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Second-Order Thinking: How To Tackle The Bad Part Of Good Outcomes
Good decisions, after they’re made, still have challenges they can open you up to.
Imagine a lonely John Doe presented with the options of remaining in his shell or coming out of it to socialize with people both offline and online. Now, loneliness is a terrible thing; its effect is considered to be as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
So for John, his best bet is to come out and feel the world.
Yet, this seemingly good decision will open up our introvert buddy to the dangers of, getting drowned in external noise or getting addicted to social media; and these things have their own consequences that are not any better than those of the dangers of loneliness.
The reality is that when we solve one problem, we can end up creating another that may even be worse. But this shouldn’t mean we reframe from solving problems, but that we also consider aftermaths, and make plans on how we can tackle them, even before we take the first step.
Second-Order Thinking
In his book, The Most Important Thing, Howard Mark explained the concept of second-order thinking when he wrote:
“First-level thinking is simplistic and superficial, and just about everyone can do it (a bad sign for…
