Burn the Ships: How to Force Yourself to Risk Success

In 1519, Hernán Cortés faced a crisis. His men, fresh off the boat in Iberoamerica, were terrified of the powerful Aztec death cult and plotting to retreat. His answer? He burned the ships.

Cortez ensured there was no illusion of retreat. And while few of us are launching expeditions to conquer empires, we face equally paralyzing fears every day. We aren’t afraid of human sacrifice, but we are terrified of rejection, failure, and embarrassment.

For example, success in business is dependent on building a network of people that will help you grow your enterprise. If you don’t ask someone to buy your thing, then nobody will buy your thing. But what if you suffer from social anxiety, and dying sounds like more fun than networking events?

This article is about how to remove retreat as an option, and force yourself to risk success.

Case Study: Phone Calls

I have a habit of not making phone calls to anybody. Especially my family. I’ve gone years not talking to my parents, siblings, and other relatives, simply because I hate talking on the telephone.

The phone calls are risky. What if I agree to do something I don’t want to do? What if I say something offensive? My family is pretty liberal, but I’ve turned, and now support Trump. What if they find out, and no longer love me? What if the call eats up my whole day?

All of those are really empty fears, but they’re fear enough to make me put off a phone call until some future date, every time.

A few months ago, I noticed that I rarely miss scheduled meetings at work, and it’s easy for me to send out a calendar appointment. I still get hit by anxiety before the actual meeting happens, but I almost always push through and do the meeting. And it usually goes much better than I anticipated.

Then it hit me – an accepted meeting invite is more powerful than a thousand reminders.

So, I started doing that with my family. If I wanted to call my Mom, I’d send her a text that says “Mom, I’m going to call you on X day at Y time. OK?” Then, even if I was nervous about making the call, I did it anyhow.

Sending out that invitation burns the ships. No retreat.

How it works

Calling family is not really high stakes. How about making one sales pitch for your new product? Higher risk of failure, so higher risk of not making that pitch.

In a previous article, I talked about removing friction to get things done. If you have to take two steps instead of one to perform an important action, you’re twice as likely to avoid that action. Removing all intermediate steps, though, makes it far easier to get it done.

When you burn the ships, though, you’re adding friction. Friction becomes your friend. You’re adding friction in front of the action of avoidance. And, yes, avoidance is an action, sometimes more difficult to carry out than whatever it is you’re avoiding!

An invitation that gets accepted introduces the friction of tarnished reputation. “If I ditch Ben today, I’ll look like a jerk.” Scheduling a presentation before an audience does the same. Anything that includes an acknowledgment by somebody that you will do something at a given time or place adds enough friction to make it hard to avoid.

Burn a Ship Today!

Here are three opportunities you could use today, to get yourself off the couch and into a potentially risky but profitable situation.

1. Schedule a phone call

That person you’ve wanted to call every weekend for the past forty weekends? Send him a text and ask if he’s available this Saturday at noon for a 30 minute phone call. Then call him.

2. Pre-Sell the Ghost Product.

Stop letting your idea gather dust. Email your 10 best contacts today with a non-refundable, steeply discounted pre-order price and a firm, 30-day delivery date. You don’t have a product yet, but now you have ten paying customers and a cash-backed deadline that makes retreat more expensive than work.

3. Interview someone

Email some idol of yours, and ask to set up an interview (phone, in person, whatever). Then, send them a Google calendar invite.

There are all kinds of ways to leverage this tactic to make ourselves do the things we fear. What ship are you burning this week? Let me know in the comments below.

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