From the introduction / Forthcoming book
Acting without
certainty.
A passage from the manuscript of Staying Ahead of the Jet.
Years of preparing, flying, deciding and debriefing changed the way I think, and the deepest change was to my relationship with certainty. I live knowing that I do not fully know what is going on. My picture of the world has gaps in it, some of it is interpretation, and any part of it can become wrong in seconds. And yet I speak clearly, hold firm opinions and make decisions. The cockpit drilled that combination into me. We never had certainty, the jet would not wait for it, and we still had to act, again and again, well enough to do the job.
That combination is what I most want to pass on. Most people treat confidence and uncertainty as opposites, so they either wait for a certainty that never arrives or they manufacture one so that they can feel entitled to act. I learned to do neither. My confidence rests on knowing what my picture is built on, what I am trying to achieve, how far I need to commit, and what I could live with if I turn out to be wrong.
From the introduction to Staying Ahead of the Jet, Paul Littlejohn’s forthcoming book on four foundational disciplines of judgement.
About Paul