Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance

Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance
by Jonathan Fields

In Uncertainty, lawyer-turned-serial entrepreneur Jonathan Fields explains how to harness fear and uncertainty and transform them into creative energy rather than sources of pain, anxiety or suffering.

Hardcover, 240pp

Penguin Group, September 2011

ISBN-13: ISBN-13: 9781591844242

Barnes & Noble online price: $15.12

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SYNOPSIS

Jonathan Fields knows the risks — and potential power — of uncertainty. He gave up a six-figure income as a lawyer to make $12 an hour as a personal trainer. Then, married with a three-month old baby, he signed a lease to launch a yoga center in the heart of New York City the day before 9/11. But he survived, and along the way he developed a fresh approach to transforming uncertainty, risk of loss and exposure to judgment into catalysts for innovation, creation and achievement.

Properly understood and harnessed, fear and uncertainty can become fuel for creative genius rather than sources of pain, anxiety and suffering. In business, art and life, creating on a world-class level demands bold action and leaps of faith in the face of great uncertainty. But that uncertainty can lead to fear, anxiety, paralysis and destruction. It can gut creativity and stifle innovation. It can keep you from taking the risks necessary to do great work and craft a deeply rewarding life. And it can bring companies that rely on innovation grinding to a halt.

That is, unless you know how to use it to your advantage. Fields draws on leading-edge technology, cognitive science and ancient awareness-focusing techniques in a fresh, practical, non-dogmatic way. His approach enables creativity and productivity on an entirely different level and can turn the once-tortuous journey into a more enjoyable quest. Fields will reveal how to:

Make changes to your workflow that unlock buried creative potential.
Build “creation hives” — supportive groups that can supercharge and humanize the process.
Tap social technology and user co-creation to add clarity, certainty and sanity, even if you’re an artist or solo-creator.
Develop a set of personal practices and mindset shifts that let you not just tolerate, but invite and even amplify, uncertainty as a catalyst for genius.

Drawing on extensive case studies and research, Fields shares a set of detailed personal practices and environmental changes that can not only humanize the creative process, but also allow individuals and teams to stay more open to opportunity and play a bigger creative game.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Human beings are temperamentally, viscerally opposed to uncertainty, especially in our careers, but lawyer-turned-entrepreneur Fields works to persuade his readers that uncertainty can be freeing and energizing — and isn't just for startups — while workers of all levels can transform that space of limbo into a site for thinking creatively. He presents a practical set of tools for overcoming fear of the unknown and rituals that help "reframe uncertainty, risk and exposure as allies for creating and innovating on a level you never thought possible." Interestingly, he finds the biggest leaps can be taken most successfully in the company of others, both by joining efforts with a hive of similar-minded people, and by inviting your colleagues and even customers into a process of co-creation. Though uncertainty is difficult, Fields encourages readers, in the words of one devotee, to "jump out of a perfectly good airplane" and take the chance that will lead to greatness. A sympathetic and practical primer on fear management and risk taking.