Margen
Before launching an important project, psychologist Gary Klein proposes a macabre ritual: the premortem. Gather the team and announce: "A year has passed. The project has failed completely. In two minutes, write down every reason it died."
The trick is in the grammar. "What could go wrong?" invites lukewarm answers, because pointing at risks feels like disloyalty. But "it has already failed — why?" turns criticism into an exercise in imagination, and frees everyone to say what they really think. A classic study found that this mental flip — looking at the future as if it were already the past — increases the ability to correctly identify causes by 30%.
It works just as well alone. About to take that job, buy that flat, launch that idea? Write its obituary: "It went wrong because…" and finish the sentence ten times.
Almost everything that shows up can be fixed today. None of it can be fixed after the funeral.