![]() ![]() Inversion is often at the core of great art. Where hair metal was flashy, Nirvana was stripped-down and raw. Where hair metal bands like Poison and Def Leppard spent millions to produce and promote each record, Nirvana recorded Nevermind for $65,000. Nirvana turned the conventions of mainstream rock and pop music completely upside down. 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. This way of thinking can reveal compelling opportunities for innovation. Occasionally, they drive their brain in reverse. They consider the opposite side of things. Great thinkers, icons, and innovators think forward and backward. ![]() What if the opposite was true? What if I focused on a different side of this situation? Instead of asking how to do something, ask how to not do it. Inversion is a powerful thinking tool because it puts a spotlight on errors and roadblocks that are not obvious at first glance. 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. Jacobi believed that one of the best ways to clarify your thinking was to restate math problems in inverse form. 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.” 3 The German mathematician Carl Jacobi made a number of important contributions to different scientific fields during his career. How Great Thinkers Shatter the Status Quo with Inversion As I have studied it more, I have begun to realize that inversion is a rare and crucial skill that nearly all great thinkers use to their advantage. When I first learned of it, I didn’t realize how powerful it could be. This way of thinking, in which you consider the opposite of what you want, is known as inversion. What would things look like if everything went wrong tomorrow? And what does this tell us about how we should prepare today? While most people were focused on how they could achieve success, the Stoics also considered how they would manage failure. 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. 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 goal of this exercise was to envision the negative things that could happen in life. 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.” 1 ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |