How "premeditatio malorum" helped me keep my cool when I smashed my phone
When was the last time you broke your phone?
Two Fridays ago I woke up to a cool and foggy morning. I was off work and looking forward to the pre-holiday weekend activities.
I took my two dogs out for a walk around the neighborhood. It wasn’t a work day and the walk was more relaxed; nothing to rush back home for.
I was listening to a podcast and thinking about what was being said. I had a thought I didn’t want to lose, so I had to grab my phone to note it. One hand held both leashes, so I used my other hand to reach across my body, into my pocket, to pull out the phone.
I’ve done this maneuver countless times with no issue. Until this day.
This was the day where my phone decided to take a detour out of my pants and nose-dive for the pebbled sidewalk.
This was not a tall drop, but two things conspired against me. One, the phone landed glass-side down - perfectly flat like a belly flop into the pool. Two, this brief stretch of sidewalk happens to be made of pebbles, not flat concrete. The three-foot belly flop connected with a particularly pointed pebble and the result was a non-functional phone.
Cue sad trombone sound.
To add insult to injury - in the tumult my brain also forgot whatever important thought I wanted to write down in the first place!
While I would like a do-over, this bad situation was less bad because I’d done a little premeditiatio malorum beforehand.
Premeditatio malorum - which roughly translates into “the premeditation of evils” - is a concept taken from Stoic philosophy. It’s a mental exercise of anticipating future problems.
This is not done so that you can worry endlessly about what could go wrong. It’s done so that you can prepare yourself for any bad outcomes.
Imagining what could go wrong doesn’t make you pessimistic. It makes you prepared. If you haven’t thought about the things that could go wrong, you will be at the mercy of circumstances. Fear, anger, panic—when emotion consumes you, reason leaves you. You just react.
— Shane Parrish, “Clear Thinking”
Marcus Aurelius does this in Meditiations. He wakes up in the morning and imagines his day; all the obstacles he might meet.
In the case of my phone, I’d already thought, “What would happen if my phone was stolen?” I listed out all the bad things that might happen. For example: - No access to 2FA - No text message access to recover services - Compromised financial services - Lost photos
Because I’d anticipated these problems, I could figure out how to solve them before they were needed. This gave me time to research and execute when there wasn’t any pressure. I put mitigations in place and then went about my life.
Robert Greene has a quote on this from Cardinal Richelieu in his book, “The 48 Laws of Power.”
Experience shows that, if one foresees from far away the designs to be undertaken, one can act with speed when the moment comes to execute them.
— Cardinal Richelieu, 1585-1642
When my phone completely broke over the break, instead of frantically trying to solve all of these problems in the moment, I was able to calmly execute repair/replacement actions knowing everything was backed up.
This is why premeditatio malorum is so helpful; as Machiavelli says, evils are easily cured ahead of time.
“Once evils are recognized ahead of time, they may be easily cured; but if you wait for them to come upon you, the medicine will be too late, because the disease will have become incurable.”
— Niccolò Machiavelli, “The Prince”
In today’s newsletter I’ll share some examples of premeditatio malorum, a couple tips, and close with a call to action on your 2024 goals.
Let’s explore a few areas where premeditatio malorum can apply to life.
While this concept can be used for literally anything that has an uncertain future outcome, we’ll focus our examples today on three areas:
1. Business Strategy
2. Financial Planning
3. Health and Wellness
This exercise can be done iteratively and consists roughly of two parts; anticipation and preparation. What could go wrong, and then act upon that information. I’ll use the anticipation / preparation framing in these three examples.
💼 Business Strategy
What are your business goals for the next 1-3 years? What could prevent you from achieving them?
Anticipation:
Maybe a team you depend on will not commit to (or will back out of a commitment) for resources. Maybe a team will produce a major milestone late. Your customer behavior might change. A competitor might beat you to market.
Preparation:
Maybe you choose to design around the dependencies or lower the scope of the ask. Maybe you test your assumptions early, like customer behavior for different options. Maybe you watch a key competitor more closely and prepare marketing material in advance so you can execute swiftly.
💵 Financial Planning
Think of your long-term financial goals. What’s your time horizon? What could go wrong?
Anticipation:
You could lose your job. The market could take a sharp downturn. Inflation goes up. Your bank goes under. Tax laws change. Change in medical circumstances.
You can zoom into each one of these to provide more granularity and detail to help your preparations.
The job loss might mean three months with no income and then an ongoing 10% decline relative to your prior job.
The medical circumstances might mean you have periodic large bills and ongoing prescriptions to fill.
Preparation:
For the job loss you might build up your savings, reduce your fixed expenses, learn a new skill, and start being more intentional about networking.
For the medical circumstances you may preemptively change your exercise and diet habits. You might increase the total amount you’re planning on saving.
🏋️ Health and Wellness
Are you trying to lose weight? Do you have a 5K race goal? Strength goals? Do you want to improve sleep quality?
Anticipation:
For losing weight, maybe you know of some large group events that will have unhealthy alcohol and food - and the social pressure to participate. Maybe it’s hard to regulate sugar when you’ve got cookie options in the pantry.
If you are planning on joining a gym, maybe the class schedules will periodically conflict with some family events. Maybe you know that the commute time will often be an excuse not to go.
Preparation:
For the group event, maybe you enlist an accountability buddy to go with you. You’ll both help each other not drink and make healthy choices. For cookies in the pantry, you could keep those off the grocery list - if you can make it through the store without buying, they won’t be at home to tempt you (speaking from experience here!).
For the gym, you may choose a different class time. You may choose to buy some equipment at home to solve the commute issue - paired with some online accountability to ensure you’ll commit.
Those three examples should give you a good general sense of how to approach this exercise. No matter what aspect of life you’re working on, the approach is straightforward. Anticipate what could go wrong, the prepare for the possibility in advance.
Here are two helpful tips when doing this yourself.
Play - I find it helpful to bring an element of play and creativity into brainstorming preparations. Focus on interesting ways to surmount the issue as opposed to the issue itself.
Detail - Think of this exercise like building a map. Using a globe to drive across the country isn’t as helpful as a detailed topographical and street level map. The detail provided by the latter will give you much more insight. The same is true here; if you can only name a general worry your corresponding action will lack the detail you need to solve it.
Now that you know so much about premeditatio malorum it’s time to put it to work!
Since you have goals for yourself in 2024 and beyond, this is the perfect time to apply this thinking. This week pick at least one of your goals for 2024 and do some premeditatio malorum.
Anticipate what could go wrong. List out the potential issues.
Prepare solutions to those problems in advance. Be creative while you’ve got the time!
Again, you’re doing this exercise not to get caught up in worry. You’re doing it so you can calmly execute plans when the universe inevitably throws curve balls - and pebbled concrete sidewalks - your way.
Good luck - and remember to have fun with it!
If you haven’t done so already, please email me and let me know what some of your 2024 goals are. I’d love to cheer you on!
Here’s to your successful 2024! 🥂
Kevin