Growth Mindset Psychology: The Science of Self-Improvement Why Having a Backup Plan Is Making You Fail - Burn the boats with Matt Higgins
Mar 13, 2026
Matt Higgins, Shark Tank investor and Harvard Business School lecturer who wrote Burn the Boats, explains why removing escape routes boosts commitment. He discusses how backup plans sap motivation. He outlines a four-step risk-synthesis process. He shows how to extract value from failure and balance bold vision with flexible tactics.
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Dropping Out To Access A Better Wage
- Matt Higgins deliberately failed high school classes so he could qualify as a non-student to take college entrance exams and access higher wages.
- He used that risky, painful decision to lift his family out of poverty and it shaped his later embrace of radical commitment.
Burn Boats Against Retreat, Not Tactics
- Burn the boats targets the things that beckon you to retreat rather than the tactic you pursue, so you can be rigid on vision and flexible on execution.
- Zooming out to the objective (e.g., freedom) lets you iterate on tactical failures without abandoning the goal.
Backups Reduce Motivation And Success
- A Wharton study found merely having a backup plan reduces both intrinsic motivation and actual success rates.
- The safety net soothes anguish, but that anguish is precisely the fuel that drives breakthrough efforts.
