When you’re confronted with a difficult situation, how do you decide what the best course of action is?
The person in a job they don’t like thinks they either need to find a new job, or suck it up.
The political fanatic believes that everything the other side says is wrong, with no room for nuance.
In both cases they’ve fallen into binary thinking.
Binary thinking is a yes/no, either/or way of thinking, and usually it’s based on us defaulting to an emotional state.
We default to it because it’s easier than critical thinking, but if we aren’t aware what we’re doing, we can really screw ourselves over…
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I like to watch financial shows on Youtube, where people call in and ask for advice.
I especially like videos related to paying off debt/financial freedom.
But a common theme from people that call in to the show is the trap of binary thinking.
For example, a caller tells the host they have 50k of car debt and they’re stressed.
The host asks how the hell they got so much car debt, and they explain that they had an issue with their old car… so they went and bought a new Mercedes Benz.
When pressed about the decision, it usually comes down to:
“It was gonna cost so much to fix my old car… and I didn’t want more car issues down the line… so I just bought a new car”.
Now obviously they had other options:
Repair the old car
Buy a used car
And if they were really set on a new car, they could’ve opted for a cheaper option like a Honda Civic.
But no, they boiled it down to two options, and quickly made a decision based on what they “wanted”. Not what was best for them.
They convinced themselves that they only had two choices, and didn’t think much farther than that.
Now they’re in even more debt, stressed, and feeling hopeless.
Hopefully the host can help them get out of the crappy situation (surprise surprise, he usually tells them to sell the car).
But how can we avoid falling into this trap in the first place, and not get sucked into unhelpful binary thinking?
In his book Clear Thinking Shane Parrish addresses this exact issue with a helpful mental model.
He calls it The 3+ Principle:
“Force yourself to explore at least three possible solutions to a problem. If you find yourself considering only two options, force yourself to find at least one more.”
Thinking of a third option forces us to get creative and find new angles for the problem.
In the case of the car buyer above, we already listed some other options, but Shane Parrish also gives another mindset shift:
“How can I have both?”
Don’t settle for coming up with a few options and choosing one… push yourself to ask how you can have both options.
This won’t always be possible, but sometimes it will, and that’s worth exploring.
So how could our car buyer have the best of both worlds? If we boil down his issue, he was tired of his old car that needed repairs and wanted a new one.
One option would be to fix his car just enough so he can drive it reliably, and then start saving up so he can get his new car in a couple of months.
A second option would be for him to look around a bit longer, and see if he can find a used Mercedes Benz in good condition. Then he gets his “new” car, and doesn’t put himself into more debt to do it.
The point is, there are always more than two options. Whether it’s how to handle an argument with your spouse, how to discipline your kids, what to do about a job you hate… it rarely comes down to two options.
As Parrish says in his book:
Limiting ourselves to binary thinking before fully understanding a problem is a dangerous simplification that creates blind spots.
So if we can only think of two choices, it may be that we aren’t being creative enough, or don’t understand the problem deep enough… we still have blind spots.
If we want to be the best thinkers we can be, we have to explore all solutions, and look at problems from all angles.
Thanks for reading,
– Josh
Best lesson yet! I am going to forward this email my wife every day.
Thank you!!!!!