Uncertainty and Intuition

The best advice I've gotten came from myself, four years ago

read time 3 minutes

Earlier this week, I had my first call with a student through NYU’s mentorship program. Right away she said: “I have no idea what I want to do, but I’d love your help figuring that out.”

That alone caught me, but then she kept going - I’m interested in philosophy, creativity, art, technology. I don’t know how to pick one.

I almost laughed. Not at her, but because I’d heard that voice before. Mine at 22 (and sometimes today).

When you’re a multi-passionate individual, uncertainty hits different. It’s not just “what do I want to do?” It’s “how do I choose when everything interests me and none of it fits neatly into one job title or industry?” That was my exact problem eight years ago when I moved to the US for my degree. It was my problem when I finished undergrad, my masters, and it’s still my problem now. It also turns out I’m not alone.

After the call, I went back through my LinkedIn looking for something I knew I’d written. I found it - a post from four years ago, right before I graduated:

“It’s okay not to know. I didn’t know what university I would get into, I didn’t know where I would find a job... All I know is that I have a better understanding of what I don’t want - which means I am a step closer to understanding what I deserve.”

146 people reacted to that, I think because it was honest. I also think I needed to hear it again more than my mentee did.

Four years later, I’ve done things I’m proud of. I shipped Gen-AI search at Walmart. I’m building AI agents at Adobe. I’m speaking at a conference next month. I run a newsletter. I coach aspiring PMs. By any external measure, the uncertainty should be gone by now.

It’s not. If anything, it's expanded.

The more I do things I actually want to do and say no to the things I don’t, the more doors appear - and they keep getting more exciting. There’s growing certainty about the broader direction, but still total uncertainty about which specific door to walk through. None of them have signs on them.

AI is also redrawing the boundaries of every role I know. I could lean deeper into engineering or move toward design. I could go all in on creative work, on writing or content. I could build Product Rookies into a real business. The more experience I accumulate, the more doors appear.

The difference between me at 22 and me now isn’t that I have answers. It’s that I have better instruments. Every role, every project, every environment I’ve walked into and walked out of added signal. A feel for what gives me energy vs what drains it, what I’ll fight for vs what I’ll tolerate, or what I’m building toward vs what I’m just doing.

I think that’s what intuition actually is. It doesn’t feel like a flash of insight. It’s accumulated evidence from lived experience, forming so slowly you don’t notice until someone asks you a question and you realize you already know your answer.

Here's what I've come to believe about uncertainty: you don't solve it by looking forward. Not by mapping every possible career path, or comparing yourself to people who seem like they figured it out, or optimizing for what looks right from the outside. The answer isn't ahead of you. It's behind you - in the pattern of what you've said yes to, what you've said no to, and what that trail is telling you about who you're becoming.

My mentee doesn’t know what she wants to do and neither did I. Neither do I, fully, right now. But I’m closer than I was four years ago.

I told her the same thing I told myself at 22: choose intentionally and pay attention to what you eliminate. That’s your compass building itself.

— Akash