To Party or to Study? Halloween 2017
In my first semester of college, I took an intro-level anthropology course. It was fun to learn about human ancestors and evolution; however, the course was surprisingly challenging. After barely scraping out a B on our first exam, I knew I needed to put in more effort to do better on the second one. Unfortunately for me, the second exam fell on November 1st, the day after Halloween and all of its celebrations.
During our lecture, some classmates protested our Professor's willingness to disrupt their partying, but she refused to change the exam date. When deciding to prioritize my first Halloween at college or our Physical Anthropology exam, I applied a framework called "second-order thinking" from Ray Dalio's book "Principles."
The rest of this post will explore that framework using this example.
On Halloween of 2017, I had two choices.
Go to the Party
Stay in and Study
First, we will analyze option A "Go to the Party."
First order thinking only encompasses the immediate cause and effects of our decisions; thus, the first-order consequence of going to the Halloween party is that I have fun with my friends. However, the first order only encompasses a tiny time scale and ignores further orders, of which there are many.
The second order consequence of going out on Halloween is poor exam performance. Extrapolating to the third order this becomes a mediocre semester grade, which becomes an unimpressive GPA in the fourth order. Finally, in the fifth order it becomes worse employment opportunities; you see where this is going. I know this to be the case because it is exactly the path a buddy of mine took.
Now let's look at Option B, "Stay in and Study."
In the first order, I may have experienced "FOMO" or fear of missing out. And instead of dancing with my friends, I spent five hours memorizing types of Monkeys. However, in the second order, I got a 107 on the exam, while the class average was 52. In the third order, I got a perfect 4.0 average my first semester, and in the fourth order, I decided that I would continue as a 4.0 student(This plan was thwarted by History of Naval Warfare). Finally, in the fifth order, I won a nationally competitive Fulbright scholarship to be a cultural ambassador to Germany. I believe I would not have won the scholarship had I chosen to go to that party freshman year.
Your future self will thank you
The ability to think in multiple orders coincides greatly with thinking in larger time scales. Too often, immediate gratification blinds us to the treasure in patience and thoughtful action. We all recognize this to some degree, but this essay's point is to encourage you to make it a conscious part of your mental framework. Your future self will thank you.
