[acb-hsp] The 10-10-10 Rule

[Donna Rose]

Thanks Peter,

I have some big decisions to make and this email will help.

Go Bravely,
Donna Rose, LMSW


"An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow
confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all
humanity...."--Martin Luther King, Jr.


-----Original Message-----
From: acb-hsp-bounces at acb.org [mailto:acb-hsp-bounces at acb.org] On Behalf Of
peter altschul
Sent: Monday, April 01, 2013 12:06 PM
To: Acbhsp
Subject: [acb-hsp] The 10-10-10 Rule

The 10/10/10 Rule For Tough Decisions
  By Chip Heath and Dan Heath April 1, 2013
  It's good to sleep on it when there are tough choices to make, 
but you also need a strategy once you wake up--which is why you 
should employ the 10/10/10 rule.
  It's easy to lose perspective when we're facing a thorny 
dilemma.  Blinded by the particulars of the situation, we'll 
waffle and agonize, changing our mind from day to day.
  Perhaps our worst enemy in resolving these conoeaicts is 
short-term emotion, which can be an unreliable adviser.  When 
people share the worst decisions they've made in life, they are 
often recalling choices made in the grip of visceral emotion: 
anger, lust, anxiety, greed.  Our lives would be very different 
if we had a dozen "undo" buttons to use in the aftermath of these 
choices.
  But we are not slaves to our emotions.  Visceral emotion fades.  
That's why the folk wisdom advises that when we've got an 
important decision to make, we should sleep on it.  It's sound 
advice, and we should take it to heart.  For many decisions, 
though, sleep isn't enough.  We need strategy.
  One tool we can use was invented by Suzy Welch, a business 
writer for publications such as stBloomberg Businessweekst and 
stOst magazine.  It's called 10/10/10, and Welch describes it in 
a book of the same name.  To use 10/10/10, we think about our 
decisions on three different time frames:
  * How will we feel about it 10 minutes from now? * How about 10 
months from now? * How about 10 years from now?
  The three time frames provide an elegant way of forcing us to 
get some distance on our decisions.  Consider a conversation we 
had with a woman named Annie, who was agonizing about her 
relationship with Karl.  They'd been dating for nine months, and 
Annie said, "He is a wonderful person and in most ways exactly 
what I am looking for in a lifelong mate."
  She worried, though, that they weren't moving forward in their 
relationship.  Annie, at 36, wanted to have kids and didn't feel 
she had an unlimited amount of time to cultivate her relationship 
with Karl, who was 45.  After nine months, she still hadn't met 
Karl's adopted daughter (from his oearst marriage), and neither 
person had told the other, "I love you."
  Karl's divorce had been horrendous, leaving him gun shy about 
another serious relationship.  After the divorce, he'd resolved 
to keep his daughter separate from his dating life.  Annie 
empathized with him, but it hurt her to have a critical part of 
his life ruled off-limits to her.
  When we talked to Annie, she was about to take her first 
extended vacation with Karl, a road trip up Highway 1 from Los 
Angeles to Portland.  She wondered whether she should "take the 
next step" during the trip.  She knew that Karl was slow to make 
decisions.  ("He's been talking about getting a smartphone for 
like three years.") Should she be the first to say, "I love you"?
  We asked Annie to try the 10/10/10 framework.  Imagine that you 
resolve right now to tell him, this weekend, that you love him.  
How would you feel about that decision 10 minutes from now? "I 
think I'd be nervous but proud of myself for taking the risk and 
putting myself out there."
  How would you feel about it 10 months from now? "I don't think 
I'll regret this.  I don't.  I mean, obviously, I really would 
like this to work.  I think he's great.  Nothing ventured, 
nothing gained, right?"
  How about 10 years from now? Annie said that, regardless of how 
he'd reacted, it probably wouldn't matter very much after a 
decade.  By then they'd either be happily together or she would 
be in a happy relationship with someone else.
  So notice that, according to 10/10/10, this is a pretty easy 
decision:
  Annie should take the initiative.  She'd be proud of herself 
for doing it, and she doesn't think she'd regret it, even if the 
relationship ultimately didn't work out.  But without consciously 
doing the 10/10/10 analysis, it didnbt feel like an easy 
decision.  Those short-term emotions--nervousness, fear, and the 
dread of a negative response--were a distraction and a deterrent.  
We followed up with Annie a few months later to see what had 
happened on the road trip, and she e-mailed the following:
  "I did say `I love you` first.  I am definitely trying to 
change the situation and feel less in limbo about things...  Karl 
hasn't yet said he loves me too, but he's making progress overall 
(in terms of getting closer to me, being vulnerable, etc.), and I 
do believe that he loves me and just needs a bit more time to get 
over his fear of saying it back.  I'm glad that I took the risk 
and won't regret it even if things don't ultimately work out with 
Karl.  I'd say it's about 80/20 odds right now that Karl and I 
will stay together past the end of this summer."
  10/10/10 helps to level the emotional playing field.  What 
we're feeling now is intense and sharp, while the future feels 
fuzzier.  That discrepancy gives the present too much power, 
because our present emotions are always in the spotlight.  
10/10/10 forces us to shift our spotlights, asking us to imagine 
a moment 10 months into the future with the same bfreshnessb that 
we feel in the present.
  That shift can help us to keep our short-term emotions in 
perspective.  It's not that we should ignore our short-term 
emotions; often they are telling us something useful about what 
we want in a situation.  But we should not let them be the boss 
of us.
  Of course, we don't check our emotions at the door of the 
office; the same emotion rebalancing is necessary at work.  If 
you've been avoiding a difficult conversation with a coworker, 
then you're letting short-term emotion rule you.  If you commit 
to have the conversation, then 10 minutes from now you'll 
probably be anxious, but 10 months from now, won't you be glad 
you did it? Relieved? Proud?
  If you've been chasing a hotshot job candidate, 10 minutes 
after you decide to extend an offer, you might feel nothing but 
excitement; 10 months from now, though, will you regret the pay 
package you're offering her if it makes other employees feel less 
appreciated? And 10 years from now, will today's hotshot have 
been flexible enough to change with your business?
  To be clear, short-term emotion isn't always the enemy.  (In 
the face of an injustice, it may be appropriate to act on 
outrage.) Conducting a 10/10/10 analysis doesn't presuppose that 
the long-term perspective is the right one.  It simply ensures 
that short-term emotion isn't the stonly voice at the table.
  Excerpted from Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and 
Work by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.  Copyright 2013 by Chip Heath 
and Dan Heath.  Published by arrangement with Crown Business, a 
division of Randomhouse, Inc.
  Copyright B) 2013 Mansueto Ventures LLC.  All rights reserved.
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