
The Power of Negative Thinking - prostoalex
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324705104578147333270637790.html
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paulsutter
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.

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3minus1
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.

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b0rsuk
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."""

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gordaco
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.

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Tyrant505
The problem is no one understand's until you go through it. I assume you have
based on your wisdom.

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chimpinee
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.

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001sky
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.

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

[http://www.amazon.com/Pessimism-Philosophy-Joshua-Foa-
Dienst...](http://www.amazon.com/Pessimism-Philosophy-Joshua-Foa-
Dienstag/dp/0691141126)

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joseph
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.

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scotty79
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.

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nakedrobot2
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."

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

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flog
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...](http://www.mindthebeginner.net/2009/06/stoic-
psychological-tactics-part-one-negative-visualization/)

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fallous
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.

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Kaivo
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.

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TeMPOraL
"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/>

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inthewoods
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.

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

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TDL
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]

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boksiora
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.

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lifeisstillgood
<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

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kghose
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.

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

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

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bitwize
"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!"

