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1/ One of the most underappreciated ways to increase your intelligence and avoid mental mistakes is to use a strategy known as inversion.
2/ Inversion is when you consider the opposite of what you want. Usually we ask how TO DO something. Instead, ask how TO NOT DO it.
3/ This shift in perspective can reveal fundamental errors that often get overlooked. Once spotted, you can avoid them or plan for them.
4/ Want a better relationship? Ask, "What would ruin a marriage?" Financial stress, misalignment of values, etc. Avoid those things.
5/ Want to be more productive? Ask, "How can I maximize distraction?" Keep your phone in the room. Work in a noisy place. etc.
6/ Inversion is not about finding good advice, but rather about finding anti-advice. It teaches you what to avoid.
7/ My favorite example is called a "failure premortem." Step 1: Imagine the most important goal or project you are working on right now.
8/ Step 2: Fast forward six months and assume the project or goal has failed. Tell the story of how it happened. Why did you fail?
9/ Inversion is a powerful thinking tool because it puts a spotlight on errors and roadblocks that are not obvious at first glance.
10/ Great thinkers, icons, and innovators think forward and backward. Occasionally, they drive their brain in reverse.
11/ The German mathematician Carl Jacobi worked by this motto: "man muss immer umkehren." Translated: “invert, always invert."
12/ Jacobi would write down the opposite of the problem he was trying to solve and found that the solution often came to him more easily.
13/ Inversion can also reveal a more innovative path forward. For example...
14/ Inversion is often at the core of great art. Great art breaks the previous rules. It is an inversion of what came before.
15/ In many industries, secret to unconventional thinking is just inverting the status quo.
16/ Perhaps most usefully, inversion can teach you to that avoiding stupid mistakes is just as important as achieving success.
17/ As Charlie Munger says, "What do you want to avoid? Such an easy answer: sloth and unreliability."
18/ In most jobs you can enjoy some degree of success simply by being proactive & reliable—even if you aren't particularly smart/talented.
19/ Genetic IQ is mostly fixed, but strategies like inversion can make you smarter. As Alan Kay said "Point of view is worth 80 IQ points."
20/ I wrote a whole lot more about how inversion works and how to apply it to daily life in this article: jamesclear.com/inversion
