Invert It

When to use it

Use it on a goal that keeps stalling despite plenty of advice on how to pursue it — saving money, getting fit, keeping a habit — where you've heard the success advice many times and it hasn't moved anything, which suggests the problem isn't a missing tactic but an active one working against you.

When it's the wrong tool

It's the wrong tool when you genuinely don't know what success would even look like — inversion only helps once a goal is defined, it can't define the goal for you. It also isn't useful for one-off decisions with no ongoing behavior to correct, since inversion works by identifying failure patterns, and a single choice doesn't have a pattern yet.

An example

Someone has failed to build a savings habit for two years despite reading plenty about budgeting apps and automatic transfers. Inverted: how would you guarantee you never save anything? Keep all your money in the checking account you spend from daily. Check that account balance as your only sense of how much you have. Treat every paycheck as fully available. All three are exactly what they're doing. The fix isn't a new savings method — it's opening a separate account they don't see day to day.

How it works

1. Write down the goal that keeps stalling.
2. List every way you could guarantee failing at it.
3. Check your current behavior against that list.
4. Stop doing whichever ones you recognize.

The tool below is free and needs no account. Nothing you type leaves your browser unless you save it.

Prefer to train the thinking behind these instead of reaching for a tool each time? The frameworks are explained free, and one drill takes about a minute.