Just Don't Be Stupid

While the rest of us are chasing victory, the best in the world know they must avoid losing before they can win. It turns out this is a surprisingly effective strategy.

Inversion shows us that we don’t always need to be geniuses, nor do we need to limit its application to mathematical and scientific proofs. Simply invert, always invert, when you are stuck. If you take the results of your inversion seriously, you might make a great deal of progress on solving your problems.

One useful mental model for thinking about this is the principle of inversion, popularized by German mathematician Carl Jacobi. He told his students to “invert, always invert,” encouraging them to approach difficult problems by inverting the equation to gain a new perspective.⁠1 We can also apply this principle to our lives. For example, instead of

What are you trying to avoid? Instead of thinking through the achievement of a positive outcome, we could ask ourselves how we might achieve a terrible outcome, and let that guide our decision-making.