Learn How To Handle Uncertainty With Simone Stolzoff

**Morra Aarons-Mele** (0:00)
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I'm Morra Aarons-Mele, and this is The Anxious Achiever. What is the thing that you're most afraid of? Not knowing what comes next and imagining the worst is actually the condition that makes growth, creativity, even the meaningful life possible. My guest today is Simone Stolzoff, and he's author of two books that together make a pretty radical but cool argument about how we should relate to work and identity and uncertainty. As an anxious achiever, you might have a lot of feelings about them. His first book, The Good Enough Job, made the case that we've become dangerously over-invested in our careers as a source of who we are, our identity, and that when the job might disappear, our sense of self goes with it. And maybe that's not a great way to live and we should think about, like he says, diversifying our identity. And Simone's new book, How Not To Know, goes deeper into the psychology underneath uncertainty and what it costs us.
Simone is a former journalist and designer who has thought more carefully than almost anyone about the stories we tell ourselves when the future feels uncomfortable. Right now, with AI reshaping entire industries and layoffs hitting without warning in a general sense that it's kind of a mess and the old rules don't apply. I think his timing is pretty good with this book that will help us understand how not to know. We talk about the three traps that keep us addicted to certainty and why diversifying your identity might be more important than diversifying your income streams and his grandmother's bicep. I'm serious. It's a great story. You'll understand when we get there.
Simone, welcome. Welcome to the show. I've got you in the middle of your book promotion. So I'll try to make it spicy for you.

**Simone Stolzoff** (4:34)
Thank you so much. And I probably will try to not make it too salesy for you.

**Morra Aarons-Mele** (4:38)
I appreciate it. Well, you've got your book in the background. That's awesome. So everyone should go buy it. That's my pitch.

**Simone Stolzoff** (4:48)
There we go.

**Morra Aarons-Mele** (4:50)
You have this lovely anecdote in your first book about your grandmother, I think it is, in Italy. And she pulled espresso for a living.

**Simone Stolzoff** (5:02)
Quite literally. She worked in the days of manual espresso machines. And so what I say is it's sort of like an allusion to that famous quote about how my grandfather was in the army, so my father could be an engineer, so I could be a poet. And I think there's some version of that in my own family history, where my grandma did not look to self-actualize through her work. She worked at a cafe in the small town of Italy that she grew up. And the reason that pulling the lever is important is because she had one large bicep and one small bicep. She was sort of like Popeye.