Rules of Thinking, The

RULE 72

Don’t start at square two

Most of us, a lot of the time, start our decision making at square two. You know you want to change jobs; the question is what kind of new work should you look for. Or you need to move house to somewhere bigger, but where? Or which university course should you apply to?

These all seem like reasonable challenges to set yourself, but you need to go back to square one with all of them. Maybe square one still leads to square two, but think it through consciously to be sure it does. Here is square one for the examples I’ve just given you:

• Are you sure you want to change jobs? Or could you change whatever you don’t like about your current job – ask for a pay rise, or transfer, or go part time, or work from home, ...