A few years ago Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard University professor of psychology and author of Stumbling on Happiness, wrote an article titled “What You Don’t Know Makes You Nervous.” The gist of the article is that people tend to be more content knowing the worst-case scenario than facing the uncertainty of not knowing. Uncertainty about a possible unwanted outcome upsets people more than certainty about that very same outcome. It’s the not knowing, Gilbert maintains, that drives people crazy.
The anxiety produced by uncertainty isn’t just imagined. The brain’s fear center reacts strongly when presented with uncertainty and strives to resolve it as quickly as possible. The very presence of uncertainty can be a stress trigger that has negative consequences for one’s health and well-being. And of course, change—which organizations face nearly nonstop—is almost synonymous with uncertainty and is a major stress trigger for many people.
These reactions to uncertainty would help explain why, according to Gilbert, people feel worse when something bad might occur than when something bad definitely will occur. People who have faced the most undesirable life circumstances and made peace with their situations often report being happier than anyone would predict. Meanwhile, the people who lie in wait for a feared inevitable circumstance are the unhappy ones.
Supporting this view, many customers of IT organizations have told me they’d rather know there’s a problem with work being done for them than worry about whether there might be. They may not be pleased about schedule slips, budget shortfalls, or delayed features—let’s face it, they’ll be highly displeased—but they would rather know and deal with these circumstances than wonder and worry.
Still, this preference for certainty doesn’t apply across the board; sometimes, we’d rather latch onto uncertainty than cope with the reality that certainty will force us to face. Consider, for example, the homeowner who delays calling the plumber for fear that the seemingly minor leak will require an expensive repair. Or, more seriously, the person who doesn’t go to the doctor to have a pain diagnosed for fear it could be something bad.
At work, consider the manager who refrains from asking his development team about the potential for schedule slips for fear of having to deal with the messy consequences of such a slip. Or the team leader who withholds information about a likely slip, preferring the uncertainty about how the manager will react to such news to the certainty of finding out.
If you face uncertainty at work, coping with it might entail accepting the craziness that Gilbert describes. It also entails recognizing that somehow, things do eventually work out—even if “eventually” is often later rather than sooner.
