In a world that's growing more terrifyingly unpredictable, the swift certain answer seems just right. But while pursuing the secrets to good thinking in scientific laboratories, operating rooms, corporate boardrooms, and on the frontiers of Artificial Intelligence, award-winning author Maggie Jackson realized that in devaluing uncertainty we have been overlooking the crucial missing link to the higher-order mind. Once largely neglected as a topic of study, the newly discovered gifts of not-knowing now fascinate the greatest cognitive scientists - and offer us a remarkable antidote to the narrow-mindedness of our day. Uncertain reveals the startling cognitive riches that are abandoned in the flight from the unknown and the unsure. Understanding when and how to be unsure is what distinguishes a superior expert from one who is merely good enough, as young doctors are now being taught. An ambivalent executive is far more resourceful in a crisis than the ultra-decisive leaders we admire, groundbreaking research shows. By learning to wield uncertainty with skill and care, we can deftly navigate conflict and surprise, bolster our memory and creative imagination, and gain resilience. Featuring cutting-edge research and in-depth reporting, this paradigm-shifting book shows us how to skillfully confront the unexpected and unknown, and how to seek not-knowing in the service of curiosity, wisdom, and discovery. In these pages, Jackson shows how dissent, even if wrong, provokes a group to better complex problem-solving; how moving beyond a first-reflex decision unlocks more successful long-term solutions; and how mounting evidence reveals that the more frequently we set down our devices and navigate the branching architecture of our memories, the more we strengthen our brains in unanticipated ways. An unpredictable, changeable world has been with us all along. Liberating ourselves from the ever-alluring but mistaken belief that life could be otherwise offers a startling new vision of human progress and of what it means to know.