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- Invert, always invert (082)
Welcome back to the 1st Law Newsletter - Friday Edition.
In this email:
Inversion
Being hard on yourself
Quotes to ponder
Mental Model: Inversion
This is a mental model that can help you make decisions, or at least eliminate options from your decisions. Inversion is useful because it is much easier to understand and define what you should not be doing and what will not work than what you should. This technique is centered around avoiding failure.
“Invert, always invert: Turn a situation or problem upside down. Look at it backwards. What happens if all our plans go wrong? Where don’t we want to go, and how do you get there?
Instead of looking for success, make a list of how to fail instead–through sloth, envy, resentment, self-pity, entitlement, all the mental habits of self-defeat. Avoid these qualities and you will succeed. Tell me where I’m going to die so I don’t go there.”
Want to be healthy? Determine how you could make your health decline as fast as possible and avoid that.
Want to be peaceful and have original thoughts? Realize all of the distractions that creep into your daily life. Realize that you should not waste your time on social media and watching mindless content. Avoid things that distract your mind.
Now what you actually SHOULD do is much harder to figure out, and I will leave that one for another day.
This also reminds me of the concept of a losers game. Where there person who wins is not the one who made the best plays, but the one who made the least mistakes. Focus on not making mistakes and living simply and let your opponents make the mistakes.
Being hard on yourself
There is a fine line to this one. On one hand, once you are out in the world on your own (i.e. done schooling, moved out from your parents house), you need to be hard on yourself… Because who else is going to be hard on you? With no more teachers telling you what to do, without daily parental advice and guidance, you are your own master. Granted, you may have a boss who is very serious and demanding, but this is just in a professional sense. If you want to grow personally, the only person who can push you to do so is yourself.
However, sometimes you also need to let yourself relax a bit. Putting too much pressure on yourself can cause a feeling of burning out, and unnecessary stress. I am still trying to find a balance with this one, I will write about this again when I have figured out either: a happy medium or solution of some sort, or just a way to cope with self-criticism.
Quotes to ponder
“To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.”
Reflection is so incredibly important. However, our society has increasingly been shoving distractions and entertainment down our throats making it hard to find the time and peace of mind required to reflect effectively.
“The Internet commoditized the distribution of facts. The "news" media responded by pivoting wholesale into opinions and entertainment.”
Thanks for reading!
Lucas