Negative Visualization

Negative visualization an exercise where you picture the worst possible thing that could happen. The approach has become more popular in recent years with the rise in popularity of Stoicism.

Marcus Aurelius took negative visualization to a valuable, albeit extreme of reminding himself frequently of death.

I like to use negative visualization in everyday decision making. I use negative visualization quite frequently at startups where we are constantly doing new, unique. and scary things. I ask the team to ask themselves “What is the worst that can happen?”

• At Fancred we wanted to give every new member a free Fancred-branded t-shirt.

• At Wyndy we wanted to give $25 to any parent for their first babysitting job through our app.

• At Plastiq we rewarded people for referring friends by providing fee-free transactions on the site.

In those cases, we were actually planning for massive success. The giveaways or promotions could be massively popular, but the incentives, if not looked at through the lens of negative visualization, could also be financially detrimental each startup.

Negative visualization isn’t YOLO, it’s an exercise for considering the varying degrees to which something could go right and/or wrong.