I don’t want to make a series of poor choices that leads me down a dark path, (Is this my tie-in to Star Wars?). I discovered recently the difference between First Order and Second Order thinking.

The First Order

No, I’m not talking about the evil empire of the recent Star Wars trilogy. Although, I wonder if Lucas named his new Sith group “First Order” because of this cognitive thinking definition? It would certainly fit that group! Always thinking about immediate gratification instead of the long-term ramifications.

What is First-Order Thinking?

First-order thinking is short-term thinking. In other words, we only consider the immediate effects of any decision we make. As an example, if I eat that cake, my sweet tooth will be satisfied! Or… if I go to the gym, I’m going to be tired and have sore muscles.

First Order thinking puts us in a thinking category closest to the animals. (This is not a creation vs. evolution conversation… I’m simply stating a fact.) Animals don’t cognitively think about the future or consider strategic ramifications of their decisions. They simply make decisions to achieve short-term and immediate effects. What do I want right now and how can I get it right now?

Guess what? We do the same thing sometimes.

Second-Order Thinking Tool

In contrast, our ability to think further down the road about the derivative results spawned off of first-order decisions gives us more control over our future. This is called Second-Order Thinking. Of course, we don’t always do the best job of exercising this style of thinking.

To make better decisions we can use this tool to think about both the short-term and long-term results of the decision you’re about to make. This is heavy lifting for the brain. It pulls in multiple inputs and variables which could lead to a variety of potential outcomes. I’m reminded of the recent Avengers Infinity War movie where Dr. Strange played out one million potential outcomes in his mind and found only one good path forward where the Avengers could win.

That was some heavy-duty, second-order thinking!

But this tool creates a problem…

If you’re like me, then you love to play the second-order thinking game. It’s called speculation! My wife says if I were in the Avengers my super hero name would be “The Speculator” because I love to play out what-if scenarios. I prefer to think I’d be Dr. Strange, but I digress.

The problem we run into with second-order thinking is the tendency to overthink a situation and get caught in analysis paralysis. Sometimes we constantly play out scenarios to look at the potential results, but we never actually take action. That isn’t healthy or helpful. So how do we balance that? The second tool can help us!

The Tool to Force a Decision

Gen. Colin Powell is a retired 4-star general who served in the Persian Gulf War. He had a tool he used to make war-time decisions. His decisions had the greatest of ramifications (people’s lives were on the line) and they had to be made quickly.

To prevent himself from getting caught up in too much second-order thinking, he used a tool he called 40-70. He wouldn’t make a decision before having at least 40% of the information needed. He also didn’t wait to have all the possible information, he didn’t need more than 70%. In an imperfect world and with the constant change of the battlefield, he couldn’t afford to wait for more information.

If he had between 40 and 70% of the information needed for a decision, he felt he could make good decisions much faster than others.

We don’t need all the information and we don’t need perfect information, we just need a fair amount. Then we need the courage to make the call because we don’t have limitless time. So how do we finally pull the trigger? I present to you… the third tool.

20 Seconds of Courage Tool

In the Matt Damon movie, We Bought a Zoo, Damon’s character Benjamin moves his family to the country after losing his wife. The house also comes with a zoo. In one scene when Benjamin is talking to his son, he gives him advice on making decisions, “All you need is 20 seconds of courage… literally, 20 seconds of courage.”

Don’t be afraid to make that decision. It doesn’t take courage for a lifetime. It only takes 20 seconds of courage. All leadership requires courage, so don’t be surprised when you’re standing at the fork in the road and the followers are waiting on you to make your decision. Use your tools. You got this.

Tool 1: Did you consider the second-order ramifications of the decision?

Tool 2: Do you have between 40 and 70% of the information you need?

Tool 3: Can you muster 20 seconds of courage?

It’s time.

Have fun and enjoy the next 20 seconds.
Russ

Let’s connect…

on Twitter if we haven’t already?

OR Let’s connect on LinkedIn.

OR Let’s connect via my Facebook page!

iSpeak teaches workshops to help leaders put a voice to their vision. It’s about connecting with an audience and giving them what they came for.

Russ Peterson Jr. is the co-founder and Managing Director of iSpeak, Inc. – An award-winning professional development training company. Russ is a speaker, international trainer, and published author on Professional Sales Communication and Business Communication. He delivers workshops, keynotes, and personal communication coaching services to business professionals in the US and around the world. His leadership blog assists leaders in giving voice to their vision. You can connect with Russ directly through Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Have you been here before? I know I have. It’s a tough spot, but putting off your decision will only make it worse. A decision has to be made and you’re the only person who can make it… so choose!

Where I’ve Found Inspiration…

I don’t read a lot of poetry, but perhaps I should. This week I found myself engrossed in the depth and wisdom poets can offer. There’s something about poetry, how it takes simple words and adds a depth of humanity that seems to connect with something deep down inside. It’s more than just a deep thought or even strong feelings. It’s strange how it seems to touch your very soul at times.

If you’re contemplating a life decision about your career, your life, your studies, your world… my prayer is you can find some guidance and solace. The words of Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken has been a source of inspiration for me in the past. I hope his words can help you today.

You know the decision needs to be made. It’s time to decide.

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

See you next week,

Russ

Let’s connect…

on Twitter if we haven’t already?

OR Let’s connect on LinkedIn.

OR Let’s connect via my Facebook page!

iSpeak teaches workshops on Professional Selling to help sales leaders gather the most important data and then use that information to create the right message. Are your sales presentations closing eyelids or deals?

Russ Peterson Jr. is the co-founder and Managing Director of iSpeak, Inc. – An award-winning professional development training company. Russ is a speaker, international trainer, and published author on Professional Sales Communication and Business Communication. He delivers workshops, keynotes, and personal communication coaching services to business professionals in the US and around the world. His leadership blog assists leaders in giving voice to their vision. You can connect with Russ directly through Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

I just don’t feel like doing it anymore.

Isn’t that why we all stop doing whatever it is we stop doing? We just don’t feel like doing it anymore!

• Why didn’t you go running today? I didn’t feel like it.
• Why did you stop your weekly blogging? I didn’t feel like it.
• Why did you eat drive-through food instead of cooking at home? I didn’t feel like it.
• Why didn’t you go to the gym after work? I didn’t feel like it.
• Why didn’t you clean your room? I didn’t feel like it.
• Why didn’t you turn off the TV and pick up that book? I didn’t feel like it.

As much as I’d like to think my decisions are logical, they’re really just about my feelings. Then you know what I do? I come up with a logical reason to support my poor-feeling decision. Somehow I feel like some stretch of logic will justify my lack of doing.

What Can We Do?

Three things we can do to outsmart our feelings and reach our goals. These three areas of focus help by making it easier, supporting you, and kicking you in the butt when it needs to be kicked.

First, Let’s Make it Easier

I’ve written about Dr. BJ Fogg before in my blogs. He’s dedicated his career to studying motivation and personal achievement. He’s most known for helping people achieve by developing what he calls tiny habits.

We can make our achievements easier by focusing on developing tiny habits first. Don’t make your first step too big or you’re more likely to give up on the enormity of the task. I’m reminded of the Bill Murray movie called “What About Bob.” Bill Murray’s character learns how to live a full life by taking baby steps toward his goals. Make sure you have some tiny goals to start. Let’s get a quick win!

Second, Let’s Get Some Help

Kerry Patterson is the author of several books, one of which is called Change Anything. In his research he has found there are 6 elements of support required for us to achieve anything. These 6 break down into two categories: people and tools.

People:

1. Yourself (you’ve got to believe!)
2. Cheerleader (your friends)
3. Coach (someone to hold you accountable and offer guidance)

Tools:

1. Information and tools (books, YouTube videos, DIY, Blogs, smart phone app)
2. Organized Group Sharing (Weight Watchers, book club, discussion groups)
3. Environment or System (organized classes, run club, structured eating plan, pre-defined shopping lists)

Third, kick your own butt

Mel Robbins is the author of The 5 Second Rule. What she found is that sometimes you just need to kick your own butt to defeat the “I don’t feel like it” excuse.

When we don’t feel like starting, we don’t. When we have an impulse or idea to progress toward a goal, we need to act on it… within 5 seconds. If we allow the “I don’t feel like it” feeling to stall us, it will recruit the brain to come up with a logical excuse within 5 seconds. If we don’t take action within 5 seconds of the impulse, we’re doomed. The feeling wins again.

So what am I going to do about my situation?

Well, I’m not going to wait until next year to start over again. It’s time to start over again… and that’s okay. I’m taking a mulligan.

Knowing I will eventually hit a wall and I won’t feel like doing it anymore, I’m going to approach it in three steps:

1. Pick a small step to start with (don’t run 10 miles on your first day… why not just walk 1 mile?) I’ll leverage the Tiny Habits approach from Dr. BJ Fogg.
2. Make a plan to enlist all 6 support elements Kerry Patterson describes.
3. When I don’t feel like doing it, I’m going to count down 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1 and then say “Go!” to get past those hurdles. Time to kick my own butt.
   

Life’s failures are the learning lessons on the road to success. As Alfred (Michael Kane) in The Dark Knight movie says to Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), “Why do we fall sir? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.” It’s time for me to get back up. If you’ve stumbled too, I invite you to join me.

If your New Year’s Resolutions aren’t where you want them to be… it’s not too late. Get up. Time to reset. Start over. It’s okay to take a mulligan. You can have a do over, and I’ll take one too. Seriously, if Batman gets a do over, so do we!

See you next week… that is… if I feel like blogging.
Just kidding
Russ

Let’s connect…

on Twitter if we haven’t already?

OR Let’s connect on LinkedIn.

OR Let’s connect via my Facebook page!

iSpeak teaches workshops on Professional Selling to help sales leaders gather the most important data and then use that information to create the right message. Are your sales presentations closing eyelids or deals?R

Russ Peterson Jr. is the co-founder and Managing Director of iSpeak, Inc. – An award-winning professional development training company. Russ is a speaker, international trainer, and published author on Professional Sales Communication and Business Communication. He delivers workshops, keynotes, and personal communication coaching services to business professionals in the US and around the world. His leadership blog assists leaders in giving voice to their vision. You can connect with Russ directly through Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

“I hate my job.” That’s all he said. Then he just sat there with a blank stare focused somewhere between me and the back wall. It’s a look I’d seen before… but I was the one wearing it back then. Have you been there before? It’s not a fun place. But, you do have choices. You can change it. You actually have 3 choices.

Remember, nothing improves until something changes. That’s just logical. If everything stays the same… then everything stays the same. If you want the situation to improve, then you need to change something! Otherwise, you’ll just keep getting what you’re getting. You’ve got to change something!

Two-Step Process Toward Improvement

You really have two major decisions to make before you can improve your situation. Each decision must be made and if you think you’re not making these decisions, then you’ve really already made your decision. Once you’ve consciously made these two decisions, you can know what to expect out of life. While each of us must decide for ourselves, there is nothing wrong with choosing either option. But, these decisions are made by all of us. When you recognize you’re making these choices, you’ll know what to expect.

Your FIRST Decision

First you need to have a very raw conversation with yourself and make a critical decision about your life. I’m not over exaggerating this when I say it. This question is not to be dismissed quickly. You’ve got to decide who is steering your ship. We’re all moving through life and someone is going to steer. It can be you or it can be someone else.

There is nothing wrong with what you decide. You just need to understand and accept who has the steering wheel. If you get on a bus and the driver says he’s going to St. Louis, then don’t be surprised when you end up in St. Louis! Even if you’d rather be in Baltimore… the bus driver who wants to go to St. Louis is taking you to the gateway to the West!

Stop complaining about being in St. Louis and stop telling everyone about how great Baltimore is this time of year. We’re going to St. Louis and you knew it. If you have a certain set of expectations for your life, but you’ve given the steering over to another person heading in a different direction, you’ll be very disappointed when you don’t end up where you want to go.

What are your options for someone to steer? At a high level I think we all have 3 choices for someone to steer. You can steer yourself, you can let someone else steer, or (if you are so inclined) you can look to a higher power.

Whatever you select, know who’s steering so you know what to expect.

Your SECOND Decision

The second decision is simple, but not easy. The second question is, “Where do you want to steer?” At a very high level, you really have three choices:

• You can work for someone else
• You can be an independent contractor
• You can start your own company

Option 1: Work for Someone Else

When you work for someone else, you can take ownership of your career by working with your internal Organizational Development group to understand your career path options within your company. The OD Department is responsible for the development of the human resources within the organization to fulfill the business objectives for the company. Understand you are on one ship which you are not steering, but you are free to move around the ship and find where you fit in best.

Option 2: Independent Contractor

This is a job with no boss. That’s how I think of an independent contractor. The most successful independent contractors know they do have a boss. In fact, they have many bosses. The bosses are the customers. The best independent contractors are self-starters who understand their business and customer service. In today’s online virtual world, many people are finding this a great place to land. With websites like Fiverr.com and UpWork.com, the people who are highly skilled specialists can focus on using their talents while these web services focus on providing the marketing and sales.

Option 3: Start Your Own Company

This is different from being an independent contractor. From my experience I’ve found many people who are independent contractors and would be very successful if they remained just that, but instead they allow the customers to drive them into starting their own company. It goes something like this…

Independent contractor is a highly skilled specialist and begins working for a customer. She does outstanding work as the technical expert. Through referrals, the contractor gets even more business. Now the contractor discovers she has too much work to complete herself and she also has to do the invoicing, bookkeeping, customer service, quarterly taxes, sales follow-up, and logistics too.

The independent contractor takes care of what she can, starts to outsource some of it or hires her first employee so she can stay focused on what she loves… the technical work she wanted to do in the first place!

Then, before she knows it, the hired help is dropping the ball because she’s put no effort into training these people or giving them any direction. “Why can’t people just do their jobs!” she’s thinking as she’s working on a Saturday now to clean up the errors they’ve made.

Then one day the independent contractor wakes up and realizes they hate their own jobs because they’re running around crazy, doing the extra work they don’t like, and not being given enough time to do the technical work they love so much. Congratulations… you’re an independent contractor with the accidental company you never meant to start in the first place.

“ Go to work ON your business, not IN your business. —MICHAEL GERBER

If you want to start your own company, you’re not doing it because you love the technical work. You’re doing it because you want to build a business that does the technical work. That means it will be your job to create the business plan, define all the processes, create the roadmap for where you’re steering this company, and the proper Organization Development plans to effectively train up the skills of everyone working for you.

As Michael Gerber says in his book The E-Myth, if you started as the independent contractor and found yourself owning a company, you need to “start working on your business not in your business.”

Just another accidental entrepreneur,
Russ

I was about to jump… but the 50-foot drop to the rocks below caused me to pause. “Just step out to the edge and jump away from the edge.” My zip-line guide made it sound so simple. I’d just seen 6 others do it and walk away without a scratch, but now it was my turn. I was with my family on our summer vacation taking a zip line tour at Zip Adventures in Colorado.

This stop was called “The Canyon Plunge” and although our zip line tour guides said it was optional, everyone was lining up to do it. This was not a zip line, but a free fall jump off of a cliff. I tried to calm my nerves by talking with Chris, the guide who had just harnessed me into both auto-belays. I asked him, “Do you use two belays for redundancy?” He smiled at me and said, “Exactly… and each one alone can belay 280 pounds. That’s 560 all together…” He gave me a quick once over with his eyes and with a smile he finished his sentence, “I think we’re good.”

Whether you’ve ever jumped off a cliff before or not, I think we’ve all been in a position where we’ve had something at risk and we had to pause before we took our next step. Whether you’re a salesperson, an executive, a volunteer coordinator, a teacher, a parent, a project manager, or an engineer… we will all play the role of the leader when we’re required to choose a next step for our own story.

“ Choices with consequences create movement in our stories.

Here’s what I’ve discovered about making those tough decisions. I’ve learned these steps by reflecting on the actions of leaders I’ve had the honor to work with in my own career. Their tough decisions were tough because there was something at risk. They had something at stake… something to gain but potentially something to lose. We can all learn from these steps. I hope you find the words of encouragement you need to take your next step… because it’s time to jump.

5 Steps for Making Risky Decisions

1. Recognize the Fear

Fear is not a weakness. Please hear me… FEAR IS NOT A WEAKNESS! Fear is one of your senses. Losing one of your senses would be a disadvantage to overcome or a weakness. When you have all your senses you are stronger. Fear is one of your senses. So when you have fear in a situation, just recognize it. Thank your mind for doing what it’s supposed to do… alert you when you should take notice of the situation.

2. Know the Real Risk and Payoff

The only reason we have fear in a situation is because something is at risk and we don’t want to lose what is at risk. In my example of stepping off the cliff, I was thinking about losing my health (e.g. broken bones, etc.) or my life! In your tough situations, slow down and reflect on what is actually at risk here. Know what you stand to lose but also know what you stand to gain! Think about the reason why you’re willing to risk. What do you have to gain? Then, move quickly to the next step!

3. Devise a Plan to Mitigate

Now, answer this question… How can you reduce that risk? Can you make one more phone call before you submit your pricing proposal? Can you talk to a mentor before you present your quarterly business review to the executives? Can you put a contingency plan in place in case the vendor can’t deliver on your tight timeframe? Can you put some pillows on the floor before you jump off the top bunk bed? Can you connect a second belay to the jumpers before they jump off the cliff?

4. Believe in your Plan

This step can be a tough one because it’s a mental game you’ll play with yourself. This ugly question will rise up in your brain, “But… can I trust my plan?” Here’s how I’ve learned to deal with this question. Your brain will try to take you back to the original risk.

For me on the cliff it was… “You’re risking your life!” But I had to counter that thought with the new risk… the mitigated risk. “No, that’s not true!” With the 4 carabiners attached to me, the two support lines, the two auto belays each able to handle 280 pounds, and the benefit of seeing 6 others go in front of me successfully… my risk is not my life. My new risk was much smaller… and just think of what I had to gain! The thrill, the excitement, the fun, the story to tell!

“ Have faith in your plan.

5. JUMP!

Now comes the fun part. You’ve addressed the biggest risk.

You’ve got a plan to reduce your risk exposure.

You know the payoff.

Now enjoy the ride.

JUMP!

So What Do We Do Now?

We can all implement these steps when we arrive at the forks in the road of our own career… or when we arrive at the 50-foot cliffs. Just like many things in life, it may be simple but that doesn’t mean it’s easy! Just knowing the process for addressing the tough decisions isn’t enough. We need to be willing to implement the plan.

It’s been said that people are either in a tough situation right now, they’re coming out of tough situation, or they’re about to go into one. Regardless of your current status, use this process to address the forks in your road. Remember, your story would have no movement if you weren’t making decisions that included some risk. It’s time to move your story along… It’s time to make the decision… It’s time to choose!  Let’s go!

It’s time to jump…
Russ