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Low-Stakes Ways To Practice High-Stakes Thinking

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Published
04/07/2025

When you’re trying to advance your career and get into positions that give you real power but require real responsibility, you also have to be prepared for your work life to involve more high-level decision-making and high-stakes thinking. However, if you don’t have experience dealing with such high-stakes matters, it can be intimidating. Thankfully, this is a skill that you can build, and you don’t need to launch yourself into dangerous situations to do it, either. Here are the low-stakes methods to practice your high-stakes thinking.

Engage In “What-If” Scenarios

One of the best ways to try your hand at high-stakes thinking is to “game it out” using the theater of the mind. Exploring imaginary scenarios in your head, especially those that involve difficult choices, having to weigh consequences, and thinking several steps ahead, can help you engage with high stakes without having to feel the real repercussions of them. Finding real potential scenarios, such as what you would do if, for instance, you lost your biggest client, can help you build the mental muscle needed to respond calmly when things get real. It can also help you develop contingency plans so that, if one of your what-if scenarios does come to pass, you have some thoughts at the ready to deal with it.

Get Into Gaming

Although it might sound a lot less directly related to the kind of high-stakes thinking required at work, the right games can be more than just a distraction. They can be a practice environment for high-level cognitive skills. This is especially true of board games like chess and checkers. Playing these games can have real impacts on your pattern recognition, forward planning, and situational adaptation. Learning how to think several moves ahead applies in real life as well as in the game. The more competitively you play them, the better the impact they can have on your ability to handle high stakes in the business world, as well. They’re a way to test your adaptability and analysis so you know you can rely on them when you need them.

Try Your Hand At Debate

Although you might think that you would rather avoid anything to do with politics or the classroom, debating can be a powerful way to practice structured, high-pressure thinking. Whether you and your friends get into having lively debates over dinner or you find an online debate group to join, getting that practice in thinking critically and articulating your thoughts clearly can help you avoid having a deer in the headlights moment at work. Debate challenges you to step into someone else's logic, defend your stance, and shift gears on the fly. It also helps you build confidence in speaking your thoughts and operating gracefully under pressure.

Solve Complex Puzzles

While puzzles might seem like they’re suited for little more than passing the time and taking a break from work, they are great training grounds for your ability to use logic and focus on solving a problem. Whether it’s a crossword, Sudoku, or an escape room, challenging your ability to think differently and stay with a problem until you find a solution can be highly practical for the workplace. After all, high-stakes situations in your career often involve having to find your way through unknown ground and staying patient when things might not immediately make sense. Puzzles can help you replicate that and practice opening your mind to new possibilities in a shorter and safer format. There's no real pressure, but your brain is still fully engaged.

 

Try Programming

It might sound a little out of left field to learn such a niche skill, but there’s a reason that learning to programme becomes a hobby for a lot of business leaders. Not only are they learning skills that could at some point be valuable in their career, but it is one of the best ways to try your problem-oriented thinking in a structured and demanding yet relatively low-stakes environment. Learning how to solve programming issues isn’t going to save the day (unless it’s your career), but it can offer a realistic emulation of the pressure and relief that comes with persistently working out a problem. Even taking basic programming courses can get you approaching problems like a programmer outside of the software.

The opportunity to test your ability to operate under pressure, to solve problems, and to think strategically is like working out a muscle. The more you use it before you need it, the more likely you are to be able to rely on it when the time comes.

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