I've been reading about something called reverse thinking lately, and it's honestly changed how I approach both investing and life decisions. Most people focus on how to succeed, but what if the smarter move is studying failure first?

Charlie Munger gets this. He doesn't just ask 'how do enterprises grow?' He flips it: 'how do they collapse?' Because sometimes the path to success isn't obvious, but the reasons for failure are crystal clear. That's the power of reverse thinking right there.

So what exactly is reverse thinking? It's basically looking at things everyone accepts as true and asking 'what if the opposite is also worth examining?' It's a mental filter that lets you say no to 90% of opportunities in seconds.

There are five key reverse thinking models worth understanding, and the first one is the success-failure model. This is where things get practical.

Wu Xiaobo wrote a whole book called 'The Great Defeat' studying why companies fail. Jack Ma said something similar: he doesn't know how to define success, but failure? That's easy to spot. And here's the thing—there are countless ways to win, but only a handful of ways to lose. That's useful knowledge.

Then there's pre-mortem analysis. Before you execute a plan, you imagine it's already failed and work backwards. What went wrong? This isn't pessimism; it's preparation. Interestingly, Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War' does the same thing. People think it's about winning, but it's actually about understanding failure and avoiding it.

Duan Yongping, who built Subor, BBK, OPPO, and Vivo, calls this his 'not on the list.' His rules are sharp:

Don't blindly expand what you're good at. Your circle of competence has limits. Focus on what you can actually do, not just what you can talk about.

Don't make 20 major decisions a year. That's reckless. Real value investors make maybe 20 decisions in a lifetime. Quality over frequency.

Don't invest in what you don't understand. Don't place heavy bets on unfamiliar territory. Stick to opportunities you can actually grasp.

Don't take shortcuts or believe in overtaking on curves. That's what people who don't actually drive say. You'll always get passed.

What I find interesting is how reverse thinking isn't about being negative. It's about being realistic. By studying the failure patterns, the mistakes, the 'don't do this' list—you're actually building a better foundation for success than most people ever will. It's a different kind of discipline.