What is the anti-principle?

Asking "what's the opposite?" is a question I use a lot when talking about problems and solutions. That means asking questions like "what does this person not need to hear from me?" or "what would the least useful version of this look like?".

If you're stuck, paralysed by choice, or have a brain-itch that a conversation is heading off into the woods without packing a lunch – these questions can be really useful.

I think Hacker News surfaced the blog post Invert, always invert (in turn inspired by this Farnam Street piece) to me about three years ago, and now I reach for Inversion almost daily.

I also find that inversion can help combat vague platitudes (say, strive for excellence, or keep it simple). I think these hand-wavy big theories are appealing but not very valuable.

I think you can take the idea of Inversion in one hand, and a meta/generic/bland principle in the other - and you come back with an Anti-Principle.

For example:

• "Design with the context in mind" becomes "Design with your quiet office and MacBook Pro in mind"
• "Measure what matters" becomes "Measure what's easiest to measure"
• "Actively resolve complexity" becomes "Preserve effort and prolong complexity".

I had an experience recently where laying out principle/anti-principle next to each other helped a colleague recognise some things they need to work on. I don't think this would have happened if it was just the principles.

I find anti-principles especially useful when human nature (or a company culture) pulls us heavily in one direction. For example it's very easy to feel anxiety when you don't understand something. Ignoring our ignorance is a natural response, and hard to acknowledge. But when someone clearly says to you that allowing complexity or uncertainty linger around a project or conversation is an anti-pattern, our actions (or non-actions) seem more obvious. We didn't fight against the uncertainty (because we didn't want to have a difficult conversation, or because we prioritised urgent unimportant work).

When doing the right thing is hard, for whatever reason, the anti-principle acts as a nice little reminder. It's like when you open the biscuit tin and say out loud to yourself, alone in the kitchen "I shouldn't have a biscuit, I'm just bored". The acknowledgement is important.