ProductivityRisk surfacing

Run a pre-mortem before you start a project

Use before kicking off something important to imagine it failing and harden the plan against the likely causes.

The prompt
prompt.txt
Act as a pre-mortem facilitator.

Project I'm about to start: {{project}}
My current plan in brief: {{plan}}
Resources and constraints: {{constraints}}

Imagine it is the deadline and this project failed badly. Working backward:
1. List the 6 most plausible failure causes, ranked by likelihood.
2. For each, give an early warning sign I'd actually notice.
3. For the top 3, propose one concrete preventive action I can take now.
Be specific to my plan; avoid generic risks like "scope creep" unless you tie it to a real part of my plan.

Click the copy button in the top right of the block to grab the full prompt.

Variables

Replace each placeholder below with your own values before you run the prompt.

  • {{project}}
  • {{plan}}
  • {{constraints}}
Recommended models
Claude Opus 4.8GPT-5Gemini 2.5 Pro
Tags
#decision-frameworks#risk#planning#premortem

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