Last year, I launched a side project without Murphyjitsu. Everything that could go wrong did. This year, I Murphyjitsued my next project. Nothing went wrong. Same person. Same skills. Different process.
What Is Murphyjitsu?
The name is a mashup of Murphy’s Law (“anything that can go wrong will”) and jujitsu (using force against itself). It was developed by the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR) as a practical planning tool [1].
The process:
- Make your plan
- Visualize yourself at the point of failure. Not “what if it fails?” but “I have failed. What happened?”
- If the failure feels surprising (“I didn’t see that coming”), your plan has a blind spot
- If the failure feels predictable (“Yeah, that was always a risk”), you already know the fix — add it to the plan
- Repeat until no failure scenario surprises you
Why It Works Better Than Regular Planning
Standard planning is optimistic by design. You imagine success and work backwards. The problem: humans are terrible at imagining failure during optimistic states [2].
Pre-mortem analysis (first formalized by Gary Klein in 1998) flips this [3]. By assuming failure has already happened, you bypass the optimism bias and access a completely different mental model — one where your brain actively hunts for threats instead of ignoring them.
Klein found that pre-mortems increased the ability to identify failure causes by 30% compared to standard planning [3].
Real Examples
Example 1: Job Interview
Plan: Prepare answers to common questions, research the company, arrive early.
Murphyjitsu: “I failed the interview. Why?” → I froze on a technical question I wasn’t expecting. → Fix: Prepare for 5 curveball questions, practice saying “Let me think about that for a moment.”
Example 2: New Habit
Plan: Meditate 10 minutes every morning.
Murphyjitsu: “It’s three weeks later and I stopped. Why?” → I skipped one day while traveling and never restarted. → Fix: Set a rule — never miss twice. And have a 2-minute version for travel days.
Example 3: Product Launch
Plan: Ship MVP, get user feedback, iterate.
Murphyjitsu: “The launch flopped. Why?” → Nobody shared it because the landing page didn’t explain the value in 5 seconds. → Fix: Test the landing page with 5 strangers before launch. If they can’t explain what it does, rewrite.
The CFAR Inner Simulator
CFAR teaches that your brain has an “inner simulator” — a subconscious model of reality that’s surprisingly accurate when you give it the right prompts [1]. Asking “what could go wrong?” produces generic answers. Asking “I have failed — does this surprise me?” activates the simulator at full power.
The surprise test is the key. If a failure scenario doesn’t surprise you, your inner simulator already predicted it — which means some part of you already knows it’s likely. Listen to that part.
When Not to Use It
Murphyjitsu is for plans with real stakes. Don’t use it for deciding where to eat lunch. That’s analysis paralysis, not rationality. Reserve it for decisions where the cost of failure is high and the investment in prevention is low.
For everything else, just act. You can Murphyjitsu while walking to the car. It takes 60 seconds once you’ve practiced.
References
[1] Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR). “CFAR Handbook.” rationality.org
[2] Kahneman D. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.
[3] Klein G. “Performing a Project Premortem.” Harvard Business Review, September 2007. hbr.org