This post may contain affiliate links. For more information please read my disclaimer.
We make decisions every day. These decisions, big and small, influence the trajectory of our lives. What we eat, the career we choose, our lifelong partner, where we live etc. But we don’t always get it right. How often have you made decisions that you regret? And how much time and energy have you wasted stressing about them and imaging alternative outcomes?
Imagine if you could make better decisions. You would gain clarity of thought and confidence in your choices. To get there, let’s understand why we might regret decisions and how to make better ones.
How we make decisions
The decision-making process is as follows. It starts with identifying a need (I’m hungry), looking for ways to satisfy it (sandwich, crisps, salad), evaluating these alternatives (taste/calories), making a decision (sandwich), and evaluating the decision afterwards (happy with my choice/wish I’d gone for something else).
Most of our decisions are based on intuition and emotion. This is fine for gratifying short term desires but ignores the long term consequences of our decisions.
Arguing with your partner or eating a whole cake in one sitting might feel satisfying in the short term but in time you’ll likely regret it.
How to make better decisions
To rationally think about long term consequences over simply being absorbed in short term emotion-driven decision making use the 10/10/10 rule.
When faced with a difficult decision consider how an outcome will make you feel in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years.
These three timelines are unique in that they allow you to evaluate your option from three separate perspectives. They provide you with a well-balanced, thorough, and realistic picture of how your decision will play out.
Your emotions will probably determine how you feel in 10 minutes and is a good gauge for the immediate feelings towards a decision. But considering the 10-month and 10-year time horizons forces you to rationally consider the longer-term implication of your choices.
Dealing with uncertainty
What makes this exercise difficult is that life is full of uncertainties. How can you possibly know the outcome of a decision in 10 years time with so many external factors at play? In these cases, consider the best-case and worst-case scenarios and give them a score from -10 (disastrous outcome) to +10 (incredible outcome). Considering the overall picture by comparing the best and worst scenarios will help you understand if the decision is overall a positive one or not.
For example, imagine you’re deciding whether to quit your job and go travelling for a year. You’re hesitant because what if it all goes wrong or you can’t find your footing in the working world when you’re back? It’s a big decision and one that should be considered carefully.
In the worst-case scenario you head off travelling and aren’t earning any money for a while, don’t really make new friends as you’d expected and feel out of place before coming home after 2 months, poorer and discouraged. Will this matter in 10 years? It might take some time to get back into work but you’ve only lost a few months and foregone some income (score: -4).
In the best-case scenario, you explore new cultures, meet new and exciting people, make life long memories and collect stories to share for years to come. It’s an exciting chapter in your life that makes you an interesting candidate for future employers and you land an even bigger and better role because of it than if you’d just stuck with your job and carried on as you were (score: +9).
Evaluating these, it makes sense to just go for it. The expected return is positive (+9 – 4 = +5).
The 10–10–10 rule can be applied to almost any choice you face. Personal or professional, fleeting or important, every day or once in a lifetime. Just ask yourself:
How will I feel about this in ten minutes, ten months, and ten years from now?
Conclusion
Making decisions can be difficult and we tend to focus on the short term outcomes. But consider the longer-term consequences of your actions using the 10/10/10 model. Most of the decisions we make don’t change the trajectories of our lives. But some can have a bigger impact than we anticipate. The only way we can understand this is to imagine the future.
