Ideas
Parrish is the entrepreneur and wisdom seeker behind Farnam Street and the host of The Knowledge Project Podcast, where he focuses on turning timeless insights into action. His new book is Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments Into Extraordinary Results
One of the five simple notions to solve problems is the concept of inversion. To solve problems we need to look at them both forward and backward.
But how does this look in practice? Let me give you an example that Charlie Munger gave during a speech.
Munger liked to give his family little puzzles. And one of the puzzles he gave his family was:
Any ideas? How would you answer this?
“In my family,” Munger said, “not a lot of light bulbs were flashing.” Except for one.
Flipping one’s thinking both forward and backward is a powerful sort of mental trickery that will help improve your thinking.
This piece originally appeared on Farnam Street.
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