🧠 Weekly MindSweep No. 226 | Mind Your Business |Uncertainty
May 2026
Week 225: Curated Conversation: Uncertainty
*Week 226: Mind Your Business: Uncertainty
Week 227: Manage Your Mind: Uncertainty
Week 228: What's On My Mind: Uncertainty
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In the MindSweep this week:
Weekly MindSweep: Past issues live here.
Jamie’s Second Brain Corner: Links to references & MindSweep Mapping
What’s Inspiring Me - The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
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Uncertainty is open for business
Busyness, performance, and five steps forward
There's a particular kind of busyness in creative entrepreneurship that has nothing to do with productivity.
The calendar that's full but not full of those things.
The tasks that get done are things like the family's laundry, the never-ending inbox, and the group chat you've been meaning to reply to from last week. Meanwhile, the thing you actually need to do sits quietly in the corner, waiting for you to return.
In the past, we might have called it procrastination or procrasti-working. But that doesn't really fit. Procrastination can sound like laziness, and this isn't about being lazy.
This is self-protection, wearing a very convincing costume.
It fits so well that you might forget it's even there.
You start to believe that staying productive means doing the work.
You confuse being busy with making progress, and you fill every quiet moment before it can become uncomfortable.
Where Uncertainty Is Showing Up Right Now
I don’t want to talk about this in an abstract way. I want to talk about it so you feel a little less alone as you sit in your makeshift home office.
Uncertainty is showing up in my business:
in the spaces between decisions
in the moments after I've done the visible work and there's nothing left to point to
in that Sunday evening feeling when the week ahead is open and should feel like freedom, but instead it feels unsettling.
And, I know it's showing up for you, too.
I see it in the patterns that keep coming up in our Curated Conversation community. The performing and the filling and the exhaustion that has nothing to do with how much sleep you got last night.
Here's what I'm noticing in the creative entrepreneurial space:
We're filling the empty space. When free time comes, instead of resting, we fill it right away. We make plans or do tasks to avoid the silence and the questions we’re not ready to face.
We're performing productivity. The words we use, the updates we share, and the way we talk about our week are sometimes for an invisible audience. If it looks like we’re moving, maybe it won’t be obvious that we’re not sure where we’re headed.
We can handle uncertainty when it’s someone else’s problem. When a client, friend, or colleague is struggling, we stay calm and clear. We see the path and offer the next step. But when the uncertainty is ours, it feels different. It’s personal and physically exhausting in a way that’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t felt how heavy ambiguity can be.
The ADHD brain struggles with motivation, not because we don't care, but because the slow, boring parts of building something don’t give the same dopamine rush as a new idea or a crisis. Without that boost, trying to stay productive just to feel valuable becomes an exhausting full-time job on top of the real work.
Sometimes uncertainty turns into anger, and that’s important to notice. When we’ve been pretending to be certain for too long, filling every gap and performing every step, our bodies eventually run out of patience. The frustration that shows up isn’t always about what it seems. It’s the cost of carrying something heavy for too long without a break.
In Curated Conversation last week, we talked about something Brené and Adam discussed in The Curiosity Shop episode “Uncertainty is not the Enemy.” Adam made a clear point: maybe people aren’t really looking for certainty, but for control. Uncertainty threatens our sense that we’re in charge of our own lives. Brené added that certainty is often seen as a privilege to be earned. Marketing, advertising, and politics all use our fear of losing control and uncertainty by promising that if you do everything right, you’ll have more control and less uncertainty.
So when uncertainty shows up, as it always does in entrepreneurship, it doesn’t just challenge us. It can feel like proof that we’ve failed at what matters most: creating security and control.
It can feel like evidence that we didn’t do everything right.
No wonder we’re exhausted. We’re not just dealing with uncertainty. We’re doing it while being told that the right people never have to face it.
The Question Underneath All of It
And what I hear underneath that layer is: "Why do I even want to do this, if this is what it costs?"
I’ve been sitting with that question since I wrote it last week.
What I can say for myself is: I want to do this because the alternative—staying in a path that felt certain but never felt like mine—costs even more.
I’ve already weighed that cost. That’s why I’m here.
And even when you know that, it doesn’t make the uncertainty any easier to handle.
From Noticing to Moving: 5 Small Steps
So, I keep moving forward. That doesn’t mean I ignore the discomfort. It’s about taking one smaller step than I think I need to, and letting that be enough. Whether you need permission to start smaller or permission to slow down, here are five practices for exactly where we are right now:
Name what’s really happening. Awareness comes first. Before you can move forward, you need to see what’s going on. The next time you notice yourself "staying busy," pause and say it out loud or write it down: I am filling space because I'm uncertain about ___. That’s it. Naming it breaks the pattern and gives you something real to work with. No need to fix it yet.
Find the one true next action, not the whole plan. The ADHD brain gets paralyzed by the full staircase. You don't need the staircase right now. You need the next single stair. Ask yourself: "What is the one thing that, if I did it today, would move this forward?" Not the project. Not the strategy. The single step of action. Write it on a sticky note if you have to. Then do only that.
Let yourself feel the weight without trying to solve it. Uncertainty is physically and emotionally exhausting, and part of why it stays exhausting is that we keep trying to think our way out of it instead of letting our bodies process it. Give yourself ten minutes—not to solve or plan—just to acknowledge that this is hard. Take a walk, write in a journal, or have a quiet cup of coffee. Allowing yourself to feel it isn’t a weakness. It’s part of the work.
Notice when you’re performing and when you’re just being yourself. This takes practice. Start paying attention, even just in your mind, to the moments when your words or actions are for others instead of for the work itself. There’s no judgment here. Performing is a way to protect yourself. But over time, you want more of your energy to go into real action and less into putting on a show. Noticing is the first step.
Take an honest look at what being "busy" actually cost you this week. Do this with curiosity, not shame. Look at your week and ask: "What did I fill that could have been left open? What did I do to stay productive that didn’t help what I’m building?" This isn’t about regret. It’s about noticing the pattern so you can see it before it takes over your week.
If you’ve read all five of these and felt a mix of recognition and relief, that’s normal.
Remember, you're not doing this alone.
This is not easy work. It doesn't look like the kind of hard that gets acknowledged. Nobody sends you a trophy for noticing you've been filling silence instead of sitting in it. Nobody gives you credit for catching yourself mid-performance and choosing something more honest. Nobody sees the moment you let yourself feel the weight instead of pushing through it.
But I do.
I see it in the entrepreneurs who show up to Curated Conversation on Monday mornings before the week has had a chance to pick up speed. I see it in the replies that come in after a MindSweep lands in your inbox. I see it in the quiet courage of someone who has been building something real in the middle of a world that keeps telling them certainty is something you earn.
You are not behind. And you are certainly not the only one who finds this hard.
You are someone doing the real work—the inner work that most people never slow down enough to try—while also running a business, caring for the people you love, and figuring out what it means to build something that is truly yours.
That is not a small thing.
So before you move into next week, pause for a moment. The fact that you’re here—in Curated Conversation, listening to the Weekly MindSweep, or reading this for yourself—matters. It means something in you is still leaning toward the truth, even when staying busy feels easier.
That part of you is exactly right. Trust it.
Next week is Neuroscience Week!
Next week we’ll look at what actually happens in the brain when uncertainty shows up: why it triggers the same systems as physical threat, why the ADHD brain finds this especially hard, and what that means for how we respond.
Last week was about noticing. This week, we added movement. Next week, we’ll focus on understanding why this happens, and I think that will help things make more sense.
Until then: just one smaller step. I’m with you in the uncertainty.
My questions for you this week:
Where did you notice uncertainty showing up for you in life or your business this week? Does it wear the busyness costume, the performing costume, or something else entirely?
When uncertainty is someone else's problem, you can see the path clearly. When it's yours, everything changes. What do you think makes it so much harder to hold your own uncertainty than someone else's?
Reply and share with me!
✨ You Belong Here. I can help.
Whether you've been perfecting the landing page for six weeks or posting the graphic before the plan exists you’ll find uncertainty is underneath it. And working through it alone is exhausting.
I work with creative entrepreneurs as a brain-based business strategist. We look at what's actually driving the patterns and build from there.
It starts with one conversation.
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What I’m reading
The War of Art
by Steven Pressfield
If you create anything — a business, a brand, a body of work — this book will name something you’ve been living but couldn’t quite articulate.
What has stayed with me is recognizing how sophisticated Resistance can be.
In other news…
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