When you’re trying to figure out what to do, sometimes the easiest place to start is figuring out what not to do.
We have a tendency to attack problems from the same direction.
How do I succeed?
How do I make this work?
How do I make more money?
How do I build a great business?
How do I have good relationships?
How do I live a good life?
Those are good questions.
But sometimes they’re too big.
So turn the question around.
Instead of asking:
“What would make this work?”
Ask:
“What would almost guarantee this fails?”
Then start eliminating those things.
I call it Start With What Fails.
Work Backward
Imagine you want to have good friends.
You could spend a lot of time trying to figure out the perfect formula for getting people to like you.
Or we could reverse the problem.
Ask:
“What would I have to do if I wanted to make sure nobody trusted or wanted to be around me?”
That’s easier.
Gossip about people.
Lie.
Exclude people.
Make everything about yourself.
Break promises.
Only call when you need something.
Make fun of people to impress someone else.
Now we have something useful.
We still haven’t discovered the perfect formula for friendship.
But we’ve identified several ways to destroy one.
So don’t do those things.
That’s inversion.
Instead of trying to solve the problem from the front, turn it around and look at it from the back.
Sometimes Failure Is Easier to See
Success can be complicated.
Failure is often surprisingly predictable.
Imagine you want to build a successful business.
I could give you hundreds of ideas about what you should do.
But let’s try something different.
How would you guarantee the business fails?
Spend more money than you make.
Treat customers badly.
Promise things you can’t deliver.
Ignore your numbers.
Hire people you don’t trust.
Stop learning.
Refuse to change when something isn’t working.
Blame everyone else when something goes wrong.
Eventually, you’re probably going to have a problem.
So before you spend all your energy searching for the perfect strategy, eliminate the obvious ways to lose.
Sometimes winning starts by refusing to lose stupidly.
Use It on Yourself
This gets more interesting when you stop applying it to businesses and start applying it to your own life.
Suppose you want to be healthy.
Ask:
“What would I do if I wanted to become incredibly unhealthy?”
Never exercise.
Sleep four hours a night.
Eat terribly every day.
Sit around constantly.
Ignore problems until they become serious.
Okay.
Maybe you don’t know the perfect health routine yet.
But you already know several things not to do.
Want a good marriage someday?
Turn it around.
“What would I do if I wanted to destroy my marriage?”
Lie.
Hide things.
Keep score.
Never apologize.
Stop listening.
Put everything else ahead of your spouse.
Spend money irresponsibly.
Let small resentments grow for years.
Again, avoiding those things doesn’t guarantee a great marriage.
But doing them certainly isn’t going to help.
Sometimes you don’t need to know exactly where the perfect road is.
You just need to recognize the roads that lead somewhere you don’t want to go.
Ask the Opposite Question
Whenever you’re stuck, get in the habit of asking the opposite question.
If you’re trying to become financially independent:
“What would keep me broke?”
If you’re trying to become someone people trust:
“What would make people stop trusting me?”
If you’re trying to become good at something:
“What would guarantee I never improve?”
If you’re trying to build a company:
“What could kill this company?”
If you’re making an important decision:
“How could this go terribly wrong?”
Those questions force your brain to look at the problem differently.
And sometimes the answer becomes obvious.
Don’t Just Think About What Could Go Right
Optimism is useful.
I want you to believe things can work.
I want you to try things other people think are impossible.
I want you to take risks.
But optimism doesn’t mean ignoring reality.
Before you make an important decision, don’t only imagine the best outcome.
Spend some time imagining failure.
Suppose this goes badly.
Why?
What happened?
What did I overlook?
What assumption was wrong?
What could I have prevented?
Then come back to today.
Maybe you can eliminate some of those problems before they ever happen.
That’s not pessimism.
That’s preparation.
Avoid the Obvious Holes
Imagine you’re walking across a field full of holes.
You could spend all your time trying to calculate the perfect path across the field.
Or you could start by marking every hole.
Now the path becomes easier to see.
Life works like that more often than you might think.
You don’t always need the perfect answer.
Sometimes you need to eliminate enough bad answers that the good ones become clearer.
And here’s where Know Your Edge matters.
When you reach something you don’t understand, admit it.
Then ask:
What am I missing?
How could this fail?
Who has done this before?
What mistakes did they make?
What would they never do again?
Someone else’s failure can become part of your education if you’re willing to pay attention.
You don’t have to personally step into every hole to learn that it’s there.
Learn From Other People’s Mistakes
Experience is a great teacher.
But it can also be an expensive one.
You don’t need to make every mistake yourself.
If somebody lost a business because they took on too much debt, learn from it.
If someone destroyed an important relationship because they couldn’t control their pride, learn from it.
If someone tells you, “If I could go back, I would never do that again,” listen.
You have a limited amount of time.
Learning only from your own mistakes is incredibly inefficient.
Learn from yours.
But borrow lessons from other people’s mistakes whenever you can.
You Still Have to Move
There’s one danger with thinking about failure.
You can become so focused on everything that could go wrong that you never do anything.
That’s not the point.
The goal isn’t to eliminate all risk.
You can’t.
The goal is to eliminate unnecessary risk.
There’s a big difference.
Starting a business has risk.
Investing has risk.
Getting married has risk.
Trying something nobody has done before has risk.
Living has risk.
You aren’t trying to create a life where nothing can go wrong.
You’re trying to avoid the failures you could have seen coming.
Then take the risk.
Make the decision.
Build the thing.
Try.
Turn the Problem Around
Whenever you’re facing something complicated, remember that you don’t always have to attack it head-on.
Turn it around.
Look at it backward.
Ask what failure looks like.
Identify the behaviors, decisions, and mistakes most likely to take you there.
Then avoid them.
You may not know exactly what will make you successful.
You may not know the perfect decision.
You may not know the exact path you’re supposed to take.
That’s okay.
Start with what you do know.
Figure out what fails.
Don’t do that.
Then keep moving.