What is Inversion Thinking?
Inversion thinking is a problem-solving method that allows us to turn things upside down by first focusing on possible failures, and through this new perspective, we can easily get closer to solutions.
The brilliance of this method lies in its simplicity. Inversion thinking suggests that instead of trying to solve the problem directly, we should focus on its opposite. If I’m looking for an answer to how I could be more successful at work, let’s flip it and ask instead: how could I be unsuccessful and experience more workplace failures and frustrations? When starting a project, while everyone believes in its future success and enthusiasm is high, it’s worth asking the less popular question: in what ways could this become a complete failure in a few months? But the method works not just in work and business but in all areas of life. For example, if we want to live in a happy or happier relationship, it’s worth asking the question: how could I ruin my relationship? At first, we might be taken aback by this negative approach, but it can actually be a very effective help in achieving our original positive goal.
The History of Inversion Thinking – Jacobi and Munger
The method is attributed to Carl Gustav Jacobi, a 19th-century German mathematician, who approached many difficult-to-solve mathematical problems and complex equations by first inverting them, thus creating a novel perspective. However, it was Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s billionaire investment partner who passed away at age 99, who popularized the method of inversion thinking. According to him, his business success was largely due to regularly using the inverse or inversion thinking mental model in his decisions.
Inversion Thinking as a Problem-Solving Method
Different thinking techniques can be categorized based on their best uses. There are thinking techniques meant for coming up with novel, bold, creative ideas (like SCAMPER). There are those aimed at understanding something, grasping its essence, like the Feynman technique. Other methods try to look behind phenomena, dig deeper into them (like the iceberg model), going beyond surface-level understanding. Some specifically peer into the future, trying to tame and understand it somehow – scenario planning is a good example of this. And there are thinking techniques that are practically aimed at solving a problem or achieving a goal, and this latter category includes the currently discussed method of inversion thinking, which is nothing more than a problem-solving technique.
Inversion Thinking in Personal Finance – Financial Security Step by Step
Let’s look at a concrete example of how inversion thinking works.
After establishing our anti-goal opposite to our original goal, let’s ask how we could achieve this negative goal. Let’s say we want to improve our personal financial situation and money management to make it stable and predictable. The inverse goal would be to dramatically worsen my financial situation and have financial difficulties. What does it take for this to happen, and what can I do for it? Probably everyone can immediately list several ways they could worsen their financial situation. For example:
- I could give free rein to impulse buying, buying whatever I like without considering if I can afford it
- It’s particularly good if I regularly spend more than my income
- If needed, I’ll take out loans for this
- It’s worth not planning my finances, not making a budget, better if it remains unclear to me where I stand
- Bill payments don’t need to be rushed either, they can wait until the reminders come and if I still have money left
- It’s worth choosing work that’s comfortable, not demanding, even if it comes with lower pay
- Let’s not spend on insurance, there’s only a small chance something bad will happen
- I don’t need to expand my knowledge about finances and investments
If I do these things or just some of them, I’m already on the right path toward my inverse goal, namely to dramatically worsen my financial situation.
Fortunately, the inversion thinking method doesn’t end here – now let’s flip it again and think about how we could still avoid these negative factors, and we get a suggestion list that:
- Avoid or keep impulse buying within limits
- Preferably don’t take loans except when truly justified
- Plan and track your finances, prepare monthly budgets
- Read books about financial management, savings, and educate yourself
- Set up a system for paying bills so you can always sleep peacefully
- Always spend less than your income and always save something
- Get insurance for your valuables so you can handle unexpected events
- Make efforts to ensure you have more income a year from now than you do now
If we think about it, there’s nothing surprising in these suggestions, and that’s the beauty of it – the method doesn’t require anything more than a bit of common sense. Yet, if we pay attention to these things we found, it’s almost guaranteed that over time we’ll achieve our original goal, in this case, the continuous improvement of our financial situation and greater financial security.
To make sure something actually happens in these areas, we can achieve this by not stopping at these realizations but setting specific actions as goals, for example:
- This month I’ll prepare my monthly budget plan and calculate approximately how much I can spend on what
- This week I’ll look for a good book that helps develop my financial knowledge and personal financial management, or find a YouTube channel on the topic
- I’ll look into savings opportunities and start small this month
- I’ll develop a system to pay bills on time at the beginning of the month or when due, maybe set up automatic payments at my bank
- If I see an expensive product in a shopping mall that I like and suddenly want to buy, I’ll develop the habit of always taking a round in other stores first or sleep on it and only make my decision afterward, and never right there on the spot
Inversion Thinking vs. Traditional Problem-Solving
As Charlie Munger says, we don’t need to come up with brilliant ideas; for success, it’s usually enough if we consistently don’t do stupid things and don’t make serious mistakes.
Why is it that in many cases inversion thinking can be more effective in problem-solving than the usual goal-oriented, linearly forward-looking solution-seeking?
They say this method’s effectiveness is also due to human thinking being prone to pessimism and better at handling negative thoughts than positive ones. There might be truth in this, but in my opinion, it’s more about the positive linear problem-solving thinking and the inverted anti-goal-seeking negative inversion thinking that’s open to multiple factors essentially covering different mental operating modes and accordingly necessarily delivering different kinds of results to the same problem.
A significant portion of life’s problems isn’t simple and one-dimensional, so in these cases, the solution can’t be either. If we apply the traditional linear, single-solution-seeking mode to solving a complex, multi-factor problem, we’ll naturally struggle with it, and our mind won’t get a grip on it. Yet when we think about solving a problem, our brain automatically looks for THE SOLUTION in capital letters – the single, the real, the all-healing solution, and tries to reach it linearly. This immediately puts it into an operating mode that encourages seeking a single solution, even though reality is usually not simple but rather complex. For example, if someone asks how to be happy, we couldn’t answer simply. But to the question of how not to be happy, how to become unhappy, we can immediately bring “solutions,” not just one, but many.
Traditional linear single-focus problem-solving thinking is like when we focus sunrays hitting a magnifying glass’s surface into a single point until we achieve our goal of starting a fire.
In contrast, the inversion thinking method can be compared to a prism that breaks down the incoming light ray into its components and shows the rainbow’s colors, even though we wouldn’t have thought that behind the white light coming from the sun, there are actually such and so many colors. Inversion thinking does the same with the incoming problem, breaking it down into many components.
Inverse or inversion thinking thus achieves that our brain unconsciously switches to a non-linear mode, which we might call complex, diffuse, or divergent thinking. This way, we’re no longer looking for the single solution to achieve the inverted negative goal, but the possible paths that might lead there. This mental mode switch achieved through inversion thinking is what helps find different solutions.
Many problems in life arise from making bad decisions, making mistakes, doing stupid things, persistently and as a lifestyle. This can be the cause of health, financial, workplace, or other problems. This also means that the solution leading to success should simply be sought here – in eliminating bad decisions and behavioral patterns. Inversion thinking, by switching us from the mode seeking the sure miracle solution to common sense mode, helps recognize these otherwise trivial mistakes and eliminate them, so that afterward we don’t do stupid things but do things not-badly, meaning well, which will then automatically lead us to success.
This is why Munger’s somewhat crude characterization is apt, that inversion thinking is simply about how not to be stupid.
Therefore, don’t expect earth-shattering and very creative new sensational ideas from inversion thinking, because by bringing us down to earth, it turns us away from these toward common sense and obvious solutions. The solutions found might not seem impressive because they’re things we knew before, but here the point is exactly what we knew before and still haven’t done well.
Another advantage of inversion thinking lies in its simplicity because if we don’t push this thinking method too far but do it quickly, and say bring up only 3-4-5 ideas about the inverted negative goal that immediately come to mind, we achieve that we’ll automatically focus on the most important things. This way we don’t need to prioritize afterward among too many creative ideas using the Pareto principle’s 80/20 rule or other methods, but practically we’ll concentrate on the essence right away.
Invert, Always Invert or Never Not Invert
After Carl Gustav Jacobi, Charlie Munger also emphasized that “invert, always invert,” meaning we should always apply the inversion thinking method. Or stylishly turning it around, we could also say “never not invert,” meaning we should never forget about inversion thinking. But of course, this doesn’t mean that traditional positive problem-solving thinking is a bad thing and we should banish it. Far from it – rather, it’s worth using the two side by side because they can strengthen each other, and our thinking becomes more flexible and creative if we sometimes take the magnifying glass, other times the prism in our hands.
I hope I’ve succeeded in introducing the simple yet brilliant method of inversion thinking and arousing interest in it. If someone hasn’t used it yet, it’s worth trying, spending a few minutes on it daily, because we can quickly gain routine in it and then can apply it quickly in any situation afterward. We can start by collecting seven goals or problems that occupy us, whether financial, health, workplace, personal life, or other areas. Then spend half an hour to an hour every day or two taking one problem through the inversion thinking process and see what we discover, what success-oriented tasks we identify, and how inversion thinking works for us as a problem-solving method overall.
Which of your goals could you examine with the help of inversion thinking?