It's Called a Premortem–and It's the Most Productive Thing You'll Do All Year

This being HN, I thought it would be an engineering premortem: assume your XYZ has died; what killed it and what do we do now?

Engineering premortems have saved me so much time over the years and these days I find Claude is fairly helpful at thinking of causes. I find the most effective strategy is to focus on the common blunders and ignore the elaborate what-if scenarios, keep it short. You can easily spend way too much time figuring out an elaborate issue but most failures are for obvious or common reasons.

Also, in a non-engineering way, valuable for other risks in life. Anytime you do something new, hard, or dangerous. Safety, baking, relationships, home improvement, life changes, et cetera. If this (shower drain/baguette/workout routine/startup idea) failed, what killed it and what do I do now? Figure out the common risks, Google if you have to, and you'll do things differently.

"[What] we do is to identify the main stupidities that do bright people in and then organize your patterns for thinking and developments, so you don’t stumble into those stupidities" - Buffett & Munger

I do get that certain rituals/habits make people typically more successful, however what works for a billionaire I'd hazard is significantly different to what works for someone striking out on their first business/plan.

I wonder to what extent these blunt the Cassandra Effect.