a given and that constricts the possibilities available to us.

While frontiers are about expanding the current boundaries of your life, the adjacent possible is about the untapped opportunities nearby, ready to be discovered.