I clearly remember the 2008 financial crisis—not just as a headline, but as something deeply personal. Lehman Brothers had just gone bankrupt, and my husband was working there at the time. Meanwhile, I was at Morgan Stanley, watching in disbelief as the firm’s market value plummeted by 80% in just a few short months. Both of us were facing the very real possibility of losing our jobs. But what made it even more daunting was the risk of losing each other.
We were young, engaged to be married, and living in a highly uncertain world. On top of everything, we were both on work VISAs, which meant if things went sideways, we could be sent back to our home countries—separately. The stress was overwhelming; it was this strange mix of fascination with history unfolding and deep anxiety about what the future might hold.
Research shows that certainty—and its close companions fairness, ownership, rank, and emotional connection—are fundamental social domains our brain seeks to feel safe and in control. You don’t have to live through a financial crisis for your brain to react this way. That same threat response can flare up in everyday moments—a meeting suddenly put on your calendar with no agenda, a taxi that’s taking longer than expected when you’re already running late, or even dropping your child off at sleepaway camp for the very first time.
What’s Happening in the Brain?
The truth is, the brain hates uncertainty and its designed to reduce uncertainty as much as possible. If you think about our ancestral past, the more certainty you had, the more likely you were to survive. If you didn’t know what that weird noise was in the bushes or where the resources were or who was your enemy in the tribe, you were very likely to die. As a result, our brains became prediction machines.
This is why our brains are wired to seek certainty because it helps us manage the chaos. But those moments of uncertainty? They challenge us, create stress, and remind us just how much our sense of safety depends on feeling in control.
In today’s world these predictions can be dangerous. A lot of the risks that we were facing in nature, in our ancestral past, don’t exist anymore. And yet, we are still responding exactly in the same way when it comes to uncertainty.
You want to know how much humans hate not knowing what the future will hold? In a famous experiment, people were given the choice between receiving a stronger electric shock immediately or waiting for a smaller one at an unknown time. Most people chose the bigger shock right away. In other words, we would rather imagine a catastrophe than deal with something unpredictable.
The Uber and Heathrow Airport Effect
One can now understand why Uber was so successful. You know exactly when your ride will be at your door. For many, it doesn’t matter that it’s 10 minutes away and that you may be able to catch a taxi quicker. At least you know.
This is why Heathrow airport saved hundreds of millions of dollars by making one simple change. Showing people their wait times rather than actually decreasing their wait time at each stage of the check-in process. That transparent communication about wait times led to better passenger satisfaction, even though the actual wait time were not shortened.
High Performers and the “Overs”
So how does our reaction to uncertaintly manifest today? For some people, they procrastinate – a sort of “deer in the headlight” reaction. But for most high performers, it results in what I call the “Corporate Overs”.
FMRI studies show that uncertainty activates threat detection circuits in the brain—even before any real threat appears. In short: You’re not anxious because things are falling apart. You’re anxious because your brain can’t guarantee they won’t.
Psychologist, Dr. Julia DiGangi, actually defines anxiety as a “disturbed relationship with certainty.”
And in the world of finance and corporate leadership, that disturbed relationship usually shows up as:
- Overworking: Staying online until midnight tweaking decks no one will read
- Over-analyzing: Replaying one client comment 100 times in your head
- Over-scheduling: Filling your calendar to avoid “unproductive” time
- Over-communicating: Writing the 4th follow-up email just to “make sure”
- Over-engineering: Adding more layers of process to feel in control
The energy of uncertainty is something your nervous system tries to avoid—by doing more. This is known as
“Compensatory control”, a psychological theory that shows that whenever we feel like we’re losing control, we try to over exert control.
This is very rarely something that people can keep up with for a very long time. So although this may work for a while, this pattern eventually backfires.
The Reality Check
Now, the logic feels sound in the moment: “If I just do more… control more… plan more… I’ll eliminate the uncertainty.” If you audit your own professional history, you’ll realize:
“Never in the history of overthinking has overthinking actually solved the problem.”
There is an old well-known adage in the Investment Banking world. Whether you have 4 weeks or two days to pull a pitchbook together, you will always be turning the document until the last second. At some point, there are diminishing returns.
When I was on the Well-Being Board at Morgan Stanley, and even more so when growing our Debt Capital Markets business, I saw this pattern everywhere—at every level.
Managing directors over-engineering administrative processes after one bad quarter…
VPs over-scripting their talking points for their client discussion…
Associates over-analyzing that thing their MD said in the last feedback session…
And yet, despite all the overs… anxiety didn’t decrease.
It increased.
What Capacity-Built Leaders Do Instead
It takes an effort to elevate yourself above those natural automatic instincts so that we don’t feel the need to respond to that uncertainty on autopilot just to try and fill the gap. Let’s explore how:
Leaders who sustain performance over time don’t eliminate uncertainty… they build tolerance for it.
The goal through coaching or reading this blog isn’t to eliminate uncertainty. It’s to understand that the brain innately is driving that uncomfortable feeling in response to uncertainty that causes these “Over” behaviors in some, and “deer in the headlight” moments for others (although most of us high performers scurry off in to go-mode).
When you master this, you can make better decisions. You increase efficiency. All because you can better self regulate.
Three steps we can take:
- Recognize the feeling – scan for the “overs”: When you catch yourself overanalyzing, over-communicating, or overengineering—pause and label it: “This is my brain’s attempt to manufacture certainty.”
- Increase certainty… if reasonable: Ask yourself: 1) Are the actions I’m taking increasing certainty of the outcome? 2) If yes, then ask, would the increased certainty gained substantiate the effort made?
- If no, then practice decision tolerance: Give yourself time-boxed decision windows. For example: “I’ll make this decision in 30 minutes, with whatever information I have by then.”
Although preparation is very important, it helps to de-glorify over-preparation: Acknowledge that 95% of your career wins didn’t come from having perfect certainty—but from making informed bets, adjusting in real time, and learning quickly.
Remember to work the nervous system, not just the calendar: Incorporate breathwork, body scans, or short nervous system resets before major decision points to bring the prefrontal cortex back online.