The inverse method

Have you ever read something that made sense but forgot about it soon after? Chances are you've read something generic like this:

• "I want the world to be a better place"
• "We create value for our customers"
• "We're innovative and build long-term solutions"

At a glance, these statements seem fine. After all, they're positive and sound inspirational. But on closer inspection, they seem fine because anyone could say them. However, for a message to be memorable, you don't want it to be possibly said by everyone.

This is where the inverse method comes in. It's as simple as inverting the message:

• "I want the world to be a worse place"
• "We don't create value for our customers"
• "We're not innovative and don't build long-term solutions"

See? Hardly anyone would feel comfortable saying such things.

In other words: If you're uncomfortable saying the inverse version of the message, it's too generic. Once you become aware of this, you'll start seeing generic messages everywhere.

And that's what we're here to fix.

Link to this headingTowards the specific

To write a memorable, engaging, or inspirational message is to write a specific message. One approach I learned from Greg McKeown in his book Essentialism is that a concrete message answers the question, "How will we know we're done?" Now read the examples at the start of this article and think about when you'd be done with each.

Difficult, right? You're not alone.

So what could we do to improve the messages? How can we write a specific message? The answer comes from these three ingredients:

1. Context
2. Concrete goal
3. Timeframe

With these three ingredients, your messages will be more memorable. Let's take an example.

Link to this headingAn example

To get started, take a look at these three generic messages:

• "I want to produce the best work"
• "I try to do my best to achieve what I want"
• "I aim to help my team as much as possible"

Now apply the inverse method to see if these messages are too generic (spoiler alert: they are). To improve the messages, let's start by adding the first ingredient, context. With context, we can narrow down the messages:

• "I want to be the best woodworker"
• "I want to be a good student"
• "I want to be a good football player"

That's already better. However, applying the inverse method reveals we still have weaknesses to work on. As a next step, let's add a concrete goal:

• "I want to be featured in the local woodworking magazine"
• "I want to have a GPA of 3.7 or more"
• "I want to score 20 goals for my football team"

Getting even better. But we can do even better and add a timeframe:

• "I want to be featured in the local woodworking magazine this year"
• "I want to graduate from high school with a GPA of 3.7 or more to get into UCLA next year"
• "I want to score 20 goals for my football team in the next season"

While sometimes you might intentionally craft messages to be interpreted in many ways, usually you want to aim for a message that is not subject to interpretation. One clear message early on can save a thousand messages in the long run. And these messages are exactly like that: they're explicit and leave no questions.

Now what happens if we apply the inverse method to these messages? Let's see:

• "I don't want to be featured in the local woodworking magazine this year"
• "I don't want to graduate from high school with a GPA of 3.7 or more so that I don't get into UCLA next year"
• "I don't want to score 20 goals for my football team in the next season"

While I argue most people would feel weird saying these things, they wouldn't feel uncomfortable. That's because the context, timeframe, or goal doesn't apply to them in the first place.

And this is exactly what we want.

Link to this headingPractice

Ready to practice? Take the messages at the start of this article and try to make them more specific:

• "I want the world to be a better place"
• "We create value for our customers"
• "We're innovative and build long-term solutions"

You need to invent context, a concrete goal, and a timeframe, as the original messages lack these three ingredients. Ready? Go!

How did you do? I also took a stab at the challenge. Here's what I came up with:

• "I want to serve three evenings a week on a support phone to prevent people from drinking and driving"
• "We help our clock manufacturing customers improve their time-to-market on average by 45 %"
• "We've decreased the amount of harmful cyber security attacks by 85 % with our no-code online service"

Less generic? Yes, sir.

Easier to remember? You bet.

For anyone to say? No way.

Link to this headingLook around

To be fair, the inverse method is a mere gimmick to get people to pay attention to specificity. After using the method a couple of times, you don't even need to invert the messages to spot their generic nature.

Read carefully the next smartphone ad you encounter. See how they "change everything", are "the winners' choice" or encourage you to "be the change"? Not even the big players are free of the generic.

The next time you try to make an impact with your communication, use the inverse method to weed out all the generic. You'll be surprised how much better your message is received. And how much better place the world will be – or what was it?