Imagining every way a task could go wrong can help some people perform better

Psychologist Julie Norem found that a subset of anxious people, 'defensive pessimists', perform just as well as eternal optimists by deliberately picturing worst-case outcomes beforehand and mentally rehearsing how to handle them. Blocking that pessimistic rehearsal in lab experiments measurably hurt their performance, while it didn't affect genuine optimists at all. For this group, bracing for failure functions as real preparation, not just worry.

— Julie K. Norem, The Positive Power of Negative Thinking — Basic Books, 2001
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