Pre-mortem simulation

Imagine the project already failed and work backwards to why: catching plan holes while you can still change them.

When to use this: At the end of a session
Learning impact: Reliable gain
Learning evidence: Credible with caveats
Where you are with the topic: Checking readiness
How often to use it: Worth repeating often

When to use it

A project, essay plan, or experiment is about to start and you only imagine success.
You want failure modes before they are expensive.
A post-mortem after the fact is too late for this deadline.

What to ask AI

Type something like: “Pre-mortem: it is two weeks after the deadline and my dissertation chapter failed. Interview me on why, one question at a time. Do not comfort me. Then help me turn the top three causes into prevention checks.”

You invent the failure narrative; AI structures it.

How it helps

A pre-mortem imagines the project already failed and works backward, which surfaces risks optimism hides.

It is prospective, unlike an exam post-mortem after the fact.

How to run it

Set a vivid failure in future tense.
Generate causes without censoring the embarrassing ones.
Rank by likelihood times damage.
Convert the top causes into concrete prevention checks.
Schedule those checks on a calendar.

Example exchange

You

Pre-mortem: imagine my group presentation already failed publicly. Why did it fail?

What did you not rehearse together that you told yourselves you would?

You

The handoff between slides 4 and 5,we each practiced alone and assumed it would be fine.

Prevention check: one timed joint run that includes that handoff, or it isn’t a plan yet. What’s the next failure you’d invent if that handoff were perfect?

Copyable prompt

Project: [ ]. Success looks like: [ ].
Lead a pre-mortem. Force me to generate failure stories in first person past
tense ("It failed because I…"). Push for specificity. Then help me cluster and
choose top 3 plausible, not most dramatic. For each, I propose a mitigation;
critique whether it actually lowers odds.

The Tell

You know this method has flipped when the pre-mortem was cathartic and nothing on your calendar changed.

Unscheduled prevention is daydreaming.

Top three causes must become dated checks.

Principle evidence

Strength of the underlying learning idea, not a claim about AI products.

The underlying learning idea is rated moderate. Pre-mortem (imagine failure, work backwards) is a known decision-quality technique (Klein, prospective hindsight ) applied here to projects/plans. Principle moderate; AI-generated failure modes speculative.

AI delivery evidence

Whether an AI tutor delivers this method well is a separate question.

The learning principle may be moderate, but that does not prove an AI session delivers it well. Treat AI delivery as speculative unless a study of tutoring with this method is named, and none is claimed here.