The Upside of Uncertainty

The journal

Upside Journal

Articles on uncertainty, decision-making and resilience — ours and Nathan's columns elsewhere, newest first.

An illustrated toolbox representing the 42 UP tools

Forbes

Can’t Make A Decision? Here’s What’s Trapping You

How your search for certainty is undermining your effort to decide.

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Forbes

What’s Your New Mexico Moment: How To Think About Hard Decisions

Many times our most important success comes from going the opposite direction from everyone else. But can we find the courage to make the decision?

Forbes

Uncommon Advice For Uncommon Success: Forgive And Be An Optimist

Although we often think business is cold and calculated, forgiveness and optimism can be some of our most powerful tools to succeed.

Forbes

Is Success Holding You Back From Success? Unpacking Secrets Of Disruptive Innovators

Our quest for success often holds us back from taking the risks that would lead to ever greater success. Disruptive innovators have learned they must embrace uncertainty.

Forbes

Negative Feedback? Amazing! How to Turn it into a Success Unlock

Negative feedback doesn’t mean you are wrong. It’s a clue to how you can get better.

Don’t Sweep It Under the Rug

Learning from failure may be the one thing keeping you from success!

The AI Agent Tsunami Is Here: Hype Versus Transformation

AI agents are silently transforming the world as we speak. Here's what you need to know and how to be ready.

Ready For Uncertainty? Adjust Your Personal Real Options

One of the best ways to survive an uncertain world is to adjust our personal real options, or our portfolio of projects and activities to get certainty out of the uncertainty.

How to Make Decisions in an Uncertain World: The Dr Alban Strategy

Making decisions in uncertainty is hard but there are strategies to make a smart decision.

Staying Strong in an Uncertain Economy: How To Boost Resilience

Building resilience in uncertainty is critical and starts with arguing with our situation, reframing it as temporary, isolated, and impersonal.

How To Turn Failure Into Success: The Power Of Accelerated Learning

Fear of failure holds us back. But how can we overcome it?

Adjacent Possible: Love is a Hike

The mountains felt like a place we could be equal in. And they were. We re-found our pace of friendship in a shared daily focus: to climb.

Unlocking Your Best Year: An Olympic-Inspired Approach

Stumbles feel like failure but working at the edge of our capability is the path to our most interesting work and life.

Ideas for Endurance

To look forward, we can look back at how people have sustained themselves in difficult times.

The Most Important Leadership Capability In Demand Today

Leading ourselves and others through uncertainty is the most important but under-developed leadership skill for the next century.

The Counterintuitive Power Of ‘As If’ For Leading Through Change And Uncertainty

Imagining the world “As If” may be one of the core strategic tasks for leaders who want to create new products, markets, or industries.

The Unexpected Benefit Of Plan C

Laying out Plan C, with a dose of courage and resolve, can help us make it through Plan B to a better and more powerful outcome.

The Secret To Courageous Decisions: A Conversation With Top CEOs

Courageous decisions can change our life, career, and companies. Why then are they so hard to make? We can use tools to face the uncertainty

AI Feels Terrifying: Three Steps To Turn Fear Into Opportunity

In a podcast recently with one of the leading HR consulting firms, our host shared that AI is creating increasing anxiety for many...

New Year Doubts? How To Overcome Self Doubt

It’s so hard to get started on something new, or worse, something uncertain. Maybe you have been thinking about that idea, project, or...

How To Overcome Your Fear Of What's Next

Anxiety is the new normal in a world of change. But there are tools to help you and your team feel calm and make forward progress.

What The Fight At Universities Reveals About The Future Of AI And Society

The trouble at universities is a mirror of the trouble in society. AI can make it worse or fix it, depending on our collective choices.

The Secret To Bringing Your Ideas And Interest To Life? 10,000 Shots.

Few people know that the breakthrough leading to the LED which illuminates our homes, offices, cars, and TVs looked like a complete...

Life as an Infinite Game: Are you in?

Reframing your life as an infinite game expands well-being in all ways and always: when things are going as planned, when they’re going...

Celebrating the 1 year anniversary of The Upside of Uncertainty

Sometimes people ask me what my favourite type of uncertainty is. Just kidding; they don’t. But if they did, I would say “unplanned”...

Immune to Uncertainty? The Power of Values Over Goals

Why values outlast goals when the ground keeps shifting.

Help For Uncertain Times: The First Aid Cross For Uncertainty

The world today feels incredibly uncertain, and for good reason.