THE ORIGIN OF ANXIETY: BEHAVIORS ASSOCIATED

A deer may be startled by a loud noise and take off through the forest, but as soon as the threat is gone, the deer immediately calms down and starts grazing. And it does not appear to be in anxiety about it later. Let us play act for a moment that we are that deer, living in the grasslands of India. We have slim long feet that help us get into a sprint quickly and pruned senses that pick up signs of danger, a majestic antelope that grabs attention from the group of humans that, every now and then, come driving around on a jungle expedition taking pictures of us.

Perhaps the biggest difference between us and our other deer friends, and the humans taking our photograph is that nearly every decision we make (as a deer) provides an immediate benefit to our life. When we are hungry, we walk over and chomp on a bush. When it rains, we shelter under a tree. When we spot a tiger, we run away. Most of our choices as a deer—like what to eat or where to sleep or when to avoid a predator—make an immediate impact on our life. We live in what scientists call an immediate-return environment because our actions instantly deliver clear and immediate outcomes.

Now, let’s flip the script and pretend we are one of the humans on the jungle expedition. While taking photographs from the Jeep, we might think, “This safari has been a lot of fun. It would be cool to work as a park ranger and see deer every day. Speaking of work, is it time for a career change? Am I really doing the work I was meant to do? Should I change jobs?”

Most of the choices we make today will not benefit us immediately. If we do a good job at work today, we will get recognition at the end of the business quarter. If we save money now, we will have enough for retirement later. Many aspects of modern society are designed to delay rewards until some point in the future. This is true of our problems as well.  Such a situation is commonly referred to as delayed returns.

Researching hunting and gathering societies, anthropologist James Woodburn classified societies into two major categories: those with immediate return systems and those with delayed return systems. This entails two different environments.

The Immediate Return Environment

In an Immediate Return Environment, the actions of an individual bring about immediate benefits. Everything that prehistoric humans did was oriented at the present, as a result of following their instincts to survive: avoiding predators, finding shelter when they need it, reproducing, hunting and gathering to survive. For the sole purpose of completing these tasks, they made tools and weapons that did not require a lot of labour. The human brain evolved in this type of environment to use anxiety to protect humans from danger and starvation, compelling them to solve all the short-term problems they were faced with. The feelings of stress and anxiety were relieved as each problem was solved.

The Delayed Return Environment

The actions taken in a Delayed Return Environment are not directed at an immediate benefit, but with future reward in mind. Each day we work, we are putting in the effort to get a reward in the future: salary at the end of the month/project. We study in order to obtain a degree in years. We save money so we can invest it or enjoy spending it later. We choose healthy foods and exercise knowing that it will not make us fit immediately, but in the future and only if we maintain a regimen, and so on.

As humans evolved, they adopted more characteristics of delayed return societies, making elaborate weapons, processing, and storing food for future use, etc. But the modern environment presents a very abrupt change when you look at it from the perspective of evolution. The Delayed Return Environment tends to lead to chronic stress and anxiety for humans. Why? Because the human brain did not evolve for life in a delayed-return environment.

Evolution of the Brain

The earliest remains of modern humans, known as Homo sapiens, are approximately two hundred thousand years old. These were the first humans to have a brain relatively like ours. In particular, the neocortex—the newest part of the brain and the region responsible for higher functions like language—was roughly the same size two hundred thousand years ago as today. Compared to the age of the brain, modern society is incredibly new. It is only recently—during the last 500 years or so—that our society has shifted to a predominantly Delayed Return Environment.

The pace of change has increased exponentially compared to prehistoric times. In the last 100 years we have seen the rise of the car, the airplane, the television, the personal computer, the Internet, and MTV. Nearly everything that makes up our daily life has been created in a very small window of time. From the perspective of evolution, however, 100 years is nothing. The modern human brain spent hundreds of thousands of years evolving for one type of environment (immediate returns) and in the blink of an eye the entire environment changed (delayed returns).

The Evolution of Anxiety
The mismatch between our old brain and our new environment has a significant impact on the amount of chronic stress and anxiety we experience today. Thousands of years ago, when humans lived in an Immediate Return Environment, stress and anxiety were useful emotions because they helped us take action in the face of immediate problems. For Instance:

Anxiety was an emotion that helped protect humans in an Immediate Return Environment. It was built for solving short-term, acute problems. There was no such thing as chronic stress because there are no really chronic problems in an Immediate Return Environment. Wild animals rarely experience chronic stress. Today we face different problems. Will I have enough money to pay the bills next month? Will I get the promotion at work or remain stuck in my current job? Will I repair my broken relationship? Problems in a Delayed Return Environment can rarely be solved right now in the present moment.

Ways to balance our Anxiety and Stress.

One of the greatest sources of anxiety in a Delayed Return Environment is the constant uncertainty. There is no guarantee that working hard in school will get you a job. There is no promise that investments will go up in the future. There is no assurance that going on a date will land you a soul mate. Living in a Delayed Return Environment means you are surrounded by uncertainty. So how do we reconcile the way our brains work with the problems of the Delayed Return Environment?

First things first: we need to deal with the built-up chronic stress through small lifestyle changes. Many of us have excess levels of cortisol (the stress hormone) because of this fast-paced environment, so adjusting our diet, sleeping habits, and exercising more is the first step to balancing these hormones. Of course, practices such as meditation can help us regain emotional balance and realign our thoughts; meditation takes time to perfect, but it is worth it (there we go, delayed return all over again).

Next, there are two ways to regain balance:

01) Measuring something:-> We cannot know for certain how much money we will have in retirement, but we can remove some uncertainty from the situation by measuring how much we save each month. We cannot predict when we will find love, but we can pay attention to how many times we introduce ourselves to someone new.

The act of measurement takes an unknown quantity and makes it known. When we measure something, we immediately become more certain about the situation. Measurement will not magically solve our problems, but it will clarify the situation, pull us out of the black box of worry and uncertainty, and help us get a grip on what is actually happening.

Furthermore, one of the most important distinctions between an Immediate Return Environment and a Delayed Return Environment is rapid feedback. Animals are constantly getting feedback about the things that cause them stress. As a result, they actually know whether or not they should feel stressed. Without measurement you have no feedback.

02) Shift Your Worry:-> The second thing we can do is “shift our worry” from the long-term problem to a daily routine that will solve that problem. Instead of worrying about living longer, we can focus on taking a walk each day. Instead of worrying about losing enough weight for the wedding, we can focus on cooking a healthy dinner tonight.
The key insight that makes this strategy work is making sure our daily routine both rewards us right away (immediate return) and resolves our future problems (delayed return).

In the end, hopefully, by reflecting on the way the brain works and acknowledging how it puts anxiety in motion, we can use these mechanisms to our advantage. The Delayed Return Environment presents a challenge for humans, but there is a way to reconcile the age-old hardwiring of the brain with this environment that presents itself as threatening. Research has shown that the ability to delay gratification is one of the primary drivers of success. It is then interesting that delaying gratification is both the opposite of what our brain evolved to do and the skill that matches the Delayed Return Environment we live in today.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa.

GOAL SETTING: ITS SYSTEMIC BEHAVIORAL IMPACT – CHAPTER – 02

***Continued from Chapter 01 (Covered previously: Case Studies on Goals going Awry, Inappropriate Calibration of Goals, Impact of Time Horizon on Goals,)

Link to Chapter 01:

GOAL SETTING: ITS SYSTEMIC BEHAVIORAL IMPACT – CHAPTER 01

Goals Becoming Too Challenging

Proponents of goal setting claim that a positive linear relationship exists between the difficulty of a goal and employee performance. Specifically, they argue that goals should be set at the most challenging level possible to inspire effort, commitment, and performance—but not so challenging that employees see no point in trying. This logic makes intuitive sense, yet stretch goals also cause serious side-effects like:-

Shifting Risk Attitudes:-> Goal-setting often distorts risk preferences. People motivated by specific and challenging goals adopt riskier strategies and choose riskier gambles than do those with less challenging or vague goals. Related literature has found that goals harm negotiation performance by increasing risky behavior. Negotiators with goals are more likely to reach an inefficient impasse than are negotiators who lack goals. A negotiator who has obtained concessions sufficient to reach their goal, will satisfies and accept the agreement on the table, even if the value maximizing strategy would be to continue the negotiation process. Clearly, in some domains, goal setting can significantly harm performance rather than promote better outcomes.

In the 1996 Mt.Everest disaster in which eight climbers died due to the decisions of the two team leaders is an example of destructive goal pursuit. On Mt. Everest, world-class high-altitude guides, Rob Hall and Scott Fischer, identified so closely with the goal of reaching the summit that they made risky decisions that led to their own and 6 of their clients’ deaths. Some warning signs of leaders who have become excessively fixated on goals may be:

Unethical Behavior:-> Goal setting has been promoted as a powerful motivational tool, but substantial evidence demonstrates that in addition to motivating constructive effort, goal setting can induce unethical behavior. Goal setting can promote two different types of such behavior:

First, when motivated by a goal, people may choose to use unethical methods to reach it. For example, at Sears (reference – case study from chapter 01), mechanics told customers that they needed unnecessary repairs and then performed and charged them for this unneeded work.

Second, goal setting can motivate people to misrepresent their performance level—in other words, to report that they met a goal when in fact they fell short. For example, in 1993, employees at Bausch and Lomb who were driven to reach sales targets reported sales that never took place. They falsified financial statements to meet earnings goals.

Goal setting, of course, is not the only cause of employee unethical behavior, but it is certainly an important, understudied ingredient. A number of factors serve as catalysts in the relationship between goal setting and cheating: lax oversight, financial incentives for meeting performance targets, and organizational cultures with a weak commitment to ethics.

The interplay between organizational culture and goal setting is particularly important. An ethical organizational culture can reign in the harmful effects of goal setting, but at the same time, the use of goals can influence organizational culture. Specifically, the use of goal setting, like “management by objectives,” creates a focus on ends rather than means. Goal setting impedes ethical decision making by making it harder for employees to recognize ethical issues and easier for them to rationalize unethical behavior.

Psychological Costs of Goal Failure:-> One problem embedded in stretch goals is the possibility that the goal may not be reached. In negotiations, for example, challenging goals can increase negotiation and task performance, but decrease satisfaction with high-quality outcomes. These decreases in satisfaction influence how people view themselves and have important consequences for future behavior. It was found that giving someone a challenging goal versus an easy goal on an attention task or an intelligence test improved performance, but left people questioning their concentration abilities and overall intelligence. These goal-induced reductions in self-efficacy can be highly detrimental, because perceptions of self-efficacy are a key predictor of task engagement, commitment, and effort.

Fostering  Collaboration and Learning in Goals

In order to adapt to a competitive landscape, organizations need employees who are able to learn and collaborate with their colleagues. Goals can inhibit both learning and cooperation.

Goals inhibit learning :->  When individuals face a complex task, specific and challenging goals may inhibit learning from experience and degrade performance. A person who is narrowly focused on a performance goal, will be less likely to try alternative methods that could help her learn how to perform a task. The narrow focus of specific goals can inspire performance but prevent learning.

“Learning goals” can be used in complex situations rather than “performance goals.” In practice, however, managers may have trouble determining when a task is complex enough to warrant a learning, rather than a performance goal. In many changing business environments, perhaps learning goals should be the norm. Even when tasks are complex enough to clearly warrant learning goals, managers face the challenge of identifying the specific, challenging goal levels for learning objectives.

Goals create a culture of competition :->  Organizations that rely heavily on goal setting may erode the foundation of cooperation that holds groups together. An exclusive focus on profit maximization can harm altruistic and other behavioral motives. Similarly, being too focused on achieving a specific goal may decrease extra-role behavior, such as helping coworkers. Goals may promote competition rather than cooperation and ultimately lower overall performance.

When Goals Harm Motivation Itself:-> As goal setting increases extrinsic motivation, it can harm intrinsic motivation – engaging in a task for its own sake. This problem is important, because managers are likely to over-value and over-use goals. Although people recognize the importance of intrinsic rewards in motivating themselves, people exaggerate the importance of extrinsic rewards in motivating others. In short, managers may think that others need to be motivated by specific and challenging goals far more often than they actually do. By setting goals, managers may create a hedonic treadmill in which employees are motivated by external means (goals, rewards, etc.) and not by the intrinsic value of the job itself.

Implementation and Calibration of Goals

Proponents of goal setting have long championed the simplicity of its implementation and the efficiency of its effects. In practice, however, setting goals is a challenging process, especially in novel settings.

Goal setting can become problematic when the same goal is applied to many different people. Given the variability of performance on any given task, any standard goal set for a group of people will vary in difficulty for individual members; thus, the goal will simultaneously be too easy for some and too difficult for others. Conversely, idiosyncratically tailoring goals to each person can lead to charges of unfairness. This has important implications, because employee perceptions of whether rewards fairly match effort and performance can be one of the best predictors of commitment and motivation.

When reaching pre-set goals matters more than absolute performance, self-interested individuals can strategically set (or guide their managers to set) easy-to-meet goals. By lowering the bar, they procure valuable rewards and accolades. Many company executives often choose to manage expectations rather than maximize earnings. In some cases, managers set a combination of goals that, in aggregate, appears rational, but is in fact not constructive. In reality, CEOs (and many Wall Street executives) face asymmetric rewards—a large bonus for meeting the goal in one year, but no fear of having to return a large bonus the following year for underperforming.

Harnessing the Power of Goals

Goals can inspire employees and improve performance as well. Just as doctors prescribe drugs selectively, mindful of interactions and adverse reactions, so too should managers carefully prescribe goals. To do so, managers must consider—and scholars must study—the complex interplay between goal setting and organizational contexts, as well as the need for safeguards and monitoring.

According to General Electric’s Steve Kerr, an expert in reward and measurement systems, “most organizations don’t have a clue how to manage ‘stretch goals’”. He advises managers to avoid setting goals that increase employee stress, to refrain from punishing failure, and to provide the tools people need to meet ambitious goals.

It’s one thing to know about goal setting, and how it can help us, but another entirely to know how to actually set goals and stick with them. Goal setting tools are a great way to help us set goals, keep track of, and stay focused on what we are trying to achieve. These tools can be informal, for instance:

There are several concepts and tools for Goal Setting. Which tool is right for us will depend on what our goals are, how long we want to take to achieve them, and whether it is an individual or group goal.

Here are some popular tools:

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa.

GOAL SETTING: ITS SYSTEMIC BEHAVIORAL IMPACT – CHAPTER 01

For decades, goal setting has been used as a tool for improving employee motivation and performance in organizations. Across hundreds of experiments, dozens of tasks, and thousands of people across four continents, the results are clear. Compared to vague, easy goals (e.g., “Do your best”), specific and challenging goals boost performance. Locke (1964) is credited with the very first Goal Setting Theory, where he focused on goal setting within the workplace.

He found that employees were motivated more by clearly set goals and actionable feedback to help them achieve those goals. Locke also found that motivation is key to achieving our goals, and we feel more motivated when we’re not 100% certain we can achieve the goal we’ve set for ourselves. Taking on challenges is highly motivational as it allows us to develop our skills, flex our problem-solving muscles, and gain a deeper sense of personal achievement.

But has the systematic harm caused by goal setting been largely ignored? When managers set targets for specific dimensions of a problem, they often fail to anticipate the broader results of their directives. Goals inform the individual about what behavior is valued and appropriate. The very presence of goals may lead employees to focus myopically on short-term gains and to lose sight of the potential devastating long-term effects on the organization.

Case Studies to Consider:

Consider Sears, Roebuck and Co.’s experience with goal setting in the early 1990’s. Sears set sales goals for its auto repair staff of $147/hour. This specific, challenging goal prompted staff to overcharge for work and to complete unnecessary repairs on a company-wide basis. Ultimately, Sears’ Chairman Edward Brennan acknowledged that goal setting had motivated Sears’ employees to deceive customers.

In the late 1990’s, specific, challenging goals fueled energy-trading company Enron’s rapid financial success. Enron’s incentive system was of paying a salesman a commission based on the volume of sales and letting him set the price of goods sold. Even during Enron’s final days, Enron executives were rewarded with large bonuses for meeting specific revenue goals. In sum, Enron executives were meeting their goals, but they were the wrong goals. By focusing on revenue rather than profit, Enron executives drove the company into the ground.

In the late 1960’s, the Ford Motor Company was losing market share to foreign competitors that were selling small, fuel-efficient cars. CEO Lee Iaccoca announced the specific, challenging goal of producing a new car that would be “under 2000 pounds and under $2,000” and would be available for purchase in 1970. This goal, coupled with a tight deadline, meant that many levels of management signed off on unperformed safety checks to expedite the development of the car—the Ford Pinto. One omitted safety check concerned the fuel tank, which was located behind the rear axle in less than 10 inches of crush space.

Lawsuits later revealed what Ford should have corrected it in its design process: the Pinto could ignite upon impact. Investigations revealed that after Ford finally discovered the hazard, executives remained committed to their goal and instead of repairing the faulty design, calculated that the costs of lawsuits associated with Pinto fires (which involved 53 deaths and many injuries) would be less than the cost of fixing the design. In this case, the specific, challenging goals were met (speed to market, fuel efficiency, and cost) at the expense of other important features that were not specified (safety, ethical behavior, and company reputation).

As these disasters suggest, the harmful effects of goal setting have received far too little attention in the management literature. Although prior research has acknowledged “pitfalls” of goal setting, we argue that the harmful side effects of goal setting are far more serious and systematic than has been acknowledged.

Calibration Of Goals

Advocates of goal setting argue that for goals to be successful, they should be specific and challenging. Countless studies find that specific and challenging goals motivate performance far better than “do your best” kind of goals. According to these findings, specific goals provide clear, unambiguous, and objective means for evaluating employee performance. Specific goals focus people’s attention; lacking a specific goal, employee attention may be dispersed across too many possible objectives. In turn, because challenging goals, or “stretch” goals, create a discrepancy between one’s current and expected output, they motivate greater effort and persistence. However, here are what can cause disarray:

When Goals Are Too Specific:-> Unfortunately, goals can focus attention so narrowly that people overlook other important features of a task (example – the Ford Motor Company Case). This focusing problem has broad application and direct relevance to goal setting.

When Goals Are Too Narrow:-> With goals, people narrow their focus. This intense focus can blind people to important issues that appear unrelated to their goal. Suppose that a university department bases tenure decisions primarily on the number of articles that professors publish. This goal will motivate professors to accomplish the narrow objective of publishing articles. Other important objectives, however, such as research impact, teaching, and service, may suffer. Consistent with the classic notion that you get what you reward, goal setting may cause people to ignore important dimensions of performance that are not specified by the goal setting system.

When Goals Are Too Many:-> A related problem occurs when employees pursue multiple goals at one time. People with multiple goals are prone to concentrate on only one goal. Related research suggests that some types of goals are more likely to be ignored than others. When quantity and quality goals are both difficult, people tend to sacrifice quality to meet the quantity goals. Goals those are easier to achieve and measure (such as quantity) may be given more attention than other goals (such as quality) in a multi-goal situation.

Impact of Time Horizon on Goals

Even if goals are set on the right attribute, the time horizon may be inappropriate. For instance, goals that emphasize immediate performance (e.g., this quarter’s profits) prompt managers to engage in myopic, short-term behavior that harms the organization in the long run. The efforts to meet short-term targets occur at the expense of long-term growth. Some companies are learning from these mistakes; Coca Cola announced in 2002 that is would cease issuing quarterly earnings guidance and provide more information about progress on meeting long-term objectives.

The time horizon problem is related to the notion that it can lead people to perceive their goals as ceilings rather than floors for performance. For instance, a salesperson, after meeting her monthly sales quota, may spend the rest of the month playing golf rather than working on new sales leads.

An excellent example of this problem comes from a study of New York City cab drivers. This study answers the age-old question of why it is so hard to get a cab on a rainy day. Most people blame demand: when it is raining, more people hail cabs than when the weather is clear. But as it turns out, supply is another important culprit. As a day progresses, cabs start disappearing more quickly from Manhattan streets on rainy days than on sunny days. Why? Because of the specific, daily goals that most cab drivers set: a goal to earn double the amount it costs them to rent out their cabs for a 12-hour shift. On rainy days, cabbies make money more quickly than on sunny days (because demand is indeed higher), hit their daily goal sooner, and then they go home (the problem of goals as ceilings).

This finding flies in the face of the economic tenet of wage elasticity, which predicts that people should work more hours on days when they can earn more money and less on days when they earn less. If NYC taxi drivers used a longer time horizon (perhaps weekly or monthly), kept track of indicators of increased demand (e.g., rain or special events), and ignored their typical daily goal, they could increase their overall wages, decrease the overall time they spend working, and improve the welfare of drenched New Yorkers.

***To be continued in Chapter 02 (Goals Becoming too Challenging, Fostering Collaboration and Learning in Goals, Implementation and Calibration of Goals, Harnessing the Power of Goals, Goal Setting Tools) Link to Chapter -02:

GOAL SETTING: ITS SYSTEMIC BEHAVIORAL IMPACT – CHAPTER – 02

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa.

INVERSION AS A CRITICAL THINKING APPROACH: BEHAVIOURS ASSOCIATED

The ancient Stoic philosophers like Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus regularly conducted an exercise known as a premeditatio malorum, which translates to a “premeditation of evils.” The goal of this exercise was to envision the negative things that could happen in life. For example, the Stoics would imagine what it would be like to lose their job and become homeless or to suffer an injury and become paralyzed or to have their reputation ruined and lose their status in society.

The Stoics believed that by imagining the worst-case scenario ahead of time, they could overcome their fears of negative experiences and make better plans to prevent them. While most people were focused on how they could achieve success, the Stoics also considered how they would manage failure. This way of thinking, in which we consider the opposite of what we want, is known as inversion. It is a rare and crucial skill that nearly all great thinkers use to their advantage.

How Great Thinkers Shatter the Status Quo with Inversion

The German mathematician Carl Jacobi made a number of important contributions to different scientific fields during his career. In particular, he was known for his ability to solve hard problems by following a strategy of man muss immer umkehren or, loosely translated, “invert, always invert.” Jacobi believed that one of the best ways to clarify our thinking was to restate math problems in inverse form. He would write down the opposite of the problem he was trying to solve and found that the solution often came to him more easily.

Inversion Vs Reverse Engineering

The Inversion Thinking concept finds its roots in how mathematicians solve complex problems. Look at any problem backward and turn the situation upside down to find the solution. Also, it is not to be confused with reverse engineering.

In reverse engineering we work backward from an achieved solution. For example, if we want to achieve a target of 10 customers, we need to submit 30 proposals, then to give 30 proposals we have to prospect 100 customers and for that every day we should meet 5 customers. This is simple reverse engineering, reversing from a positive result. But in Inversion Thinking, we consider the opposite of what we want. What if the opposite was true? What if I focused on a different side of this situation?

Inversion is a powerful thinking tool because it puts a spotlight on errors and roadblocks that are not obvious at first glance. What if the opposite was true? What if I focused on a different side of this situation? Instead of asking how to do something, we ask how to not do it. Great thinkers, icons, and innovators think forward and backward. Occasionally, they drive their brain in reverse.

This way of thinking can reveal compelling opportunities for innovation. Art provides a good example. One of the biggest musical shifts in the last several decades came from Nirvana, a band that legitimized a whole new genre of music—alternative rock—and whose Nevermind album is memorialized in the Library of Congress as one of the most “culturally, historically or aesthetically important” sound recordings of the 20th century. Nirvana turned the conventions of mainstream rock and pop music completely upside down. Where hair metal was flashy, Nirvana was stripped-down and raw. Inversion is often at the core of great art.

At any given time there is a status quo in society and the artists and innovators who stand out are often the ones who overturn the standard in a compelling way. In a way, the secret to unconventional thinking is just inverting the status quo. This strategy works equally well for other creative pursuits like writing. Many great headlines and titles use the power of inversion to up-end common assumptions.

Success is Overvalued. Avoiding Failure Matters More. This type of inverse logic can be extended to many areas of life. Avoiding mistakes is an under-appreciated way to improve. In most jobs, you can enjoy some degree of success simply by being proactive and reliable—even if you are not particularly smart, fast, or talented in a given area. Sometimes it is more important to consider why people fail in life than why they succeed.

The Benefits of Thinking Forward and Backward

Inversion can be particularly useful in the workplace. Leaders can ask themselves, “What would someone do each day if they were a terrible manager?” Good leaders would likely avoid those things. Similarly, if innovation is a core piece of the business model, we can ask, “How could we make this company less innovative?” Eliminating those barriers and obstacles might help creative ideas arise more quickly. And every marketing department wants to attract new business, but it might be useful to ask, “What would alienate our core customer?” A different point of view can reveal surprising insights. We can learn just as much from identifying what doesn’t work as we can from spotting what does. What are the mistakes, errors, and flubs that we want to avoid? Inversion is not about finding good advice, but rather about finding anti-advice. It teaches us what to avoid.

Some more ways in which inversion can come into play in work and life:

Project Management: . . . . . Failure Premortem. Imagine the most important goal or project we are working on right now. Now fast forward six months and assume the project or goal has failed. Tell the story of how it happened. What went wrong? What mistakes did we make? How did it fail? In other words, think of the main goal and ask, “What could cause this to go horribly wrong?” This strategy is sometimes called the “kill the company” exercise in organizations because the goal is to spell out the exact ways the company could fail. Just like a Premeditation of Evils, the idea is to identify challenges and points of failure so you can develop a plan to prevent them ahead of time.

Productivity: . . . . .. . Most people want to get more done in less time. Applying inversion to productivity we could ask, “What if I wanted to decrease my focus? How do I end up distracted?” The answer to that question may help us discover interruptions we can eliminate to free up more time and energy each day. This strategy is not only effective, but often safer than chasing success. This insight reveals a more general principle: Blindly chasing success can have severe consequences, but preventing failure usually carries very little risk.

Decluttering: . . . . . . . . Marie Kondo, author of the blockbuster best-seller The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, uses inversion to help people declutter their homes. Her famous line is, “We should be choosing what we want to keep, not what we want to get rid of.” In other words, the default should be to give anything away that does not “spark joy” in our life. This shift in mindset inverts decluttering by focusing on what you want to keep rather than what you want to discard.

Relationships: . . . . . . . . .. . . . . What behaviors might ruin a marriage? Lack of trust. Not respecting the other person. Not letting each person have time to be an individual. Spending all of the time on kids and not investing in the relationship together. Not having open communication about money and spending habits. Inverting a good marriage can show us how to avoid a bad one.

Personal Finance: . . . . . . . . .. . . . .Everyone wants to make more money. But what if you inverted the problem? How could you destroy your financial health? Spending more than we earn is a proven path to financial failure. It doesn’t matter how much money we have, the math will never work out over time. Similarly, accumulating debt is a hair-on-fire emergency to be resolved as quickly as possible. And gradually creeping into unchecked shopping and spending habits can lead to self-inflicted financial stress.

Consider the Opposite

Inversion is counterintuitive. It is not obvious to spend time thinking about the opposite of what you want. And yet inversion is a key tool of many great thinkers. Stoic practitioners visualize negative outcomes. Ground-breaking artists invert the status quo. Effective leaders avoid the mistakes that prevent success just as much as they chase the skills that accelerate it.

Inversion can be particularly useful for challenging our own beliefs. It forces us to treat our decisions like a court of law. In court, the jury has to listen to both sides of the argument before making up their mind. Inversion helps to do something similar. What if the evidence disconfirmed what we believe? What if we tried to destroy the views that we cherish? Inversion prevents us from making up our mind after our first conclusion. Some more examples of Inversion Thinking Questions may be:

It is a way to counteract the gravitational pull of confirmation bias. Inversion is an essential skill for leading a logical and rational life. It allows us to step outside our normal patterns of thought and see situations from a different angle. Inversion is different than working backward or “beginning with the end in mind.” Those strategies keep the same goal and approach it from a different direction. Meanwhile, inversion asks you to consider the opposite of your desired result.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa.