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👋 Hey dumdums,
Three nights ago I tried falling asleep upside down. Not like a bat on a juice cleanse. Just feet where my head usually goes. I had read, or possibly misread, a tip about “resetting your brain’s navigation system.” Mostly I just kicked a lamp and tangled myself in a phone charger.
But something odd happened. My bedroom felt unfamiliar. The fan sounded like it was in a different spot. Shadows moved strangely. Same room, new lens. I noticed things I’d ignored for years.
Flipping myself didn’t change the facts. It changed what my brain paid attention to.
When the familiar stops looking familiar, your brain starts to wake up.
Let’s ride the upside-down escalator.
The Stock Trader Who Flips His Charts Upside Down to See the Truth
Imagine staring at a stock chart. Prices rising. Candles glowing. You feel like a genius. But is it a trend, or a trap?
Some traders don’t trust their gut. They flip the chart upside down. Literally. Up becomes down. Gains look like losses. One trader told FuturesMag, “When I’m not sure if I’m seeing what I want to see, I invert. It snaps me out of bias.”
Some platforms even have a chart-flip button. Research in visual perception supports this. Flipping a pattern forces your brain to stop coasting and start analyzing.
When in doubt, turn it upside down and squint.
The Workshop That Turned Bad Ideas Into Good
Innovation consultant Bryan Mattimore once ran a workshop where a team had been stuck all morning trying to come up with good ideas. Nothing clicked. So he flipped the goal. “Let’s try something different,” he said. “What’s the worst idea you can imagine?”
Suddenly, the room lit up. Someone suggested rounding down everyone's bank deposits. Another pitched giving customers free money by accident. Ridiculous. Illegal. Funny. And useful.
In one version of the exercise, a team struggling with how to price an event blurted out: “What if we make it free?” That opened the door to a real solution—corporate sponsorship. The laughably bad idea broke the creative deadlock.
Once the worst ideas were out, the group began dissecting them. Why were they bad? What assumptions were hiding inside them? Could any part be flipped into something smart?
By the end, they had not only laughed harder—they’d landed on real, usable ideas. Ideas they couldn’t reach when they were trying to “think good.”
Sometimes the path to smart runs straight through stupid.
If you’re stuck, try inventing something intentionally terrible.
The Camera That Sees Around Corners
A few years ago, engineers built a camera that could see around corners. No mirrors. Just a wall and some light.
Here’s how it works. A laser hits the wall. Light scatters, bounces around a hidden object, then bounces back. The camera captures that return data—not the object itself, just the indirect reflections. Then it works backward to reconstruct the hidden shape.
Instead of asking “What can I see?”, it asks “What must exist to cause this?”
If something’s confusing, try solving it in reverse. Ask what outcomes are showing up and then work backwards.
Brain-Science B-Side
Want to remember more? Walk backward. A 2018 study in Cognition found that people who walked in reverse recalled more details about past events than those who stood still or walked forward.
Why?
The brain connects movement with memory. Walking backward disrupts your routine, turns off autopilot, and lights up your recall. Scientists call it the “mnemonic time-travel effect.”
Next time you can’t remember where you left your keys, try backing up.
Dumb Word of the Day: “Anastrophe”
Pronounced: (uh-NASS-truh-fee)
Meaning: The deliberate flipping of word order for effect.
“Truly wonderful the mind of a child is.” — Yoda
(should you choose to accept it)
The Inversion Relay
Take any problem you’re stuck on.
Describe its opposite.
Solve that backwards version. Then flip it back.
Bonus: do this on a walk. Or with your head at the foot of the bed.
🎤 YOUR TURN
What have you flipped lately? A chart? A mindset? A pizza box? Hit reply and tell me. One lucky dumdum gets a surprise from my desk drawer. It might be a novelty eraser. It might be a single shoehorn labeled “rightish.”
Inverted we go,
David Carson 🎉
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