https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-97wmu-15a7ba2
Walking around the park behind the hospital, thinking about uncertainty and leadership this lunchtime. Welcome to Series 45.

That Scott Belsky quote from Tim Ferriss’s interview:

“I use the analogy of driving your team in a car with the windows blacked out, so no one knows where they are and how far they are in the journey. And that is sort of what a startup experience is like, by the way. You don’t know where those milestones actually are. You don’t necessarily even know where you’re going and how far along you are. The only thing that makes that more comforting or tolerable is a great narrative during the journey. Okay, we just crossed the state line. There’s this on the right. There’s this on the left. Even if it’s not necessarily answering the question of how far are we and where exactly are we going, there’s something about being talked through it. And I think that’s one of the jobs of someone at the helm is to build that narrative.”

Episode outline

Introduction

• Welcome to Walk the Pod, your daily walking podcast.
• Series 45 focuses on uncertainty.
• Acknowledging the difficulty of defining uncertainty.

My experience with uncertainty

• I feel uncertain about upcoming changes at work.
• I feel pressure to provide reassurance to others despite personal uncertainty.
• Shares anecdote about Tim Ferriss discussing leadership and uncertainty.

What uncertainty means

• The pandemic was a period of collective uncertainty.
• Discussion of various situations that can create feelings of uncertainty (having a child, starting a new relationship, etc.).
• Personal strategies for coping with uncertainty (shortening time frames, focusing on the present moment).

Call to action

• Please share your experiences with uncertainty via voice note.
• Brief mention of upcoming content (voice note walking report from John Machin).

Walk in the park

• Description of the muddy park setting.
• Mentions small plants that might be rhubarb (but warns listeners not to eat them).
• Talks about using the Merlin app to identify birdsong.
• Comments on the gloomy British weather and expresses hope for spring.

Outro

• Thank you for joining me on my walk around the park this lunchtime.
• Do take a walk during your lunch break.
• Additional tips for managing uncertainty (sleeping on things, letting go of unimportant details).
• Thanks listeners again and reminds them to submit voicemails and join the Walk the Pod Lunchtime Walk Club.
• Thank you for listening, take care of your beautiful mind, and try to enjoy this imperfect day.

Episode transcript

Hello and welcome to Walk the Pod, your daily walking show where I take my podcast for a walk because I don’t have a dog.

You’re very welcome along. This is series 45 of the daily walking podcast that invites you away from your desk, away from your keyboard and your screen at lunchtime to walk in nature and pay attention to what’s directly in front of you for just 10 minutes.

This series we’re going to be talking about uncertainty. I feel like we’ve touched on this this before. I’m not sure we’ve ever done a whole series on it before, although you may remember better than I do.

And I think it’s worth revisiting in any case, because uncertainty is all around us all the time. It’s a very, very difficult subject to even begin to know where to talk about.

Begin to know where to talk about, begin to know how to talk about, because it can apply to so many different aspects of life.

As usual, I’ll be asking for your input as well.

But I’m in the the park behind the hospital and the main point is to stretch my legs get away from my desk and stress and anxiety of the work morning and welcome you along to walk the pod.

So uncertainty let’s start with where I am at the moment in terms of uncertainty. I’m in a quite an uncertain place at work at the moment there’s some big changes happening in the next six months I don’t quite know where I’m going to land.

It all feels very uncertain.

And whilst things feel very uncertain to me, quite a lot of other people are looking to me for some kind of reassurance about what’s happening.

And I remember listening to a podcast between Tim Ferriss, who wrote The Four Day Work Week and runs an excellent podcast called The Tim Ferriss Show, talking to a Silicon Valley Mali, CEO of some kind, who said that leadership is like driving a car with all the windows blacked out.

You’re driving all your friends in a car with all the windows blacked out and they’re asking you, where are we going and when are we going to get there and are we nearly there yet?

And you can see probably the same amount that they can see, possibly less, but you’ve got to nevertheless sort of navigate, not navigate, narrate your way through the landscape you find find yourself in for their benefit, even whilst you feel exactly as uncertain as they do.

And I thought that was a very powerful demonstration of what leadership looks like. It’s got to do with having to be confident of as much as you can be confident about whilst also dealing with your own insecurity and feeling of uncertainty about what’s happening in the future.

So that’s what uncertainty means to me at the moment. The moment being March 2024.

We’ve all been through a huge chunk of uncertainty in recent years with the pandemic. Nobody quite knew what that was going to be like. or how that was going to end.

So we all got through that. So I think we can all say that we’ve been through a period of uncertainty recently.

And I’m sure that some of you have other examples. Maybe there are all kinds of things which constitute uncertainty as well, like having a child, entering into a new relationship, buying a cat, any of these things.

You’re entering into, you’re signing up for a big chunk of uncertainty, really, because you don’t know what’s going to happen, signing up for a new job, changing jobs, any of those things, starting to take care of somebody who needs a lot of help for whatever reason in your life, becoming a carer as well as becoming a parent, starting to take seriously feelings about your own identity.

Any of these things can constitute uncertainty, even entering into a new friendship. There’s no end of things that can constitute a big chunk of uncertainty in our lives and how to navigate that is a really really big question

My own way is to shorten my time frames and I’ve spoken about this on walk the pod before when I know I’m entering into a period of uncertainty I tend to just take it one day at a time and if that’s too much I sometimes take it one hour at a time and if that’s too much sometimes I take it one minute at a time and that’s my way of getting through difficult periods.

And if things are getting really bad, I might be reading Marcus Aurelius’ meditations for the third, fourth, fifth or sixth time, which reminds me I need to dig that out of a box somewhere.

So those are my initial thoughts on the topic, but I would much prefer to hear yours.