If something is going to be better, it is new, and if it's new you are confronting problems and challenges you... — Jonathan Ive

If something is going to be better, it is new, and if it's new you are confronting problems and challenges you don't have references for.

Author: Jonathan Ive

Insight: We live in a culture that prizes certainty. We want instructions, precedent, proof that something will work before we try it. But this quote cuts against that comforting instinct: anything genuinely better requires you to venture into territory where the map doesn't exist. There's no playbook for the thing that hasn't been done before. This matters because it reframes what we usually see as a bug—uncertainty, being stuck, not knowing the answer—as actually a feature of doing anything worthwhile. Whether you're starting a business, learning a new skill, or making a significant life change, that feeling of "I don't know if this will work" isn't a sign you're doing it wrong. It might be a sign you're doing something that hasn't been done by you, in your exact circumstances, before. The tricky part is learning to sit with that discomfort without it paralyzing you. Most people feel the unfamiliar territory and retreat to what's known and safe. But the people who tend to make things better—whether in design, work, or life—are often just slightly more willing to keep walking even when the path is unclear. They've made peace with the fact that "new" and "hard to navigate" are basically synonymous.