Our ability to make the most out of uncertainty is what creates the most potential value. We should be fueled not by a desire for a quick catharsis but by intrigue. Where certainty ends, progress begins. Our obsession with certainty has another side effect. It distorts our vision through a set of funhouse mirrors called unknown knowns.

For the knowable unknowns, the best strategy is to widen and diversify the team of advisors or stakeholders, to track down your General Greene and get a more accurate map of the terrain, or build a scale model of the compound based on satellite imaging. But it’s also crucial to keep track of the stubborn blind spots—the places where uncertainty can

He recognizes that uncertainty is not an enemy, but a natural part of engaging in important and valuable work. He also knows that opportunities are valuable only if he is prepared to take advantage of them, and as such he is constantly developing the skills that will be needed when he gets where he wants to go rather than where he is currently.

To be creative is to work on the frontier, to invent the next thing, the thing for which there isn’t a playbook or a manual. Certainty, then, must be elusive, because we can’t know for sure. The elusiveness isn’t a problem, it’s not a bug, it’s not something to be eliminated. The uncertainty is the point.