Don't Be Scared Of Indeterminacy

Hello, people! I'm an IT analyst from Russia, and I want to make the world around me better. Last time I worked for the biggest Russian energy company as a business analyst, and during my work, I noticed that it is unnecessary to be good at making the final result even if you are a really good professional in your field.

I think you already know a lot of ways to improve your productivity: making to-do lists, Pomodoro technique, etc. I want to tell you about not so common but unpleasant problems which I have faced.

First: Problem of indeterminacy

In a state of indeterminacy, most people feel uncomfortable and experience difficulties in starting resolving a problem before they understand it. But in most cases, it will not happen before you make the first step, and sometimes before most of the route will be passed.

Because of it, people frequently fall into "Analysis paralysis". But, unpredictability and uncertainty it is a normal trait of our world. There are two types of people: people who able to take this indeterminacy and work comfortably in a situation when a lot of things are don't understand, and some people who try to make an illusion of determinacy. Life is easier for the first type.

To handle difficulties with indeterminacy, you can use a few principles:

1. Now you don't know everything about the project and accept it.
2. While you will go forward to finish the project, you will learn new things and decrease indeterminacy.
3. On the base of these new things, you will review and improve your plan.

For example, your house is in a fire, and you sit inside. If you try to understand the cause of the fire - you can burn down with the house. In this case - trying to understand the cause of the fire is not a good decision, you have no time to make an investigation, you have to act. On the other hand, if you just save yourself, you can try to think about the next steps: put out the fire or call firefighters.

Second: Focusing Illusion

Daniel Kahneman wrote: Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it. This phenomenon often goes hand in hand with previous: when all you do is thinking that you have not enough information to act, you believe in it, and it becomes the most important idea in your head. Moreover, the more you worried you are, the more important this idea seems.

Often you think about one thing and forget about others, but if you see at the full scene, you can understand that your first idea is secondary. To handle this, you can try to look at a problem from the most remote position and take all accompanying points into account. You will found that many of things you considered most important are - in reality, not influential at all.

I hope you found something new and it will help you to handle problems and become better!