The Power of Negative Thinking

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324705104578147333270637790.html

by prostoalex • 14 years ago

108 29 14 years ago

online.wsj.com

paulsutter• 14 years ago

A great article, with an unfortunate title. It isn't so much about negative thinking, as it is about being pragmatic instead of falsely optimistic. I loved the survey of 45 successful entrepreneurs:

"Rather than choosing a goal and then making a plan to achieve it, they took stock of the means and materials at their disposal, then imagined the possible ends"

Really interesting.

hmbg• 14 years ago

When I read negative thinking, I expected the "expect the worst and you won't get disappointed". This is more of imagining the worst thing that could happen, and realizing it's not that bad. Which is not really pessimistic; maybe rather optimistic by proxy.

3minus1• 14 years ago

That quotes reminds me of playing Settlers of Catan. I remember when I first played I would notice someone win with a certain strategy and I'd go into the next game trying to replicate it. Since then I've realized the importance of adapting your strategy based on each board. I never know what strategy I'm going to use until I look at the board and place my cities and even then it changes mid game based on which resources are most plentiful.

carsongross• 14 years ago

If you are a contrarian and enjoy layman's philosophy, I can recommend this gem:

http://www.amazon.com/Pessimism-Philosophy-Joshua-Foa-Dienst...

joseph• 14 years ago

This technique is sometimes used in cognitive behavioral therapy. For example, one might record themselves telling a story with the most feared outcome, then listen to it repeatedly. After a while, it becomes easier to face the possibility of the fear coming true, and also puts it into perspective, as it is often not as realistic as imagined.

scotty79• 14 years ago

Worked for me. I imagined worst possible outcome of the situation I feared and I accepted it as if it already happened. My fear reduced I could thing straight about situation.

I found exactly same technique described in some self help book I browsed at my friend's house.

chimpinee• 14 years ago

Goals don't work because the process of achieving or creating anything valuable is unpredictable. It's a discovery. And its importance may not be immediately apparent. That's why you don't get a Nobel Prize until 10 or 20 years later.

001sky• 14 years ago

This is a great comment. If you're a navy SEAL, for example, you don't "have" goals in the same way as most people.

gordaco• 14 years ago

I've been using that "negative" rejection of automatic optimism since... ever, basically.

In certain scopes, it works really well. Especially in business or college. Think that the worst is going to happen, get ready for it, and get a very nice surprise when things always end better than you thought (and also learn a lot of damage control in the way).

However, when it comes to personal life, this can be very misleading. For example, when someone near you has a serious illness, paranoia strikes fast and you start to mourn things that haven't yet happened, and if things end well, all you've got is a real bad feeling that you could have avoided just by staying at that someone's side and conforting him/her.

I think this happens because losing money or getting bad grades is not that much of a big deal compared with certain losses in personal life (plus, you usually have less control in the latter case). I'd very much lose all my money than one of my best friends, maybe it's just me.

Tyrant505• 14 years ago

The problem is no one understand's until you go through it. I assume you have based on your wisdom.

tonyedgecombe• 14 years ago

The Art of Stoic Joy by William B Irvine is a good book on these techniques.

flog• 14 years ago

Yes, a great read for entrepreneurs. I think every entrepreneur should read some books on Stoicism - it's been a very helpful framework for me getting through some rough times.

From a quick google, an outline of the Stoic toolkit: http://www.mindthebeginner.net/2009/06/stoic-psychological-t...

arctictony• 14 years ago

Agreed, a fantastic book and should be in the library of every entrepreneur

jedc• 14 years ago

Completely agree. I saw it on Derek Siver's list of highly rated books, and it's really helped clarify my outlook on life.

I would also HIGHLY recommend it not just for entrepreneurs, but everyone.

Kaivo• 14 years ago

Expecting the worst case scenario has always seemed more logical. The best case scenario is implied, while the worst can often be overlooked which can lead to hard-to-deal-with situations.

Concerning the goal, from what I understand it concerns one/few big goals, where one has to work hard for a long time before reaching it/them. Would smaller goals be a better approach? I tend to set many small goals, such as finishing this task by the end of the week, and I instinctively expend them as I complete them. If I realize their impact is smaller than expected, or that they even don't matter much, I tend to just forget them and move on with more important tasks. It keeps them flexible and actually forcing me to do things I'm not even sure I would if it wasn't for these small goals. By keeping goals flexible and smaller, I believe they can actually help to achieve something bigger.

KiwiCoder• 14 years ago

<META> Ironic juxtaposition of the day: https://twitter.com/KiwiCoder/status/278128964499804161

nakedrobot2• 14 years ago

The Hagakure (the book of the samurai) gives a similar piece of advice, which I believe does give you a renewed sense of urgency, and a love for being alive:

"Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day when one's body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one's master. And every day without fail one should consider himself as dead."

bitwize• 14 years ago

"Go ahead and jump! What's the worst that could happen? Ohhhh, I just thought of the worst thing. Ohhhhh, there, I just thought of something worse!"

inthewoods2• 14 years ago

This is actually the way many traders I know work - and they do it through stop loses and position sizes relative to those stop loses. So, if they are willing to lose $1000 on a trade and their stop is $10, then they can buy 100 shares. That way they've built the max lose they want to take into the trade.

arjn• 14 years ago

But are stop-loss positions guaranteed to be triggered ? What if there are no buyers in a plunging market ?

inthewoods2• 14 years ago

No - but this demonstrates the mind-state of a full-time trader. Full-time traders also build that into their mindset, along with the idea of long-tail events.

TDL• 14 years ago

A stop loss is basically the point where a trader will dump their stock (most traders don't even maintain stop-loss orders since they are often times hunted by more sophisticated players.) It is a clear marker where the trader is wrong & the trader will recognize the loss, preserve capital, & wait for the next setup. So if the stop is @ $10 & the only offer is not until $9.75, a trader should take the loss @ $9.75 in order to avoid an even deeper loss.

A stop loss is merely one mechanism in a traders risk management strategy.

[Minor edits]

TeMPOraL• 14 years ago

"The prospect of losing your job, say, may seem a lot more scary when you can't even bear to think about it, than after you have calculated exactly how long your savings will last, and checked the job market in your area, and otherwise planned out exactly what to do next. Only then will you be ready to fairly assess the probability of keeping your job in the planned layoffs next month. Be a true coward, and plan out your retreat in detail—visualize every step—preferably before you first come to the battlefield.

The hope is that it takes less courage to visualize an uncomfortable state of affairs as a thought experiment, than to consider how likely it is to be true. But then after you do the former, it becomes easier to do the latter."

http://lesswrong.com/lw/o4/leave_a_line_of_retreat/

lifeisstillgood• 14 years ago

http://www.ciocookbook.com/philosophy/business_case.html

I wrote this some years ago, and have been wondering if my central idea (apart from the jokes) that a business case should contain falsifiable assumptions that is the analysts / entrpreneurs job to disprove would ever be seen as right outside of my own head

Of course it is exactly what Lean is all about - ah well, this is so badly seo'd even I could not google for it

agumonkey• 14 years ago

What should be called being neither negative nor positive about the near future but just being very focused on every details on now ?

boksiora• 14 years ago

Negative thinking is just a tool.

No one must get too deep in negative thinking and make it a habit.

Use the negative thinking as your servant and as a powerful tool to push the limits.

For example when someone have to challenge the "status quo" to do something "impossible" or say "innovate" and they have exhausted all possible ways to do it the only way to get though it is to get angry and not accept your defeat. Your "negative thinking" makes you continue and not quit.

"Do not underestimate the power of the dark" side as they say :)

Get angry at some problem and solve it.

fallous• 14 years ago

In my own experience the focus on worst-case is a matter of intellectual preparation. My mind is running through as many of the possible failures as can be imagined along with responses. When I later encounter a situation that is a close-enough match to a prepared response I can quickly adjust to the reality and act.

This appears to many people to be purely improvised and can startle them in the way that you seem to grasp all kinds of hidden issues and avoid the pitfalls, and in some cases there is a lot of improv involved, but it's really a matter of being mentally prepared and having good abstract models.

The danger of this kind of "disaster" pre-planning is scope creep. Some people will obsess on every possible bad thing, but that is not an optimal solution. Large chunks of "bad things that can happen" are either entirely out of our control or are a combination of absurdly low probability/far too expensive (of whatever resource) to justify addressing.

b0rsuk• 14 years ago

Did you know Edward Murphy, the one who came up with the laws, was a highly successful engineer ? He won a number of awards, he wasn't some kind of loser as the laws might lead you to believe.

"""Edward Aloysius Murphy, Jr. (January 11, 1918 – July 17, 1990[1]) was an American aerospace engineer who worked on safety-critical systems. He is best known for Murphy's law, which is said to state, "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."

(...)

Following the end of hostilities, in 1947 Murphy attended the United States Air Force Institute of Technology, becoming R&D Officer at the Wright Air Development Center of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It was while here that he became involved in the high-speed rocket sled experiments (USAF project MX981, 1949) which led to the coining of Murphy's law.[3] Murphy himself was reportedly unhappy with the commonplace interpretation of his law, which is seen as capturing the essential "cussedness" of inanimate objects.[citation needed] Murphy regarded the law as crystallizing a key principle of defensive design, in which one should always assume worst-case scenarios. Murphy was said by his son to have regarded the many jocular versions of the law as "ridiculous, trivial and erroneous." His attempts to have the law taken more seriously were unsuccessful."""

kghose• 14 years ago

This article, I'm sorry to be negative, is kind of woolly. It ends with this quote from Steve Jobs: Remembering that you are going to die is the best way that I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.

Which is an example of ... "positive thinking", embracing risk taking.

The Power of Negative Thinking

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