Consequences

Think before you do

💡 This mental modal tells us to think about a decision in long-term basis. This gives us a good idea that before thinking of making a decision think about - “ Than what?” When we think through this we can know how this can impact us in the future and avoid or make decisions accordingly.

A common real-life example of it is my father and an uncle who would come to talk to my father often. My father only considered first-order consequences and told him all the way he could enter his market. The first-order consequence was that he will reduce our own workload that we could not handle. But the second-order consequence became an unconsidered headache. He started to give us competition and we started to make strategies to gain our old and gold customers. And the third-order consequence became that we lose our monopoly in the local market and also lose our market share.

Or the second example of this could be a county that is funding weapons and money to the protestors or the dividing power of the country. But eventually, that group becomes so strong that that group starts to attack the same country that was waging the war. The country only considered the first-order consequence. But second-order consequences harmed that country.

Here is the simplest example. You were hungry and you decided to eat the chocolate.

Option 1— You ate the chocolate

Then What:

First Order consequence- You lost your appetite. Now you are not feeling hungry anymore.

Second Order Consequence- You started getting fat because you ate chocolate every-time you feel hungry and dint ate proper food for days.

Third-order consequence- You got sick because of your decision.

Option 2

You ate proper food and redirected your desire to eat the chocolate.

First-order consequence- You lost your appetite. Most of the time any decision makes you reach the same first order consequence.

2nd order: You live healthy and energetic life because you ate proper food.

3rd order: You get more time to do the things you want and less time worrying about what you don’t want.

Enhancing your ability to think:

1. Always ask yourself “ Then what”.

2. Think through time: what after 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years

3. Create templates like the second image above with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd order consequences. Identify your decision and think it through and write down the consequences. If you review these regularly you’ll be able to help calibrate your thinking.

4. Bonus) If you’re using this to think about business decisions, ask yourself how important parts of the ecosystem are likely to respond. How will employees deal with this? What will my competitors likely do? What about my suppliers? What about the regulators? Often the answer will be little to no impact, but you want to understand the immediate and second-order consequences before you make the decision.

A lot of extraordinary things in life are the result of things that are first-order negative, and second-order positive. So just because things look like they have no immediate payoff, doesn’t mean that’s the case. All it means is that you’ll have less competition if the second and third-order consequences are positive because everyone who thinks in the first order won’t think things through.

Second-order thinking takes a lot of work. It’s not easy to think in terms of systems, interactions, and time. However, doing so is a smart way to separate yourself from the masses.