In any fast-moving product team, there’s a familiar pattern. A confident roadmap is shared. Timelines are tight but “doable.” Enthusiasm is high. Then, just as the meeting is wrapping up, a designer tentatively raises a hand and asks:“Have we thought about what happens if…?”
Suddenly, the mood shifts. The oxygen leaves the room. And once again, the designer is labelled “negative.”
But what’s really going on here isn’t pessimism for pessimism’s sake. It’s a cognitive strategy known as defensive pessimism—a term coined by psychologists to describe people who manage anxiety by imagining what could go wrong in order to prevent it. It's not defeatism. It’s preemptive troubleshooting.
The best teams don’t treat pessimism as a threat. They treat it as insurance. Optimism gets you off the runway. Pessimism keeps you from flying blind.
So if a designer raises a concern, don’t see it as friction. See it as foresight.