Published on 118th November, 2024

Superthinking: Chapter 1 - Being Wrong Less

You make decisions everyday. In every day decision making, ideally you want to be right more often than you are wrong

Be like Charles Jacobi: Invert, always invert. Thinking about problems from inverse perspectives can give you totally new insights on how to solve it, We talked about this in the previous write up. Eg: Let's say in a football game - FIFA - playing with friends the thinking would be to score goals and inverse of that would be to concede less goals. When investing in money instead of thinking of making more money, an inverse would be to loss less money.

As stated above about been right more often than being wrong, In a dynamic world I cannot overstate how hard that can be to achieve. With most things we can only connect the dots looking backwards as Steve Jobs said. With the help of inverse thinking we can focus on not being right all times but been less wrong.

Take unforced error for example. Caused by our own bad judgement. Taking it back to FIFA unforced errors happen all the time. Especially when your opponent's focus is to score and score as much as they can, they usually make mistakes in defense, passes, dribbles, take baits before all they care is to score. With An inverse thinking of let's say not conceding less goals, my approach has always been to concede less goals, and that means holding the ball more, making less bad passes, keep a tight defense and this always wins. The best scenarios where I have found this really useful in FIFA is during last minutes when I need a winning goal or need to draw the game. This when my opponents wants to play their best, and they become nervous, they start to overwork, they probably over fit. Meanwhile on my side I am calm as ever and I still play as if I am focused on conceding less but make no mistake I am in for a kill. And I tell them, I am a better player at last minute and that I will score and mostly they end up making mistakes and end up getting my goal. To be wrong less, you need to minimize making unforced errors.

Now that you know about unforced errors, check everywhere you find yourself, you will see unforced errors. That's why it is a super model. I used the FIFA example because it is a game I have been learning and playing with friends of late, but I could have just used several places where you can apply unforced errors but I will leave that to you to find out.

Anti-fragile - get better, like they say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger - If your thinking is anti-fragile, then it gets better over time as you learn from your mistakes and interact with your surroundings