Inversion — The Thinking Skill Nobody Taught You
Used by billionaires and smart entrepreneurs.
Whether you’re starting a business, planning a trip, or creating your next product, the only guarantee, ever, is that things could go wrong.
Skills and experience are a must, but they are not enough. You’ve got to have the power of anticipating future problems and be prepared to solve them. And the best way to do that is through a mental model known as inversion.
Charlie Munger, Booker T. Washington, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, to name a few, were known for their reverse way of thinking, which gave them a serious edge against their competitors.
If you make a habit of using inversion to plan for the future, you can get a serious competitive edge and innovate in better ways.
Imagine failure instead of success.
Consider the following questions.
- How to build a successful business?- How to give a great speech?- How to become wealthy?- How to be a great leader?
Most people who want to succeed ask these questions. Yet, such thoughts prevent the mind from exploring possible pitfalls.
A better approach is to imagine failure before it even occurs. Using inversion, you can reframe the above the questions like this:
- How to fail my business venture?- How to tell a dull story?- How do I stay broke?- How to be a bad manager?
Once you that, think of all possible ways to avoid these failures.
How to build a successful business using inversion
Imagine your business needs more customers. Instead of asking, “How can I get new customers?’’ ask the inverse question, “How can I limit the growth of my business?’’
Write down all possible answers. Here is an example:
I misjudged demand for my product or service.I priced my product or service too high or too low.I carried poor market research.I used the wrong marketing strategies.
Once you do that, take the necessary actions to stop these reasons from happening.
How to stay fit using inversion
Instead of asking, “How do I lose weight?’’ ask “, How can I stay overweight?’’ You can easily come up with a list.
I will not exercise daily.I will not track my diet.I will chase quick satisfactions instead of long term gains.
Once you do that, take the necessary actions to stop these reasons from happening.
How to build wealth using inversion
Instead of worrying about getting rich, write down all the habits that can keep you broke. Once you do that, take the necessary actions to stop these reasons from happening.
How to be a good leader using inversion
Inversion can help you pinpoint the elements of bad leadership.
Blame your team for everything that goes wrong.Take all the credit when things go right.Ask the team things you’re not willing to do.Not listening to team members.
Once you do that, take the necessary actions to stop these reasons from happening.
Inversion vs normal thinking
Success is subjective. It means something for some people while it signifies something else entirely for others. There are no definitive strategies or hard rules to make it successful. Failure, On the other hand, is objective. Actions that lead to business failure, bad management, poor relationships are well agreed upon by everyone.
In an interview, billionaire Charlie Munger tells how far he went in life using inversion as his thinking technique.
“Invert, always invert. Turn a situation or a project upside down. Look at it backwards. What happens if all our plans go wrong? Instead of looking for success, make a list of how to fail instead. All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.” — Charlie Munger
Inversion unwinds things you are or will be doing wrong. You don’t see many people practising this thought process because it forces us to consider unpleasant outcomes. Unfortunately, these unpleasant outcomes are very probable.
But doing so makes you more prepared for things to be as hard as they can be. Remember, the only guarantee, ever, is that things can go wrong. That's why instead of planning for success, it’s much better to anticipate and avoid failure.
