Forced Pessimism
Ultimate Problem Solving Tool
The world is a hell of uncertainty. We are constantly gambling with our present for a better future—making predictions about it. Some of those predictions are right, while others aren’t.
Nature in its raw state is cruel and unforgiving. If left alone in a forest, you will probably get eaten up by a leopard or hyena. You need order to survive, a predictable system where you can think in terms of cause and effect. No place is safe if it is always on the verge of chaos. If you think otherwise, try living in Afghanistan. In absolute disorder, everything can go against you even if you make the most informed decisions. No amount of carefulness guarantees your survival.
However, Homosapiens are very clever creatures. We underestimate the progress we have made over the last few centuries. Our prefrontal cortex evolved to help us invent two treasures that are constantly making our environment more and more predictable— Science and civilization.
Science, Civilization, and Pessimism
Science makes the world predictable because it disintegrates the subjective reality into small systems where it is easier to find objectivity, which is just a synonym for order. The International Civil Aviation Organization, ICAO, reported that 4.8 Billion passengers traveled via air transport in 2018. Surprising how billions of people feel safe to travel in a shell of steel and aluminum flying thousands of feet above sea level. That’s how Science gives birth to certainty.
Society makes the world predictable because we created certain superficial rules that appeared to enhance the safety and reproducibility of the participating citizens. Consider a school, for instance. It is a highly predictable environment. You know that a student’s day will start with morning assembly, then their lectures will be conducted based on a timetable that was given to them at the beginning of their session, the same teacher will teach a specific subject, the time to enter and leave the school premise is fixed. The reason why schools function with a perfectly ordered grace is that there are strict rules to be followed, absolute objectivity.1
The Foundational Fabric of Society
If you look closely, most rules of our society are very pessimistic in nature. Parents prohibit their kids from taking candies from strangers because they think something bad might happen. They warn their kids not to go into the forest when it’s dark because they are scared something bad might happen. People buy guns because they think something bad might happen.
Human society is a self-correcting system, we keep doing what seems to work and reject what threatens our survival. No one person creates rules like these. Civilizations evolve to create them. It’s a very automatic process. The optimistic people constantly tested the limits of reality throughout human history and shared their experiences with the rest of the world.
Excess pessimism discourages people from taking risks and explore unknown territories. It limits us from finding new rules of reality. However, pessimism is a great tool to start your risky journey. It is necessary to be a pessimist when you are starting something new. This brings us to the next main point of this article—pessimism as a problem-solving tool.
Pessimistic Problem Solver
A study conducted by the researchers of the New York University shows that defensive pessimists performed poorly on a series of word puzzles when prompted to be in a good mood. However, when they were put in a bad mood, by being instructed to imagine how a scenario might have negative outcomes, they performed significantly better. This suggests that they harness their negative mood to motivate themselves to perform better.
Imagine you have to make an important decision, and you want to make sure that it doesn’t backfire. The let’s-do-this optimistic approach is probably not the best mindset to start. It shows that you are not thinking clearly. It blinds you to the possible ways in which this could go wrong. You only consider the scenarios in which it will turn out to be in your favor.
The optimal solution is to brainstorm all the worst-case scenarios and think of ways in which you can avoid those things. It’s a great way to spot loopholes that would otherwise stay hidden. My co-founder and I do this every time we have to make an important decision because we believe that…
“An optimist is a pessimist with a plan.”
Use forced pessimism to weave different failure stories that are logically coherent. Think in terms of cause and effect and identify how you can avoid the cause of a failure.
When you are creating an action plan, you need to be pessimistic. When you are pessimistic you consider all worst-case scenarios and you prepare for them. It’s a process of turning an unknown and unpredictable environment into something that is more conceptualized and predictable. You are suddenly more aware of the dark unknown forest and of all the beasts that could attack you. If you know that, you can figure out all the weapons that you need to carry with you.
So whenever you are starting something new in your life, or you are about to make an important decision keep this advice in your mind—Plan like a pessimist, execute like an optimist.
I appreciate your patience and dedication to read this essay. I am glad that you made it to the end. I hope you learned something new that will help you to make better plans for your future initiatives.
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But it is a very unpredictable place when it comes to student interactions because the rules governing student conversations are very few.