Bouncing back and forth between these feels like it could be an even more effective instantiation of mental contrasting, and might route around mental contrasting’s weaknesses. This is also supported by its use in psychotherapy where a similar construct is referred to as the ‘miracle question’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solution_focused_brief_therapy#The_miracle_question
Ben Hoffman has also reported some success with a similar question of the form ‘imagine a fluke occurred that solved your problem or made it much easier, is there anything you can do to make such a ‘fluke’ more likely?′
This turns it more into a factor analysis question: if you bounce back and forth between the failure and success condition, which dimensions most saliently seem like they are shifting as you move? These are your candidate hypotheses for the things that affect success. Can they be tested?
The inventor of the premortem also uses a pro-mortem: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/seeing-what-others-dont/201510/the-pro-mortem-method
Bouncing back and forth between these feels like it could be an even more effective instantiation of mental contrasting, and might route around mental contrasting’s weaknesses. This is also supported by its use in psychotherapy where a similar construct is referred to as the ‘miracle question’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solution_focused_brief_therapy#The_miracle_question
Ben Hoffman has also reported some success with a similar question of the form ‘imagine a fluke occurred that solved your problem or made it much easier, is there anything you can do to make such a ‘fluke’ more likely?′
This turns it more into a factor analysis question: if you bounce back and forth between the failure and success condition, which dimensions most saliently seem like they are shifting as you move? These are your candidate hypotheses for the things that affect success. Can they be tested?
Wow, this is pretty cool. Thanks for the links!
I like your idea of shifting the candidates to determine which points feel most like they are relevant.