Anticipating the Unexpected: The Practice of Inversion

The critical thinking skill that will help you control the uncontrollable.

Considering both positive and negative outcomes, just as a jury might listen to both sides of an argument in a court of law, enables you to see the larger picture. Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock

“What would things look like if everything went wrong tomorrow? And what does this tell us about how we should prepare today?”

In “Inversion: The Crucial Thinking Skill Nobody Ever Taught You,” the author of the best-seller “Atomic Habits,” James Clear, urged readers to ask these two questions before setting out on a new enterprise or making major lifestyle changes.