Catastrophization Prevention Exercise

To follow on from yesterday’s post I wanted to share with ye a fantastic exercise I just read in ‘Do More Great Work’ by Michael Bungay Stanier.

It’s a catastrophization prevention technique for your worst case scenario generator.

First you list all the worst case scenarios your brain is thinking of and then you assign a probability to each one. Like so…

If I don’t write excellent ad copy on Monday by 1pm my boss is going to get mad at me (30%).

My boss is then going to tell the director how I performed poorly (20%).

Then next time they are making budget cuts they are going to remember how poorly I performed and fire me (10%).

Then I won’t be able to find another job in time to pay rent (40%).

Then I’ll have to move back in with my parents (25%).

Then I’ll never leave the house because I’m so ashamed of getting fired and retreating back to my parents house (10%).

Then eventually my parents will die and by that point my shame and self pity will have rendered me completely useless to the economy so I won’t be able to get another job (5%).

I’ll sell the house and my self pity will persuade me to use all the money for alcohol and chocolate (2%).

Then I’ll end up dead in a ditch somewhere fat and stinking of booze (1%).

Then you calculate the probability of the worst case scenario happening as a result of the first terrible event. So…

0.3×0.2×0.1×0.4×0.25×0.1×0.05×0.02×0.01 = 6.E-10

Therefore the probability of me dying in a ditch fat and stinking of booze because I don’t write excellent ad copy by 1pm on Monday is 6.E-10 (in other words  so small it’s not even a proper number, there’s a letter in it for crying out loud!).

Really makes your worst case scenario generator sound silly doesn’t it?