November 24, 2025
Welp vs Wow: Plan-Fail Smackdown
Murphyjitsu (2018)
Plan for the worst or just fancy self-help? Commenters go to war
TLDR: Murphyjitsu teaches planning by imagining failure and patching weak spots until you'd be surprised to miss. Commenters split: some praise the tough-love realism, others mock it as rebranded self-help with fancy names, turning the thread into a meme parade about pessimism, procrastination, and whether naming the problem actually helps.
“Murphyjitsu” dropped into the self-improvement arena like a karate chop to your calendar: plan for failure so hard you’d be shocked if your plan actually flops. It’s a Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR) trick from the Hammertime series, mixing “Inner Sim” (your gut’s instant doom-simulator) with a cure for “Welp Mentality” (that shruggy, “eh, I’ll do it later” vibe).
And the comments? Pure fireworks. One camp calls it weaponized pessimism—finally, a way to outsmart Murphy’s Law. Another camp rolls its eyes: “classic rationalist waffle,” basically therapy with cosplay names. FrankWilhoit went full doom bard: “If anything can possibly go wrong, it already has,” while skeptics joked the only thing failing here is the jargon. Fans defended the “Outside View” trick—imagine someone else made your plan—then patch the obvious holes.
Memes exploded: “Murphyjitsu” as a martial arts move; the shrug emoji for Welp Mentality; “Due tomorrow? Do tomorrow” as a student anthem; Mandarin-speaking readers cheered the 墨菲/莫非 “what if?” pun. Bottom line: half the crowd is sharpening their plans, half is sharpening their sarcasm, and everyone’s arguing about whether naming your procrastination enemy makes you more likely to actually show up. Meanwhile, productivity nerds promised trial runs and receipts to share.
Key Points
- •Murphyjitsu is a CFAR planning technique that iteratively anticipates and defends against failure modes.
- •The procedure: plan, imagine post-deadline failure, strengthen against likely failures, and repeat until failure would be surprising.
- •Inner Sim is the intuitive ability to simulate failures; applying it to oneself benefits from an Outside View.
- •“Welp mentality” is identified as passive acceptance of likely failure without corrective action.
- •Practical countermeasures include adjusting deadlines or scope, adding resources, or pre-committing time with a “Yoda Timer.”