The Human Development Report Uncertain Times, Unsettled Lives: Shaping our Future in a World in Transformation connects the dots between various development challenges and shows how interacting layers of uncertainty – stemming from dangerous planetary change in the Anthropocene, transformations, and political polarization - are unsettling people’s lives, in various ways, spanning issues of mental well-being to human insecurity. Building on the 2023 Human Development Report on inequalities and the 2023 Human Development Report on the Anthropocene, as well as recent findings in the 2023 Special Report on Human Security, the report explores how understanding uncertainty and its relation to individual and collective choices may help account for why action may be delayed, even in the face of looming threats to people and to our planet. However, inherent in uncertain times are not only threats but also opportunities to imagine the unimaginable, to think and do differently. Thus, the report suggests a way forward that move us beyond paralysis. It argues that expanding our policy toolbox and doubling down on human development – securing wellbeing achievements whilst also fostering agency – may help us navigate and flourish in uncertain times.