If you have ever thought about achieving your goal, you probably struggled to come up with the actions you need to achieve it.
That was me in Shanghai. I wanted to make the most of my time abroad:
Meet people, expand my network, build friendships.
But I didn’t know where to start.
Then I discovered a simple mental model that changed everything:
Inversion.
It was initially created by the German mathematician Carl Gustav Jacobi and popularized by Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet’s business partner.
Instead of asking, “How can I succeed?”, you ask: “How could I fail?”
Once you see what failure looks like, the path to success becomes surprisingly clear.
Here’s how I applied it:
How to NOT meet new people abroad:
Stay in my comfort zone with the same friends.
Spend most days at home
Avoid reaching out to strangers
Never tell anyone I wanted to meet new people.
Then I inverted it.
I did the exact opposite:
Joined different groups of friends
Said yes to invitations.
Cold-messaged people I admired.
Told everyone (online and offline ) that I was looking to connect.
Sometimes it worked. Sometime it flopped.
But each time, I increased my chances to get lucky.
That’s the power of inversion:
By thinking backward, you see the obvious. And give yourself a better shot at success.
Question of the week
How did you use Inversion ?
Until next week,
Rémy
