Looking Forward and Reasoning Back

Looking forward and reasoning back is one of the practical and most useful strategies in The Art of Strategy: A Game Theorist's Guide to Success in Business and Life. Almost done with the book and this particular strategy has been the most relevant so far.

Depending on the nature of a goal or a problem, one useful strategy, as the title suggests is to look forward -see the desired end result - and reason backwards as to how to reach or accomplish that goal. For example, if you want to finish a 10 mile race in 2 hrs, you can reason backwards and know how fast your pace must be in order to accomplish your goal, or if you want to catch the 8 am train, you can reason backwards and have an idea of what time you should set your alarm clock to. The book has more complicated examples but that's the general idea more or less.

Sounds like common sense right? It is but it's not always put to use as it should be. I have one very recent experience where I should have applied this strategy but failed to do so (Hint: I was in a race) I just thought during that time that I'll know what to do when I cross the bridge so to speak, only to find out I have come up short of my goal. It has been a very memorable experience so I'm writing about it now so that I won't forget.

We often come across this strategy when we see advertisements of investment banks on how much one should save if you want to retire with a million dollars, how many more years one should work in order to retire comfortably, etc. The math can be done and we often ignore the results thinking it's unrealistic or it's something to worry about later on. There are a lot of variables of course which one has to consider when thinking of goals like this. This example just shows one crude(?) application of this strategy and why many just ignore or take it for granted.

Still, this doesn't make the case that life's problems -mundane or not- couldn't be solved or approached using this very powerful concept. I've had one recent real-life learning experience and hopefully one that I would keep on remembering.