Ep 158. Maggie Jackson: Productive Uncertainty
“We need to wake up to the opportunity that uncertainty provides.”
Maggie Jackson
Maggie Jackson is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, fellowships, and prizes as an author and journalist whose essays, commentary, and books have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New Philosopher, on National Public Radio, and elsewhere. A graduate of Yale and the London School of Economics, her book Distracted: Reclaiming Our Focus in a World of Lost Attention has been described as “groundbreaking” and “essential” and a new, updated edition has just been released that continues to warn that the fragmentation of attention in today’s world is eroding our abilities to problem-solve, innovate, and care for one another. She’s the author of another book, What’s Happening to Home? Balancing Work, Life and Refuge in the Information Age, which was the first to explore the fate of home in the digital age, a time when private life is permeable and portable.
In this episode, Stew and Maggie talk about distraction in the digital age and a new project she’s working on, what she calls “productive uncertainty.” They explore the benefits of fallow time, which permits restoration and rejuvenation; the dangers of snap judgments and how we are biased toward making them without really thinking; how to nourish the “slow mind” and much more. Maggie explains some of the cognitive science underpinning her incisive insights on how to cultivate a greater acceptance of openness to uncertainty and non-linear ways of appreciating our world.
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