As you review this year's wins and losses, ask yourself: were you playing checkers or chess?

Most entrepreneurs spend December celebrating closed deals and lamenting missed targets—first-order thinking. The operators who hit their numbers. But the strategists? They're asking different questions: "What did this year's decisions set in motion? What consequences are still unfolding?"

This is second-order thinking, and it's the mental model that will define your next decade.

First-order thinking asks: "What happens if I do this?" Second-order thinking asks: "And then what? And after that?"

Warren Buffett built Berkshire Hathaway on this principle: "The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything." He's not thinking about quarterly returns—he's thinking about what those returns enable ten years from now.

Consider two founders launching in January. The operator thinks: "I need customers." The strategist thinks: "Which customers will attract more customers like them? Which will become case studies? Which will demand features that make my product stronger?"

Same goal, different altitude.

Here's a sobering reality: 90% of startups fail, and according to CB Insights, 42% fail because there's no market need—they solved the immediate problem without thinking about whether the solution created sustainable value.

The cobra effect—when British colonials in India offered bounties for dead cobras, people started breeding them for profit. When the program ended, breeders released thousands of cobras. The solution created a bigger problem.

Sound familiar? Companies slash prices to hit revenue targets, training customers to wait for discounts. They hire fast to meet demand, diluting culture and creating future turnover costs. They optimize for engagement metrics, building products users resent.

These aren't execution failures—they're thinking failures.

Ray Dalio put it perfectly: "The biggest mistake investors make is to believe that what happened in the recent past is likely to persist."

Before you set 2026 goals, pressure-test your thinking:

You don't have to choose between execution and strategy. The best entrepreneurs are both—they just know when to deploy each.

Jeff Bezos demonstrated this perfectly: "We're willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time." Amazon's first-order losses funded second-order dominance. While competitors optimized quarterly earnings, Bezos was building infrastructure for a future only he could see.

Research from McKinsey shows that companies with a long-term orientation outperform their peers by 47% in revenue growth and 36% in earnings. The market rewards patience—but only if that patience is strategic, not passive.

This January, commit to one practice: Before any significant decision, write down the first, second, and third-order consequences. Keep a decision journal. Review it quarterly.

The entrepreneurs who will dominate the next decade aren't the fastest operators—they're the ones thinking three moves ahead while everyone else is reacting to the last one.

As Charlie Munger said: "The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more." Help your future self by thinking further than you're comfortable thinking today.

The question isn't what you'll accomplish in 2026. It's what will your 2026 decisions make inevitable by 2031?

Now that's a resolution worth keeping.