Burn the Boats
Toss Plan B Overboard and Unleash Your Full Potential
by Matt Higgins
“Burn the Boats is a must-read for anyone who wants to achieve great things in life. Matt Higgins provides powerful insights and inspiring stories that will motivate you to take action and go after your dreams.”
Why Your Plan B Is Sabotaging Your Success
We’ve all heard the advice. It’s the sensible, prudent, and responsible way to approach any major goal: “Always have a Plan B.” Don’t quit your day job until your side hustle is a roaring success. Keep your resume updated, just in case. Have a safety net. It’s the logic of parents, guidance counselors, and society at large. But what if this conventional wisdom, this obsession with fallback options, is the very thing holding you back? What if your safety net is actually a straitjacket, quietly strangling your ambition?
In his electrifying book, Burn the Boats, investor, Shark Tank guest, and entrepreneur Matt Higgins delivers a powerful and counterintuitive manifesto. He argues that the single greatest catalyst for extraordinary success is the elimination of choice. Drawing on an ancient military strategy, Higgins contends that true breakthroughs happen only when we are fully committed, when we’ve tossed our Plan B overboard and created a situation where the only way out is through. It’s a terrifying and thrilling concept: to achieve ultimate victory, you must first destroy all possibility of retreat.
What You'll Learn
The ancient military tactic that can unlock your professional potential.
How having a "Plan B" can psychologically guarantee the failure of your "Plan A."
The crucial difference between taking reckless risks and making a total commitment.
How successful people like Christina Tosi of Milk Bar used this mindset to build empires.
Practical ways to "burn your boats" without setting your life on fire.
The Ancient Strategy for Modern Ambition
The book’s title comes from a legendary tactic used by commanders throughout history. Upon landing on enemy shores, a general would order his troops to burn their own ships. The message was unmistakable: there would be no retreat. They would either win the battle or perish. Faced with this stark reality, the soldiers fought with a ferocity and desperation that a comfortable army with an escape route could never muster. Victory became the only option.
Higgins argues that we face the same psychological battle in our own lives. When we have a comfortable Plan B—the safe job, the backup plan, the easy out—we subconsciously hold back. We don’t invest 100% of our energy, creativity, or resources into Plan A. Why would we? There’s an escape hatch. That last 5% of effort we hold in reserve is often the exact margin needed for a breakthrough. As Higgins puts it, “optionality is the enemy of excellence.”
His own life is a testament to this principle. At 19, to care for his ailing mother, he dropped out of Queens College to take a full-time job at a New York City newspaper. He didn’t have a degree or a safety net. It was a classic "burned boat" moment. Failure was not an option, and that desperation fueled his meteoric rise from a cub reporter to the youngest press secretary in New York City history, and eventually, a highly successful investor and executive.
The Psychology of All-In
Having a Plan B doesn’t just divert resources; it poisons your mindset. When the first obstacle appears—and it always will—the mind immediately drifts to the escape route. The internal monologue becomes, “This is hard. Maybe Plan B is the smarter choice.” This drains your resolve and makes you fragile in the face of adversity.
Someone who has burned their boats has a different monologue. When they hit a wall, their thought process is, “This is hard. How do I get over, under, around, or through this wall?” The question is not if but how. This is the mindset that fosters ingenuity, resilience, and relentless problem-solving.
Consider Christina Tosi, the mastermind behind the dessert empire Milk Bar. When she started, she didn't hedge her bets. She poured her life savings and every ounce of her creative energy into her unique vision of crack pie and cereal milk ice cream. Higgins, an early investor, saw this all-in mentality. She wasn't building a bakery; she was building the bakery. There was no Plan B. This total commitment is what propelled Milk Bar from a quirky New York spot into a global phenomenon.
Are You Really All-In? A 'Burn the Boats' Audit
Matt Higgins's core challenge is to question our own level of commitment. Use this checklist to see if a hidden Plan B is holding you back.
Do you have a well-defined Plan B? If so, how much mental energy do you spend thinking about it each week?
Are you hedging your bets? Are you holding back time, money, or energy from your main goal "just in case" it doesn't work out?
What's your first thought after a setback? Is it "How do I fix this?" or "Maybe it's time to reconsider my options"?
Have you created a point of no return? Have you made a public declaration, financial investment, or other commitment that makes turning back more difficult than moving forward?
Is failure a final verdict or a data point? For the "boats burned" individual, a failed attempt is not the end. It's simply a lesson on how not to attack the problem next time.
This Isn't About Reckless Risk
It’s crucial to understand that Burn the Boats is not a call for blind, idiotic risk-taking. Higgins is a sophisticated investor, not a gambler. The principle is not about jumping off a cliff without checking the landing. It’s about doing your due diligence, choosing your destination with care, and then committing to the journey completely.
Burning the boats is the final step, not the first.
Do your homework. Diligently research your idea. Validate the market. Understand the risks. Choose your beachhead wisely.
Make the decision. Based on your research, make a clear, unequivocal choice to proceed.
Burn the boats. Once the decision is made, you eliminate your fallback options and commit all your resources and focus to the chosen path.
This is the difference between being reckless and being resolute. Recklessness is taking a leap of faith without looking. Being resolute is looking carefully, taking the leap, and then committing to sticking the landing, no matter what.
A Practical Guide to Total Commitment
You don't have to literally set fire to your assets to adopt this mindset. You can "burn the boats" in more strategic ways.
Create Financial Commitment: Invest money into your venture that is significant enough to sting if you lose it. This raises the stakes and focuses the mind. Instead of just dabbling, buy the equipment, sign the lease, or hire the key employee.
Make a Public Declaration: Announce your goal to your network. Social pressure is a powerful motivator. The potential embarrassment of having to publicly walk back your commitment can provide the extra push you need to persevere through tough times.
Set a Hard Deadline: Give yourself a non-negotiable deadline for a key milestone. This manufactures urgency and forces you to cut out distractions.
Kill Your Darlings: Actively shut down the side projects, hobbies, or "backup plans" that are consuming your mental and emotional bandwidth. Go from having five priorities to having one.
Final Reflections
Burn the Boats is a bracing and powerful antidote to the culture of cautious mediocrity. Matt Higgins makes a compelling case that our desire for security is often the biggest obstacle to achieving our potential. The book is a call to action: to choose your path with wisdom, and then to pursue it with a ferocious, single-minded focus that only comes when there is no other way forward. It’s a strategy that requires immense courage, but it recognizes a fundamental truth: when you’re all-in, with no safety net and no escape route, you unlock a level of creativity, resilience, and performance you never knew you possessed.
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