Riding the Certainty Curve: From Early Direction to Ongoing Reinvention
Unpacking the subtle tension between stability and evolution
We’re back at it for Round 2. I sincerely appreciate everyone who reached out to support The Shukla Script’s debut last week. The party’s just getting started.
After publishing that first article, I received follow-ups from two close friends, both wrestling with the same question in their own ways: what’s the ideal balance between certainty and uncertainty in life?
“One of my biggest takeaways is that we all have valuable advice and wisdom to offer others based on our experiences, even if we are simultaneously surrounded by uncertainty in our own lives. I get the sense that uncertainty is a permanent feature accompanying the pursuit of an examined life.”
— Brilliant Friend #1
“Tactically, how do you really know when you’ve planned too much of your life too far in advance? And when this does happen, what are the consequences?”
— Brilliant Friend #2
Wow. How lucky am I to have friends who enjoy having these types of discussions?
These are fantastic prompts — and, as with most big questions, there’s no universal answer. That said, today’s script will offer some guiding principles to help you contextualize your own situation and generate a more honest, grounded assessment of your relationship with (un)certainty.
To set the stage for anyone who’s new here, and to shamelessly keep referencing the only other article I have, these introspective inquiries were in response to the below excerpt from The Story Behind the Script:
“At just 22, I had too much of my life mapped out before I even knew who I was. Early certainty is a double-edged sword. It did give me a sense of peace while navigating the harder analyst days, but it fundamentally changed the mentality that I brought to work every day. I looked at banking through the lens of what would be most useful for my next job (which, mind you, I realistically didn’t know that much about…because of on-cycle recruiting happening entirely in one day). Meanwhile, my banking peers who didn’t go through on-cycle approached work with a more holistic lens, without any preconceived notions of what they were “supposed” to care about or be interested in. They soaked everything up and used banking as a tool to objectively identify their likes and dislikes, and then used that data to make more informed career decisions as our analyst program wrapped up. That is not a jab at on-cycle PE recruiting, but rather a recognition that embracing uncertainty is a major catalyst for maturation and personal growth. Everybody ends up having to face uncertainty — I just had to wait a little longer.”
And now, the main event.
Summer on Wall Street is a natural time to reflect on uncertainty. Interns arrive with fresh energy, ready to test-drive a 10-week glimpse of what their future could hold. Meanwhile, full-time analysts and associates are reaching key milestones and stepping into new roles. It’s a season of transition — and with transition comes uncertainty.
As I’ve gotten deeper into the world of education, I’ve become increasingly curious about the conditions that optimize learning. Through a mix of personal experience and the client journeys I’ve observed, I’ve come to see uncertainty as a necessary ingredient in creating an environment where real learning can happen. Of course, uncertainty can be viewed through countless lenses — but in today’s script, we’ll focus specifically on how it affects our capacity to learn.
We’ll start by defining the problem. There will still be some inherent subjectivity in any terms we pick, but the logic will be easier to follow with explicit definitions.
Let’s create a relationship between “Life Certainty” and “Capacity for Learning” where:
Life Certainty (LC) is the degree to which your environment, identity, and future feel predictable and within your control.
Capacity for Learning (CFL) is your ability to absorb, process, and integrate new information, perspectives, or behaviors.
By giving way too many MD-style comments to DALL-E, I created a visual representation of how I view the general directional relationship between these variables.
I can already hear my first critics telling me that that the inflection point, zone sizes, and rate of the curve’s acceleration and deceleration can be drastically different from person-to-person. You’re 100% right — they sure can be! Repeat after me. This is the general directional relationship. But it will still be useful!
Let’s break down how this graphic flows.
Uncertain Survival Zone. Here, your LC is dangerously low. You struggle to survive day-to-day, and therefore are limited in your ability to push your cognitive limits. You probably aren’t stumbling across niche Substacks if you’re in this zone, so congrats to my readers on that! Importantly though, notice how fast your CFL starts to rise as your LC makes even modest increases in this zone. This is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs at play, signaling that once our basic physiological and safety needs are met (i.e., the foundational elements of LC), we free up more of our mental bandwidth for intellectual pursuits (i.e., CFL).
Uncertain Stagnation Zone. Now it gets spicy. In this zone, you’re starting to figure things out, but still have too many life constraints holding you back from maximizing your CFL (to be clear, you still are learning, just not at your maximal capacity yet). You might have low savings or lack a sense of direction, but you have enough baseline resources to not worry about basic survival, and you’re starting to acquire some more advanced resources (capital through jobs, better social circles, educational content, etc.) which enable your CFL to accelerate. For most, the analyst-associate years will fall into this category — you can cover your living expenses, have a little capital leftover to invest in your future self and new experiences, and are starting to surround yourself with more advanced members of society (older coworkers, driven friends, etc.). You’re far from your “final form”, but can start to see the very first stepping stones of how to get there — this is the key distinction versus the Uncertain Survival Zone, where you really can’t see much past tomorrow.
Peak Learning Zone. Bingo. This is the sweet-spot. Your environment, identity, and future feel predictable and within your control, but are not entirely predetermined. You are surrounded by people and opportunities that foster your growth. You can authentically lean into your intrinsic curiosities and interests by investing in new resources and experiences. You’re gaining clarity on what you want, but you don’t have immutable expectations for how the remainder of your existence has to look. You’re aware that life is still programmable, and you begin to see every single life experience as an opportunity to refine the internal algorithms that drive your behavior. You’ve reached the perfect balance where you have enough certainty to feel grounded, safe and forward-thinking, and enough uncertainty to remain voraciously curious and inquisitive. That’s why when the CFL reaches its peak on the graph, the y-axis is marked at infinity — at this point, everything you do leads to learning.
Too Certain Stagnation Zone. I’m sure most of us intuitively understand that too much uncertainty is inherently dangerous, but it’s easy to overlook that the opposite also holds true. At what point do increases in certainty lead to decreases in learning? This zone captures that inflection point. You still have agency, but you’ve started to build yourself a cage that’s left you with tunnel vision. You’re mentally sharp and still have some wild-card creativity left in the tank, but you’ve mostly closed off consideration for new ways of doing things. Companies who stay in this zone for too long often fizzle out, as they lose touch with the innovative spirit that built them a competitive advantage in the first place. If the world were a static place, it would be rational to spend more time in this zone. But of course, the world inevitably continues to evolve, so the big risk taken by spending too much time here is losing touch with modern reality and becoming obsolete (shoutout to Blackberry, Blockbuster, and MySpace).
Too Certain Survival Zone. Rare air. In this zone, every little detail of your life has been accounted for and there’s almost no risk or uncertainty left for you to face. I would guess that few humans have ever reached this point of the curve, because there is so much inherent unpredictability baked into the human condition that doesn’t care about your wealth or strategic planning (i.e., declining health with age, geopolitical uncertainty in one’s country, etc.). But it’s still theoretically possible (shoutout to Bryan Johnson, I will be monitoring him closely), and it ties out the other maximum on the graphic where the x-axis is infinity and CFL is 0 — at this point, you’re in the Wall-E movie approaching complete auto-pilot status.
Before we continue, I feel compelled to remind us that none of these five zones are inherently “good” or “bad”. What matters is how well they align with our goals.
What you choose to optimize for in life is a highly personal decision. If learning isn’t your top priority, spending time in one of the so-called “stagnation” zones could be completely rational (remember that “stagnation” here refers specifically to your capacity for learning, not total life stagnation). In fact, that zone might actually be optimal for other priorities, like fun, rest, or quality time with family. Of course, learning can happen in those contexts too — I’m actually a firm believer that leisure can be a tool for growth — but that’s exactly the point. Every person’s beliefs and definitions are uniquely their own, and the frameworks we use to make sense of our lives should reflect those idiosyncrasies (for those so inclined…check out “The Tyranny of Words” by Stuart Chase if you want to go further down the rabbit hole of imprecision in human vocabulary. This concept has huge implications in business and in life, and 100% will get its own script one day).
This is also why being clear on what you want out of your life is so important: it gives you a north star — a reference point to evaluate whether your choices and outcomes are truly aligned with your goals. Otherwise, you could spend years playing a game you never actually cared about.
Now, philosophical disclaimers aside, I’m guessing you’re here because you do care about your learning and development, in which case getting closer to that CFL-maximizing point is a meaningful pursuit. So with this framework laid out, let’s get more specific and revisit my story.
My excerpt essentially claims that my early career-path visibility pushed me into the Too Certain Stagnation Zone. Now, how do I actually know this? The thing is, at the time, I didn’t. Back then, that was the only path I knew. As rare as it was for a 22-year-old, having the next four years of my life contractually mapped out felt normal to me. That baseline, by definition, couldn’t be challenged until I had enough new experiences to compare it against.
By going through TPG without my next gig lined up, I started to learn what it was like to live presently in an experience without preset expectations or filters of the future. Then, as I shared in my first script (another shameless plug), life hit me with the uno reverse card and served me a double-decker uncertainty sandwich. Over the next few years, I faced serious health challenges, struggled to build a one-person business, and eventually moved to Houston — a city where I knew almost no one — to work at Main Street Capital, doing a radically different style of private equity investing than what I’d done at TPG. And while I never actually crossed into the Uncertain Survival Zone, it sometimes felt like I did — a reflection of just how specific and structured my original baseline was.
There’s a lot to unpack there. It took having more life experiences to put my old ones into better perspective. But more importantly, it took an honest reflection of the learning outcomes I had Morgan Stanley compared to the learning outcomes I had at TPG, Main Street, and my entrepreneurial ventures — there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I learned at an exponentially higher rate in these later opportunities. Yes, increased maturity and other factors — like simultaneously teaching and working — certainly played a role. But my most honest assessment? Not having my future guaranteed forced me to engage harder, think deeper, and grow faster. My learning skyrocketed as a result.
Again, I’m not saying anything groundbreaking. We see this in sports all the time — some athletes crush it during contract years, land a max deal, and then quietly fade out (Tobias Harris, Philly hasn’t forgotten about you). But others thrive after signing the deal (Jalen Brunson, New York salutes you). So what explains the difference?
I think the fearsome critics of my certainty curve framework nailed it earlier: “the inflection point, zone sizes, and rate of curve acceleration and deceleration can be drastically different from person to person.” This divergence can be attributed to countless variables, such age, maturity, values, and goals.
Importantly, these variables aren’t fixed. They shift over time, often quietly, and are deeply shaped by the environments we operate in. Take private equity, for example. When you spend enough time in a field focused on downside protection, risk mitigation, and scenario modeling, it’s only natural that those patterns start to influence how you see the world and approach your own life decisions.
With that in mind, as I look back on my own journey, I can see how my trajectory was heavily shaped by two core forces:
Stage of Life. Landing the TPG offer so early felt like I had won the game before it even started. But in hindsight, that early certainty may have quietly short-circuited an important phase of my growth. At just 22 years old, I was still forming my identity — still figuring out what I valued and who I actually was outside the resume. Having such a well-defined path so early made it easy to stop asking those questions, or worse, to believe I already had the answers.
Cultural Values. Like many people from immigrant families, I grew up with a deep reverence for stability. My parents had experienced real uncertainty in their lives and worked incredibly hard to earn a stable, secure life in America. As a result, I learned to equate success with locking things in early, staying the course, and minimizing risk. That mindset served me in powerful ways — but it also made me blind to some of the hidden costs of early certainty, and the overlooked value of uncertainty.
Before you’ve reached a certain maturity level, external certainty can lock you into a version of yourself that hasn’t fully taken shape. But later on, when your sense of self is clearer, that same certainty can offer the stability needed for deeper growth. I like to think that if I were offered a similar multi-year runway today, I’d approach it with a different mindset — one that sees structure not as a box, but as a launchpad.
Nobody can define your certainty curve’s exact dimensions for you. That’s something you’ll perpetually recalibrate throughout your life — one honest reflection at a time. With each new experience, you’ll refine your internal algorithms and move closer to understanding your optimal CFL zone.
Most of us intuitively know when we’re in that optimal CFL zone. You can feel it. Just think about how people talk when they love their new job — they can’t stop telling you about how much they’re learning. It’s almost this subconscious barometer built into our brains where humans have an innate desire to learn and derive healthy, lasting dopamine from doing so. We’re wired for it — and if that wiring can be reactivated or strengthened by creating the right learning conditions, there’s something incredibly beautiful about that.
I hope your takeaway from this aggressively long Wednesday morning script is that self-awareness is the most valuable tool we have. It’s this powerful mix of curiosity, honesty, and introspection that can help us understand ourselves better, and in turn, make better choices over time. The signals and signs are always there. The hard part is, do we ever stop to listen to them?
So for the summer analysts navigating their internships, the incoming first year banking analysts deciding if doing on-cycle PE recruiting is the right decision for them, or anyone else dangling on the precipice of a major life choice, carve out some real time for honest reflection. Certainty is seductive, but clarity is earned. Take this time to listen to what your lived experience is quietly trying to teach you. Listen to your own internal compass, and let it guide you to your next chapter.
Since today ended up being deeply philosophical, I will leave you with five practical tactics I use to heighten my self-awareness. I intentionally left these until the very end so only the real ones who made it all the way through would see them:
Explore Your Curiosity at All Costs. Trust your instincts and let yourself explore what you’re naturally called to. Nothing is off-limits.
Unstructured Journaling. You don’t need any plan. Just write. Let your consciousness run wild. You will be shocked what comes out of it.
Hard Exercise Without Music or Caffeine. Release the demons. Watch what happens to your brain after the workout ends.
Solo Traveling. Go somewhere new by yourself. Even if it’s just a new part of your city. Watch what it does to help you sort out issues you’ve been hung up on.
Do What You Dislike. Some Carl Jung shadow integration here — lean into your dislikes with curiosity. See why they rile you up. You just might learn something.
Let me know where it leads you, and drop a comment with any future topics you’d like me to dig into. I wish you the best of luck, and I’ll be back to waste your time again next Wednesday :)