Inversion
A tool you can use for any decision. Work through it step by step, your answers stay saved in this browser.
Inversion
Look at a problem from the opposite side. Instead of chasing success, work out how to avoid failure.
About this method
Inversion means turning a problem upside down. Rather than only asking how to win, you ask how you could lose, then you avoid those paths. Most hard problems do not have one perfect answer, but they usually have a few really bad ones. Spot the disasters first and steer around them. It is a favourite tool in maths, engineering and everyday decisions.
Invert, always invert. Tell me where I'm going to die, so I never go there.
In real life
Charlie Munger was once asked to give a school commencement speech. Instead of listing how to have a great life, he listed how to guarantee a miserable one: addiction, resentment, being unreliable, refusing to learn from mistakes. Then he told students to simply avoid those things. Naming the ways to fail made the path to success obvious.
Useful when
- You want to avoid bad decisions by spotting the worst options first
- A problem feels too big to solve head-on, so you attack what would make it fail
- Step 1
Name the problem or decision you are facing.
- Step 2
Flip it around. Instead of how do we succeed?, ask: how could this go completely wrong?
Pretend you are a sneaky villain whose secret job is to make it fail.
- Step 3
List the worst things that could happen, the outcomes you want to avoid at all costs.
Aim for the boring, easy-to-miss failures, not only the dramatic ones.
- Step 4
For each disaster, write down what would actually cause it.
- Step 5
Turn each cause into a simple rule that stops it.
Disaster: we forgot snacks on the hike. Rule: pack snacks the night before.
- Step 6
Write your plan as a short list of we will... rules that dodge the disasters.
- Step 7
Where else in your life could you use this 'imagine it already failed' trick?