Did you reach an agreement, or did you just get tired?

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You never really get talked into a bad deal. Instead, you get tired.

These things don't get lost on the merits. They get lost on the clock. There's a moment near the end of a long negotiation where you stop evaluating and start finishing. You can feel it when it happens. And whatever you agree to in that moment, you will call it being reasonable.

In February 1938, Kurt von Schuschnigg was the Chancellor of Austria. He spent a day at Hitler's house in the mountains trying to keep his country independent. A French writer named Éric Vuillard tells the story in a short novel called The Order of the Day, built out of Schuschnigg's own memoir.

For two hours, Hitler told him the whole history of Austria was treason. Schuschnigg smoked one cigarette after another. But by late afternoon Schuschnigg had talked three small changes into the document in front of him. Small wins. Something to bring home.

Then Hitler called him back in, took the three changes out, and cut the deadline from a week to three days.

And Schuschnigg signed.

Why would a man sign a worse version of a deal he had already refused?

He was a trained lawyer. He knew exactly what was in front of him. Vuillard says he signed it as if he had gained some major concession.

He hadn't run out of arguments. He'd run out of stamina.

Igor Ryzov, a Russian negotiation trainer, has a name for what Schuschnigg spent that day. He calls it your negotiation budget.

He doesn't mean the money being negotiated in the deal itself. His idea of a "negotiation budget" consists of four things. First, the time you can put into the negotiation. Second, the energy it takes to prepare for it and to hold it. Third, the money — and he means the cost of the ongoing negotiations, not the cost of the contract. And, finally, the emotional toll the negotiation takes on you.

You are running one of these right now, whether you've added it up or not.

A headcount request has been open five months and you've been to four meetings about it. By the fourth meeting you aren't arguing for the role anymore. You just want the meetings to stop. Or it's six weeks of back and forth over a contract clause worth two thousand dollars. Or it's a conversation with someone on your team that you've rehearsed six times and still haven't had, and by now you'd take almost any version of it.

This is also why patient people beat aggressive ones.

When someone tells you they need to run it past their leadership and they'll come back to you next quarter, that isn't always process. Sometimes that is the entire plan. They aren't trying to change your mind. They're waiting for it to change on its own.

You don't get talked into bad agreements. You get worn into them.

So here's the one thing to use.

Before you agree to anything at the end of a long negotiation, ask yourself a single question: if this exact term had been on the table in the first meeting, would I have taken it?

If the answer is yes, good. You decided something. If the answer is no, you didn't decide anything at all. You just wanted it to be over.

Being tired is not the same thing as being persuaded. It only signs the same way.

Remember: negotiation is life.

– Gene

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