💡 CheatCode #164: Borrow the Autopsy
Make today’s decisions as if you’re explaining them after they fail.
“Plans are nothing; planning is everything.”— Dwight D. Eisenhower
Most bad decisions don’t look bad when they’re made. They look bad later—when someone else is reviewing them with fresh eyes, fewer excuses, and a paper trail.
Future-proofing isn’t optimism. It’s subtraction. You remove choices today that would force your future self to explain, defend, or undo them.
Instead of asking, “Will future me be proud of this?”
Ask, “How would this decision be criticized if it failed?”
This is standard practice in high-risk systems. Aviation, medicine, and military planning all use pre-mortems and after-action reviews to surface blind spots before they cost lives.
Related study
Research on pre-mortem analysis shows that teams who imagine a future failure before acting identify significantly more risks and make better decisions than teams that plan optimistically (Klein, 2007).
Gary Klein found that pre-mortems increased the ability to identify potential problems by up to 30%.
Why it works (✅)
✅ Exposes hidden risk early
✅ Reduces rationalization
✅ Improves decision durability
✅ Eliminates cleanup later
Today’s Challenge
Before committing, write one sentence starting with:
“If this goes wrong, it will be because…”
Fix that first.
Final Thought
Confidence asks how it feels. Proof asks how it holds up. -1% CheatCode