12 Comments
User's avatar
Trisha's avatar

When making difficult decisions, instead of focusing on which one I'd be more excited for, I focus on which one I'd regret not doing. That allows me to size my opportunity cost and then I optimize for regret minimization, as opposed to happiness maximization -- especially since happiness is hard to measure, whereas we're a lot more tuned to negative emotions such as regret. Turns out it's an example of inversion!

Expand full comment
Andrew Yeung's avatar

I love this! A great example of the regret minimization framework.

Expand full comment
Unnati Agrawal's avatar

As someone who loves to engage in a lot of activities, reading about Pareto’s Principle definitely gave me a new perspective. I think Pareto’s also pairs really well with Inversion and am looking forward to leveraging both! Thanks for sharing Andrew!

Expand full comment
Andrew Yeung's avatar

Looking forward to hearing about how you plan to combine these!

Expand full comment
Chris Jacobs's avatar

Thanks for sharing Andrew...going to try this inversion concept with a few things this week! Best to you in this new venture...

Expand full comment
Andrew Yeung's avatar

Cheers Chris! Let me know how it goes.

Expand full comment
Henry Zheng's avatar

Woah Andrew this article is interesting! I'm definitely going to try out inversion instead of what I normally do.

Expand full comment
Andrew Yeung's avatar

Let me know how it goes – interested to hear about your thought experiment.

Expand full comment
Henry Zheng's avatar

Coming back from 3 months ago but rather than focusing on trying to read more and exercising daily through planning or other ways, I cut out my time on TikTok because I would spend SO much time on the platform causing me to say in my head "Ah I can read or workout tomorrow". Have now made free time to pursue biking since the weather is nice out.

Expand full comment
Andrew Yeung's avatar

Awesome to hear this! I've been biking a ton more too. Gets you into the flow.

Expand full comment
Kristopher Polsom's avatar

Huh, inverse thinking. Interesting. I can think of times where I have done this by accident to great effect. I'm looking forward to attempting it with intentionality. I have just the scenario today to practice this with!

Expand full comment
Andrew Yeung's avatar

Love it! What was the scenario?

Expand full comment