You interrupt people. You make decisions too fast. You say yes before you've thought it through.
You've tried counting to ten. Breathing. Pausing. And it helps until it doesn't.

What if impulsivity isn't what you actually need to fix? What if it's just the thing sitting on top of a completely different problem, and that's why all the hacks keep wearing off?

Case Study
Impulsivity is one of those things a lot of people come to me wanting to fix. They say things like, “I just need more self-control,” or “I need to stop making impulsive decisions.”

But most of the time… impulsivity isn’t the real problem.

It’s just the thing you see on the surface.

A while back, I worked with a guy named Kevin. Kevin owned an SEO agency. Smart guy. Good at what he did. The business was growing. But he kept running into the same issue over and over again.

He’d interrupt people constantly.
Clients. Employees. Partners. It didn’t matter.

In meetings, he’d jump in mid-sentence. Someone would be explaining something, and he’d cut them off. Sometimes he’d finish their sentence for them. Sometimes he’d jump to a conclusion before they were even done explaining the situation.

And it was starting to cause problems.

His team felt like he didn’t listen. Clients felt rushed. Conversations would derail because he’d jump to the wrong assumption before all the information was even on the table.

So when Kevin came to me, he said, “My problem is impulsivity. I just react too fast.”
And on the surface… he wasn’t wrong.

But when we started digging into it, the issue wasn’t impulsivity.

The issue was a weak thinking skill that was creating impulsivity.

And this is something people miss all the time.

Impulsivity is technically a thinking skill.

But most of the time, impulsivity is the symptom of another thinking skill being weak.

Once you strengthen that other skill… the impulsivity often fixes itself.

Interrupting 
The first place Keven’s impulsivity showed up was in conversations. Keven found himself constantly interrupting, and it was hurting his relationships. Both at home and at work.

While Kevin has tried all the hacks of counting to 10 or focusing on what the other person was saying, the real problem was that Keven’s brain struggled to hold 2 or more pieces of information at once.

The moment Kevin had a response, he had a hard time listening to what the other person was saying because his brain would forget what he wanted to say. So, before he even realized what was happening, he’d blurt out what was on his mind.
It’s not that he didn’t care, it’s just that his brain trust itself to hold onto the information. So it forced the thought out immediately.

That’s not really an impulsivity problem. It’s a weak thinking skill of “holding onto 2+ pieces of information.”

Holding 2+ Pieces of Information
To improve holding 2+ pieces of information at once, I had Kevin give himself 3 tasks to do every time he pulled up in his driveway.

1) Empty the groceries
2) Respond to a text
3) And make a coffee.
Kevin had to do these 3 task without writing them down. He had to hold it in his brain and do it.

Over time, as he got better at it, I had Kevin increase the number of tasks to give himself. Eventually, he was giving himself 6 tasks to do, and he didn’t have to write them down.

But what I was most happy about was that Kevin’s interruption levels dropped. “I’m finding myself interrupting less without even trying,” he told me. Yes! That’s exactly what I want to hear. It doesn’t have to be hard, not to interrupt.

Impulsive Decisions
The second place Kevin’s impulsivity showed up was in business decisions. Hiring, strategy, acquisition, investments, these decisions were often made impulsively.

A lot of the time, those decisions were based on what felt right in the moment.

When we looked at how he was thinking through decisions, we noticed something interesting.

His brain struggled with if… then… reasoning; it had a weak thinking skill of hypothetical thinking.
Meaning it had trouble projecting outcomes into the future.

If I do this… then what happens next?

If that happens… then what happens after that?

Most of his thinking was happening in the present moment.

So decisions were being made based on what felt exciting, urgent, or logical right now… without his brain naturally simulating the downstream effects.

Improving Hypothetical Thinking
To help Kevin improve hypothetical thinking, I had Kevin write out a bunch of if… and then… statements.

If I go to sleep late… Then I’ll wake up tired.
If I give my employees more compliments… Then they’ll feel seen and appreciated.
If I take on Client A… Then we wouldn’t have the capacity to take on Client B

This gets his brain to start thinking in hypothetical thought processes.

Then I had Kevin think back to old decisions he made and put them into an if… and then… statement.

If I buy this equipment…Then we’ll be able to increase capacity, but we’ll be tight on cash flow for 30 days.

Eventually, Kevin started doing it with decisions he had to make today. And over time, with more practice, he was able to do it, in the moment, with whatever decision he was making.

Comparisons
I had a different client, named Hannah, at that time, who also struggled with making impulsive decisions, but for a completely different reason.
Hannah had a weak thinking skill of comparison, which is greatly needed for decision-making.

Because this thinking skill was weak, it was HARD for Hannah’s brain to compare. To see the pros and cons of each option, she ended up being impulsive.
Once again, she wasn’t impulsive for impulsive’s sake, as soon as we improved comparing and it was easy for her brain, all of a sudden, Hannah found herself making much better decisions.

Cheers to Peak Brain Performance!
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