A young rustic once said, “I wish I knew where I was going to die, and then I’d never go there.” While a ridiculous-sounding idea, the rustic had a profound truth in his possession. The way complex adaptive systems work, and the way mental constructs work, problems frequently become easier to solve through inversion. If you turn problems around into reverse, you often think better. For instance, if you want to help India, the question you should consider asking is not “How can I help India?” Instead, you should ask, “How can I hurt India?” You find what will do the worst damage, and then try to avoid it.
Read more at TIME Magazine.