Mind-shifting words: Some decisions you make seem like a win at first but turn out to be losses over time. This is because we don’t think through all of the consequences.
Strategy Shift: Second-Order Thinking
When trying to make a decision, your natural reaction is to think about what happens immediately after you’ve made the decision. For example, when thinking about having a chocolate bar, your immediate thoughts are whether you will like eating it or have to exercise more to burn off the extra calories.
In second-order thinking, you should ask yourself about the long-term consequences of that decision.
In the chocolate bar example, the second order consequences could be getting used to eating chocolate bars and gaining weight faster or even getting diabetes. A positive second-order effect could be you exercising more and losing more weight faster.
Whether to have a chocolate bar may seem like a trivial decision, but its second-order effects could have a bigger negative effect.
You don’t have to apply second-order thinking to all your decisions, but it’s a useful exercise for decisions with much larger consequences.
Think it through, long term.