10-10-10: the cousin who wants you to co-sign his loan

Your cousin Vikram comes home with a box of mithai and a loan form. "Bas ek sign chahiye, guarantor ka." The loan is for a small shop he wants to open. He is not a bad person. He is family, and the pen is already across the table.

Saying no will cost about ten minutes of awkward silence and a cold cup of chai. Saying yes is quicker, and it feels kind. The trouble is that the two answers are being measured on different clocks.

What the rule is

10-10-10 is a way to look at one decision on three clocks: what you might feel in ten minutes, in ten months and in ten years. The rule comes from the writer Suzy Welch. Its use is simple. The feeling of the next ten minutes is loud, and the consequences that arrive later are quiet, so you ask about them one at a time and write each down.

Meera tries it

Meera is 31 and works at a bank's back office in Nagpur. She knows what a guarantor is: the person the bank turns to if the borrower stops paying. She takes a page and makes three lines.

Ten minutes. If she says no, the room is stiff and Vikram is hurt. If she says yes, everyone smiles. This line is all feeling, and it is honest. The awkwardness is real.

Ten months. If she says yes, her name now sits on a loan that is not hers. Each month she wonders if the EMI went through. If Vikram's shop is slow in the first year, she hears about it from the bank before she hears it from him. If she says no, the stiffness has mostly passed, and she can offer him something smaller that she chooses herself, such as helping him write the shop's plan.

Ten years. A loan like this can run for years, and her signature stays for all of them. She also thinks about the cousin she will be speaking to by then. She cannot know the answer. She writes down both guesses anyway.

When she reads the page back, the ten-minute line is the one she was about to decide on, and it is the shortest-lived of the three. The rule has not told her to say no. It has only put the three clocks on one page.

Where it stops

The ten-year line is a guess, and a guess can be wrong in both directions. Vikram's shop may do well, and a yes may have been fine. The rule also cannot tell you facts you do not have, such as what Vikram already owes. Those you have to ask for, politely, as a separate step. And the rule can be misused to dodge every uncomfortable conversation by calling it a long view. Ten minutes of feeling is still part of the picture.

One thing to try today

Pick one decision you have this week, big or small. Tonight, take five minutes and write three lines: what you might feel in ten minutes, in ten months, in ten years. Then read the lines out to yourself before you answer anyone.

This is a way to think, not financial, medical or legal advice.

Each Sunday: one mental model and one real decision to try it on. Find the rest in /models.