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Inversion Thinking: Ways of Thinking #4
When I was young, I worked for a while as a gas station attendant. This was back when somebody actually came out, pumped your gas, cleaned the windshield, took your credit card, and occasionally tried not to destroy the filling station.
One day I failed rather spectacularly at that last part.
I was filling a customer’s car while also writing up the credit card receipt. I finished the receipt, handed it to the driver, and forgot one important detail: the gas nozzle was still in the car. The customer drove away, the hose tore loose from the pump, and gasoline began gushing across the station.
Fortunately, we were able to hit the emergency shutoff before something much worse happened, although not before a considerable amount of gasoline had spilled. My excuse was that I had been distracted by the credit card receipt. It was not a particularly good excuse.
But I learned something from that experience that stayed with me for the rest of my working life:
Before starting an important task, it is worth asking what could go wrong.
I did not know it at the time, but this is a simple form of Inversion Thinking.
