The 10/10/10
Rule
A message lands that annoys you. You feel the heat rise, you type a sharp reply, you hit send. Ten minutes later you'd give anything to take it back.
What is the 10/10/10 Rule?
The 10/10/10 Rule is a decision-making tool that has you judge a choice by how you'll feel about it after three spans of time: 10 minutes from now, 10 months from now, and 10 years from now. You take the decision in front of you and ask the same question at each distance, then weigh the three answers together. The rule comes from Suzy Welch, who named the three time frames. The point of the three distances is to pull your attention off the heat of the moment and onto the choice's longer life, because something that feels urgent or thrilling right now often looks different at ten months and barely matters at ten years.
Strong feelings dominate a decision and then fade quickly, while the consequences stay. Anger, fear, craving, and excitement all shout loudest in the first ten minutes. The three questions let that immediate feeling have its say, and then make the ten-month and ten-year views weigh in too, so a passing emotion doesn't get to decide something that will outlast it.
How to use it
Run a decision through five steps, especially when your pulse is up. The pause itself is half the value.
- Pause on the decision before you act on a feeling.
Name the choice you're about to make. - Ask how you'll feel about it in 10 minutes.
Capture the immediate reaction honestly, without judging it. - Ask how you'll feel about it in 10 months.
Will it still matter? Will you be glad you did it, or sorry? - Ask how you'll feel about it in 10 years.
Will you even remember it? What would the long view choose? - Weigh the three answers and decide.
Let the longer views outvote a feeling that will pass, unless the immediate cost is genuinely serious.
Worked example
You spot a £900 watch in a flash sale online, and the urge to buy it before the timer runs out is strong. So you run 10/10/10. In ten minutes you'd feel a bright rush of excitement at the purchase. In ten months you'd be looking at a noticeable dent in your savings and a watch you've stopped noticing on your wrist. In ten years the watch would be old and barely remembered, while the same money, left in savings, would have grown into something that actually mattered.
The ten-minute thrill is real, and the two longer views plainly outweigh it. So you close the tab and let the sale end. The false urgency that felt so gripping loses its hold the moment you look past the next ten minutes.