Invert, Always Invert
“Turn a situation or problem upside down. Look at it backward.
What happens if all our plans go wrong?
Where don’t we want to go, and how do you get there?
Instead of looking for success, make a list of how to fail instead.
Tell me where I’m going to die, that is, so I don’t go there.”
Charles Munger
I could have definitely used Charlie's advice in my time in Vegas.
Rather than asking how much can I gain, I should have asked how much am I prepared to lose?
The thought process is known as Inversion Thinking or Inverse Thinking.
Where you achieve success through avoiding failures, rather than simply hoping everything is going to go well.
Check out this great video below:
The steps are really straight forward:
Figure out what you want to achieve.
What do you don't want to happen? This is the worst-case scenario.
How could the worst-case scenario happen?
How can you avoid the worst-case scenario?
This can be applied to all areas of our lives, in business, relationships, health and more.
Here are a few I'm working through at detailing the inverse of:
How do I get less done each day?
How can I feel unsatisfied with my life?
How do I stay ignorant of how my money is spent?
How could I be lazier?
How can I be a bad father?
We have a stronger ability to find problems than we have at coming up with solutions, so instead of 'How can I get more done each day?' flipping it around provides a whole laundry list of ways (Social media, email, instant message, games, internet browsing etc) to be unproductive and then you simply avoid those things.
This ties very strongly into Fear Setting which is a great process of detailing the things we don't want and taking active steps to avoid them, yet this feels more explorative of the habits and systems we have for ourselves on day to day.
If you are trying to lose weight, instead of asking yourself how can I lose weight? try how do I gain weight? I suspect the answers will flow rapidly and you've got the ways you can fail.
I'll leave you with this once more from Charlie:
Avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance.
Cheers,