Flipping Perspectives

The Art of Inversion

“Invert, always invert”.

Carl Jacobi

This succinct wisdom from Carl Jacobi has an uncanny knack for unravelling complex knots of thought. As we delve into the world of mental models, where strategies for productivity and self-growth flourish, inversion emerges as a star player. It's a time-tested tool that has been instrumental in deciphering problems both trivial and monumental.

Before we move on to how inversion can help you with almost any problem or question you have it’s probably best to define what inversion is.

Definition:

The action of inverting something or the state of being inverted.

Put simpler,

Opposite/turn upside down/upend.

So how can inversion or inverting something be helpful to us?

Throughout the day we’re faced with the small task of processing upwards of 35,000 decisions. Most of these are done subconsciously but there are some that can really gnaw at our mental processing leaving us fatigued. Depending on what time of day you start processing something difficult, whether emotionally or intellectually it can make even the simplest of choices, like deciding what's for dinner, morph into exhausting conundrums due to their timing.

When you can’t make supposedly ‘easy’ decisions in life it can be the catalyst for thinking there's something wrong with you and your abilities to operate as a normal human being.

It’s easy to get seduced down the ‘success’ or ‘better’ rabbit holes and our thinking is often shown this way. Linear. Instead of a steady ascent from birth to demise we often go backwards, sideways and at times, stand still. Inversion empowers us to escape the gravitational pull of linear thinking, unearthing new perspectives from the most ordinary of experiences.

Embrace the Endgame.

Something I will be writing quite a lot about in this newsletter is fitness. More specifically, hypertrophy, which is the process of building muscle. Bodybuilding essentially. In the past, one had to wade through articles, research papers and anecdotal experiences via yourself or others. And now, with the sea of information on social media thrown in there, you could spend all day searching ‘How do I build muscle?’ or ‘How do I get lean?’ and definitely ‘How do I lose weight?’ and end up with more questions than answers. If we use ‘How do I lose weight?’ as an example I’ll show you how you can use inversion to help you make better decisions, even when you’re not 100% sure you know what the right thing to do is.

Roughly 45% of the world's population is actively trying to lose weight. It’s a big deal for people and it's a journey rife with fads and charlatans, a multi-billion-dollar industry hawking dreams of transformation. It's easy to feel lost before you begin, drowning in the cacophony of quick fixes and well-meaning yet misguided tips.

Enter inverse thinking.

Now before I start if you think that inverse thinking is a magic pill for weight loss it isn’t, but it can lay bare the missteps and roadblocks that you could be creating between you and your desired goal. After all:

“It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.”

John Maynard Keynes

Let's start with the endpoint in mind. You lose your desired weight, jump into an old set of jeans that haven’t fit for a while, look at yourself in the mirror and you feel what? Fabulous obviously! What would have to of been true to get there? Well, you would have had to lose weight to get them to fit. Here’s the sticking point again, if I knew how to lose weight, I’d just do it, but I don’t!

Well, how about thinking about how you could put weight on?

That’s easier, right? Let’s start with a maccies breakfast (my fav), smash in a family-sized share bag of crisps (too easy) and wash it down with a litre of full-fat delicious coke. Then there’s dinner and tea (I’m Northern so it is dinner and tea and not lunch and dinner). Don’t forget the snacks hidden in your bag. Just past the weight watcher bars that you threw in there to make yourself feel better but know you defo won’t be eating ;).

It’s easier to think about how to put weight on than it is to lose it. Think more takeaways, more fizzy juice (soda), crisps, excessive alcohol consumption, not exercising, not walking, not moving! Think processed food instead of whole food. Think lack of sleep, smoking, snacking, cookies, ice cream, burgers, fries and on and on and on. It really is too easy to think about how to put weight on. Well, how about you just don’t do those things, or start with not doing them as much? Instead of several takeaways a week have 1. Instead of processed food eat more wholesome. Exercise more days than you don’t. Try to be active every day by getting in 20-30 minutes of easy walking. If you have a dog this should be a breeze. You don’t have to go to town on this and go in all guns blazing from the get-go. That’s why new year, new me rarely works. It must be a lifestyle change, not a fad. Most people don’t do the basics right, but we all get to choose what food we eat in a day, and we all get to choose to move or not move, even if we work remotely.

Put simpler:

Think about all the things you’d have to do to put more weight on, and then don’t do them.

Let's look at another example: Investing.

Investing can be intimidating, and it usually is for most people, unless you’re a sociopath. Unless you're using somebody else’s money to invest in a stock, bond, property or other there’s obviously a potential massive personal risk. You could lose all your investment. There’s a lot to think about when it comes to investing and it’s something I’ll cover in due time but let’s say you’re sitting on a nest egg and have heard that people in suits from New York and Cali earn a shit load of money by doing it. The problem is you just don’t have a clue where to begin. Again, let's use the power of inversion to help us out.

Instead of thinking ‘Which company can I buy shares in that will make me a load of money?’ Let's ask ourselves ‘How can I really fuck this up and lose all my nest egg?’

Easy peasy.

I’ll nip on over to social media, Reddit or the news and just search for what everyone else is doing and go with the crowd. Safety in numbers as they say. Now, people recently did make a shit load of money on Reddit and more power to them but usually, by the time the ordinary man hears about something like that it’s well, ordinary. The ships usually sailed (GameStop and AMC).

Or you could just lump it all into a brand you like, like Nike or coca -cola. This is bordering on the better side of a punt as it’s always better to go with what you know and understand but it’s still a throw at the dart board. Maybe you hit a bullseye. Maybe you don’t.

“It does not matter how frequently something succeeds if failure is too costly to bear”.

 Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The truth is it’s easy to be a bad investor you just have to be lazy. By having due diligence, you stand a better chance of coming out smelling of roses. A little bit of due diligence would tell you it might be safer to stick it in an index tracker rather than blindly buying shares because a company is going to the moon. More due diligence might mean you want to do your own basic research into the thing you want to throw your money at. Perhaps learn how to read financial statements and company reports? How about you join an online group or try to get some form of education relating to investment? Books are still cheap, and the internet is still free. There should not be any reason why you shouldn’t be in the best possible position to make a well-informed decision. Sure, you could still lose it all, but nothing stings more than lumping your money somewhere because of FOMO only to lose it all. I’ve lost money when I knew what the risk was and it's shit, but not nearly as much as when you’ve been an idiot. Knowledge is your armour, shielding you from the humiliation of recklessness. A misstep may sting, but it's nothing compared to the soul-crushing realization that you surrendered to the charisma of an online guru.

Inverse thinking doesn’t have to be about life’s big decisions and there’s plenty of opportunity to practice it throughout the day. It is a skill to be honed and these are but two examples of where you can use inversion to help navigate through difficult decisions you might have to make. So, the next time your mind echoes ‘How do I do this?’ or ‘How can I get that?’ remember the golden rule: