Ask your three selves before you decide

Writer Suzy Welch proposed a tool so simple it sounds like a bar trick: the 10/10/10 rule. Facing a hard decision, write down how you will feel about each option in ten minutes, in ten months and in ten years.

The power lies in separating the three voices. The ten-minute self is pure present: embarrassment, appetite, dread of the awkward conversation. The ten-month self sees the middle consequences: the habit installed, the relationship repaired or broken, the money spent. The ten-year self barely remembers the episode — and when it does, that's how you know the decision was one of the big ones.

The trap it corrects is a familiar one: we make almost every choice with the ten-minute self at the wheel, because it's the one that shouts. Writing the three answers down — writing them, not just thinking them — forces it to share the car.

It's no good for choosing dessert. It's for the decisions where a strong, passing emotion is about to sign something in your name that the other two selves will have to pay for.