In simple parlance, second-order thinking means, ‘if I choose this available option, what happens next – in terms of direct and indirect consequences?’ A beautiful explanation of second order thinking is given here.
Your personal brand hinges a lot on how the short to long term decisions you make. Because, every short term decision, once compounded, leads to the long-term direct and indirect consequences for your personal brand.
Let’s say you wish to be on all social media platforms so you can gain better traction and recall and some sense of visibility. So, now you discern whether your presence on all the social media platforms will give you the necessary brand awareness and stickiness.
However, in your deliberate second-order thinking, you sense that if you are on every platform, you are not making the viable dent you wish to make based on your values and relevance and roster.
In view of a bit of this scattered approach, you research your audience, where they consume your content, do a content audit to see where the views and reach is amassing and then you start harnessing a platform’s efficacy.
This is where ‘and then what’ comes into our aperture. That said, let’s also embody the ramifications of ’what if’ – this brings optimism and unearths new possibilities in our short-term decisions that help us with a brighter and better future.
Whenever you are contemplating on making a decision, please comply with long-term results you ideally wish to obtain through it. Whether it is hiring someone; or deciding on which publisher you choose for your book; or making amends with your prospective client; or signing a new vendor, or thinking of a career reset, among other considerations.
Which brings me to this question: Which decision is weighing you down at the moment? And how are you applying second-order thinking to deduce the most qualified outcome?
Photo by Marija Zaric on Unsplash
