Decision log

Using inversion to stop killing everything by accident

Mental model used: Inversion · Jan 28, 2026


Context

I’ve been building multiple projects in parallel, all under a single operating rule:

Each project must accumulate leverage that can plausibly convert into freedom (money without daily labor).

Leverage here means something that keeps working without my daily involvement:

Despite this, I kept running into the same thought:

If people don’t share what I build, why would anyone buy it?

That question felt reasonable — and it was slowly poisoning every project.

Inversion

Instead of asking:

How do I make these projects succeed?

I inverted the problem:

How would I reliably kill all projects and any chance of freedom if I continued like this?

The answer was clear.

I would do it by:

This doesn’t fail loudly. It fails quietly, by misclassification.

The failure mode

Inversion revealed a precise pattern:

If I keep doing this, the outcome is predictable:

I will systematically discard the very things most likely to create freedom.

That is how everything dies.

The correction

The leverage rule itself was not wrong.

The mistake was how I was testing leverage.

I was using one validation mode for everything.

That mode was:

But different kinds of leverage prove their value in different ways.

Some things are meant to be shared. Some things are meant to be bought. Using the wrong test makes good work look like failure.

Two modes

From here on, I am explicitly separating two modes:

Mode 1 — Share mode

Mode 2 — Buy mode

Both modes can create leverage. They simply use different signals.

How this fits the leverage rule

Nothing about the global leverage rule changes.

What changes is how feedback is interpreted:

The leverage types stay the same. The validation signals do not.

What this decision closes

Most importantly, it closes the habit of killing projects for failing the wrong test.

Uncertainty

This does not guarantee income.

It only guarantees that I stop using a validation method that would reliably destroy any chance of freedom over time.

This entry exists so that future decisions can reference a closed correction instead of reopening the same mistake.


Log closure: validation is now matched to leverage.