Avoiding mistakes is an under-appreciated way to improve.

Ask yourself how could you destroy your financial health.

Marie Kondo, the author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, uses inversion to help people declutter their homes.

It is a mental model, a way of thinking backward about what you don’t want to happen. It is about taking an idea upside down and thinking about what could go wrong.

Applying inversion to productivity you could ask, “What if I wanted to decrease my focus? How do I end up distracted?” 

Inverting a good marriage can show you how to avoid a bad one.