What Is The 10/10/10 Rule?

In life, decision-making is inevitable.
No matter how much you try to get away from it, you must make some decision or the other to get to that next stage in life.
It is also easy to make the wrong ones, given that most of us let our emotions get in the way.
If you think back, most of the wrong decisions you have made till now may have been because of greed, lust, anger, or anxiety.
While you may want to rely on your emotions, know that they are momentary and last only as long as you experience them.
Now, the question begs. How do we make the right choices?
Let us try to understand. But before we do that, we ought to know what causes us to make decisions we regret later.

Factors That Influence Decision-Making

Such factors include:

If a decision you made in the past resulted in a positive outcome, you would most likely make the same choices again.
However, know that this does not always hold good.
For example, financial decisions do not depend on past outcomes and depend mostly on the choices that you make now.

Most decisions we make depend on what we already know or what we believe is right, and most of the things we believe to be true come from our observations.
So, you can say that our decisions relate the thinking patterns we form to our overall beliefs and observations.
Now it so happens that most of these thinking patterns are cognitive biases, meaning that these are what we believe to be the truth, a memory, judgement errors, or flaws in our logic.
When you rely heavily on these cognitive biases, such as the observations we make or neglect information that we perceive as a risk, we make the wrong choices.

Irrational commitments also influence the way we make decisions.
When there is too much burden on you or when you cannot fulfil your obligations and commitments, you tend to make decisions that may later affect you adversely.
Another aspect that can significantly affect the decision-making process is its outcomes.
When you are motivated purely by a specific outcome and expect results accordingly, you may end up making the wrong decisions.

No two persons are alike.
Each person thinks differently and so the decisions they make are also usually different.
However, when you look at the decision-making process of different individuals, there are three things that you will commonly notice.
The first one is the age of the decision-maker.
People of different ages make decisions differently.
For instance, a ten-year-old child may make decisions that differ greatly from an adult, say a 30-year-old.
Similarly, the socioeconomic status of an individual is another crucial factor in decision-making.
Others cannot decide anything on their own owing to a lack of proper education or resources or information.
So, these are the four factors that influence how we make decisions.
Whatever decisions you make, you must face the outcomes.

While we must all make decisions at different points in our lives, those of you who find it hard to do so can use the 10-10-10 rule.
The 10-10-10 rule helps you make decisions not influenced by experiences, age, commitments, outcomes, or even individual differences.
So what is the 10-10-10 rule? It is a simple rule that answers the following questions.
What will be my thoughts 10 minutes later about the decisions that I make now?
What will they be ten months later? And what will they be ten years later?
Most people look for short-term pleasures and assurances.
For example, let’s say you look at something you like.
Now, what if you could get it within the next ten minutes?
How would you feel? You would feel great, wouldn’t you?
What if you must wait for another ten months?
Well, you wouldn’t feel as great, but at least you would have considered the prospect of saving money for something more worthwhile.
What about ten years? While ten years seems like a long wait, it may still be worth it as you would not have to worry about instantly spending money to buy it without consciously thinking of saving for the future.
Using the 10-10-10 rule, you would think ahead and assess the situation at hand and make better choices.
While you could purchase the item you want within the next 10 minutes, and that would no doubt bring you some happiness, that happiness is short-lived.
But if you could be a little smarter and think ahead, you would be happier in the long run.

Now that you know what the 10-10-10 rule is and how you can use it to make smarter choices, you must make sure that you practice using it in the face of tough choices.
The only way to get acquainted with using this rule is by applying it in every instance of your life where you must choose from among a wide range of things.
You could even be using it to make those important business decisions.
If you are running a business, such as a startup organisation that offers useful products or services, you could start by picturing that organisation and the relevance of its products or services 10 days from now.
Once you visualise what your start-up organisation would look like 10 days from now, you could work towards achieving that vision.
Similarly, you could also be doing the same on a larger scale, by visualising your organisation 10 months or even 10 years from now.
And you could work towards achieving what you envisioned today.
Then, 10 years later, you could look back and see if you have achieved what you thought you would by conscious foresight and forward thinking.
So, this is how you can apply the 10-10-10 rule to your business or even your daily life.

If you want to adapt yourself to the 10-10-10 rule, then you must practice it well as it does not come naturally.
Once you get it, you will make smarter and quicker choices.
When you use the 10-10-10 rule properly, you will learn to think differently and will be able to make sound decisions that you will not regret later.