We were taught to wait for certainty before we move. To gather more data, run one more analysis, get sure. But in a world that changes faster than the plan, waiting isn't caution — it's the most expensive decision you never made.
The clarity you're waiting for sits on the other side of a move you haven't made yet. Action leads to clarity — not the other way around.
Ships April 2027
Choose your store: Pre-order on Amazon — US Pre-order — Canada (CAD)
The Certainty Crisis is a field guide for moving well when you can't see the whole road. It replaces the myth of "decide once you're sure" with a practice you can run on any decision, any week. Pathfinders follow the path; Wayfinders find the way — and they navigate by five principles the book calls the Wayfinder's GPS, taught in Chapters 3 to 7. The nine exercises on this site are separate: they're companion tools that put those principles to work.
They build in order. Each one solves the problem the one before it creates.
We are wired to overpay for the last one percent of certainty — and in life, that last one percent was never for sale. Before the principles, the book names the habit of waiting to feel sure, and why it costs more than it protects.
If certainty was never for sale, stop looking for the right decision and start looking for information. Aim at discovery instead of perfection, and you can no longer fail simply for not being sure.
You cannot plan your way to an innovation; you can only act your way to one. Doing nothing feels neutral, but it is still a decision — just one we get to pretend we never made. And when the move looks too big to make, make the decision smaller, until being wrong is survivable but the result still means something.
A destination tells you where you expect to arrive. A direction helps you decide what to do when you don't. A useful one is clear enough to occasionally tell you no, and wide enough to hold more than one ending. Goals still have a job — they are commitments to learn, not instructions from a future that hasn't happened yet.
A new direction often asks for someone the current version of you has never been. Separate your anchors — what you would still want to recognize in yourself if the job, city and title all changed tomorrow — from your variables, which are everything you're allowed to change. The trouble starts when we confuse deeply valued with merely familiar.
Find the friction, work backward until you reach something small enough to test, then change one thing somewhere the consequences of being wrong are manageable. We test because we don't already know. The attempt is allowed to fail; the information it produces still counts.
The five principles aren't a checklist you finish. They're held loosely and run again — keeping the immediate, midterm and long-term horizons lit at once, and adjusting the moment a move hands you new information.
Each one stands alone — take any in a few minutes — or run them as a set. Together they turn the book's five principles into something you can actually do tonight; each exercise is tagged with the principle and chapter it serves. Exercise answers aren't saved and aren't sent anywhere; the One-Degree Journal is the one exception, and keeps its entries in your browser. What's kept, and where.
These are reflective exercises, not graded tests — there's no right score, only a clearer read on where you stand and what to do next.
Twelve statements on how you tend to move when the road isn't clear — and which of four tendencies, if any, your answers point to today. It explains the result from your own answers and suggests one exercise to try next.
Think through the decision in front of you: can it be undone, what does waiting cost, what information is actually coming, and who else is affected? Borrows Bezos's one-way and two-way doors as a heuristic, not a formula.
Action only creates clarity if you read what it revealed. Audit a journey you've committed to: four questions help you see whether any trouble lies in the goal, the approach, the pace, or the sacrifice.
Four questions that trade the destination you can't predict for a bearing you can hold. Walk out with a direction clear enough to decide against, loose enough to keep discovering.
Name the version of you the situation has outgrown, sort your anchors from your variables, and map the self the next chapter needs. Walk away with a written crossing you keep.
List the roles you've inhabited and describe what you actually did inside each one. The container changes; the thread doesn't. Find the through-line your next move can carry forward.
Where the small moves get recorded — each one a question you didn't know the answer to, tested cheaply enough that being wrong is just learning. Not a to-do list. A running record of the clarity you earned by moving.
You live in three time horizons at once, and focusing on one quietly steals from the others. Map what matters across all three and see which horizon is getting starved.
Has the goal changed? Have I changed? Do I like who I'm becoming? Three questions for a path you're already on — answered together, they read back as a pattern rather than a mood.
Pre-order The Certainty Crisis and it arrives the week it prints. There are two places to order it depending on where you are — the button below picks the right one for you.
Amazon for readers in the United States, and a listing priced in CAD for Canada. Pick your own store below if you'd rather.
The Certainty Crisis ships in April 2027. If you'd like the occasional note from Eric as the book takes shape — launch news, new exercises, and the odd behind-the-scenes update — leave your email. You don't need to sign up to pre-order. No noise, easy to leave.
The exercises map onto the book's chapters, and onto its five principles one at a time. Start anywhere — but read down the list and you're walking the route the book walks, from noticing how you navigate today to keeping honest once you're moving.
Eric Termuende is a keynote speaker and author whose work centers on trust, navigating uncertainty, and building teams ready for whatever comes next. He has worked with organizations including Amazon, Toyota, IBM, Coca-Cola, TD, and Lockheed Martin.
The Certainty Crisis is his exploration of a simple, hard-won idea: that in a world moving faster than any plan, the people who thrive aren't the ones who predict best — they're the ones who've learned to move well before the picture is complete.
These nine exercises are the book's five principles made practical — the same tools Eric uses to help leaders stop waiting for certainty and start finding clarity in motion.
The site does three different things with what you type, depending on where you type it.
In the Wayfinder Assessment, the Certainty Threshold, the Bearing Check, the Direction Setter, the Identity Crossing, the Thread Finder, Time Horizons and the Three Anchoring Questions, your answers are held only in the open page. They aren't saved, and the exercises don't send them anywhere. Reloading or closing the page clears them, so copy anything you want to keep.
Journal entries are saved in your browser's local storage so they're still there when you come back. They stay in that browser on that device. They aren't sent to us, and they won't follow you to another browser or device. Clearing this site's data or your browsing history, or using a private window, can remove them. The journal's delete button removes every entry from that browser, and nothing else.
If you sign up for book updates, the email address you enter is sent to this site's form service (Netlify Forms) and kept there, so Eric can send the occasional update about the book. It stays on the list until it's removed, and you can ask to be taken off at any time. Nothing else you've typed on the site is sent with it.
There are no analytics or tracking scripts on the site. As with any website, the host receives standard request details such as your IP address when pages load. The pre-order button also uses your approximate country to choose between the US and Canadian store.