One has often wondered ‘how’ to overcome a challenge that is hitherto unknown. Or perhaps, ‘how’ to create a process, object, or idea into a concrete form when it has never existed before, never been done before. So how is it done?
This question has often boggled creators, innovators, entrepreneurs, start-up founders from time immemorial.
One often remains rooted to the spot in the journey towards an envisioned goal in lack of not knowing what to do next. The best course of action in such a scenario is to avoid doing things that will take one away from the goal; this technique is called inversion.
Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, a German mathematician applied this technique to solve many arithmetic problems. ‘Invert, always invert’, was his advice when tackling difficult challenges. Jacobi’s method of inversion has been applied and used by many from difficult fields to achieve their envisioned goals. Charlie Munger, Vice chairman for Warren Buffet’s conglomerate, Marc Andreessen, an immensely successful investor in the Silicon Valley and Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize winning psychologist who has written the book ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ , are some of the famous personalities who have relied upon inversion in one form or another.
In everyday life, Inversion finds many successful applications for better decision-making. For example, if I am hosting some new acquaintances at my place for the first time, I would not know so well about their liking for food, music and conversation. So how do I make their dinner at my place a pleasant experience? Till the time I come to know my new acquaintances well, I can begin by not doing things that will make dinner with me an unpleasant experience for them. So, I will avoid having an untidy place, avoiding distasteful food, avoiding conversation about unpleasant topics and so on. Thus, I become a good hostess for them, and create a successful dinner despite no or minimal knowledge about my guests.
One can gradually become wise by avoiding stupidity initially.
I would like to end with the famous quote by Charlie Munger who has championed the use of Inversion for avoiding failure and achieving success.
“All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.”