Are you a Definite or Indefinite Optimist, or Pessimist?

The approach you adopt makes all the difference.

A scene from the early 80’s television show “Knight Rider”

The matrix below is from entrepreneur Peter Thiel’s bestselling book Zero to One. It describes different stances that a person can take about the future.

• Indefinite Pessimism: “An indefinite pessimist looks out onto a bleak future, but he has no idea what to do about it.” Your typical Doomer.
• Indefinite Optimism: The future will be better than the past, but the indefinite optimism doesn’t know how, exactly. He might buy Index Funds, or go all in on ‘progress’, however loosely defined that term may be.
• Definite Pessimism: A person who thinks the future will be worse than the present and has a good idea as to why — for instance, the fertility crisis — and he has a specific plan to navigate that new reality. He has thought about the reasons why the future might be bad, and can at least hedge against some of these things. For instance: if he thinks that a war with China is imminent in the Taiwan Strait, and he is currently an expat in Taiwan, he moves out of Taiwan. It pays to be a definite pessimist, when you’re right.