Margaret Heffernan And The 5 Essential Skills In Times Of Uncertainty

Margaret Heffernan is a prestigious British intellectual who in recent years has studied a crucial topic: uncertainty. At the beginning of 2020 he published his book Uncharted: How to map the future or Unexplored: how to draw the map of the future . It was a perfect fit for a critical year and that is why it became one of the most widely read works in recent months.

Therefore, it is not strange that Margaret Heffernan has been one of the characters that everyone wants to interview. During 2020, uncertainty was imposed  on the entire planet and human beings have been forced to look it in the face and deal with it.

Everyone wants to know what is going to happen, when it will happen and how it will happen. However, no one has those answers at hand. Margaret Heffernan calls, in principle, to abandon this obsession with prediction. In return, he proposes developing skills  to deal with uncertainty in a constructive way. It highlights five of them, which we will see below.

1. Imagination

The first skill Margaret Heffernan highlights is imagination. He points out that the influence of science and technology made many people addicted  to certainty. So when the unexpected comes, they feel completely off base. They don’t know what to do except try to search for new certainties, even if they can’t find them.

The imagination is a way to deal with uncertainty : rather than go looking for certainties, can consider different possibilities, different paths or exits and play with each of them. The imaginative does not seek the final answer, but the range of options. That is why it is essential in times of crisis.

2. Adaptation

Obviously, adaptation is one of the crucial skills in Margaret Heffernan’s perspective. It is an exercise in which you have to re-shuffle the cards and discover what we can do with them.

Adapting is being willing to change based on the reality principle. It implies being flexible and having the desire to find solutions to problems, instead of denying that they exist or trying to return to circumstances in which they did not exist. Uncertainty is less scary if we are adaptable.

3. Collaboration, Margaret Heffernan’s proposal

The crisis of 2020 has posed an unprecedented complexity for human beings. It showed us that the problem of one can end up being the problem of all. We are so closely interconnected that it is very necessary to look at the world in terms of “we”, rather than only in relation to “me”.

In the same way, the crisis raised implies that we need each other to get ahead. Either we all leave or the situation will not be overcome. Therefore, the best solutions in these times are those that serve many. Even from an emotional point of view, if the other is okay, I can be okay. Collaboration is essential.

4. Motivation

Margaret Heffernan points out that in recent years many people do not see technology as a means, but as a solution. However, the crisis of 2020 has also come to put things in their place in this regard, since it has served a lot, but it has not delivered all the solutions.

In this regard, Margaret Heffernan points out that technology can offer the means to work, but not the motivation to do so. It also allows you to communicate with others, but it does not generate the genuine desire to share and the ability to do so. So having the interest and the desire is essential to use any tool that we have at hand and make it something really valuable.

5. Do experiments

The ability to build knowledge on one’s own is another skill that helps to deal with uncertainty, according to Margaret Heffernan. This intellectual points out that experimenting, both in the private sphere and in the workplace, is decisive in learning how to find outlets.

Calls to avoid attitudes whereby people sit and wait for others to construct the perfect answers to their problems. When doing experiments, everyone should go through a trial and error process until they reach their own knowledge and conclusions. The opposite is a learned helplessness.

Margaret Heffernan has many other interesting ideas about it. It is one of those intellectuals that is worth reading because it shows a different panorama in which human abilities are revalued to overcome crises, thus returning to the essential that distinguishes our species.