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The rule works because the three horizons don't carry equal weight in your head. The next ten minutes are vivid: the awkward call, the stress, the extra work. Ten months and ten years are abstract, so they barely get a vote unless you ask for one.
Asking for it changes the evidence in front of you. You write down what each option means at each horizon, and the discomfort that felt decisive becomes one line among three. Often it's the smallest of them.
For a leader, this shows up most in decisions with a painful start and a slow payoff: a tough negotiation, a difficult hire, a client who is hard work. The short-term cost lands on you personally while the long-term benefit lands on the business, which makes the ten-minute view feel bigger than it is.
Most advice on emotional decision-making asks you to set the feeling aside. The 10/10/10 rule keeps it in the room and puts a date on it.
The rule earns its keep when the options look different at each horizon. When all three views point the same way, you already have your answer, and running the exercise again is a way of putting the decision off.
The practical tell is a no you can only justify with effort: the hours, the friction, the awkward conversation. Run the three horizons on it before you decline.
Our distribution contract was on the rocks, and the one buyer who could rescue it was a large internet retailer whose terms and conditions didn't come close to ours. My first instinct was to walk away: their terms would take a lot of work, and none of it would be easy. The ten-month view told a different story: without that volume, there might be no contract left to protect. So I broke their terms down into ones I could overcome and worked through each with our finance director until we could accept them all. Ten months later, sales through them had tripled.