Most problems don’t ambush us — we meet them half-made, out of lack of preparation, failure to think ahead, or plain unawareness. That’s Innocent’s observation about his own life, and it points at the remedy: “Problems come few and far between in the life of a proactive person.”

His method is long stretches of reflection — thinking about problems, deliberately not worrying about them — to lower the odds of the lingering, recurring and unforeseen kinds.

People tell him not to dwell on problems, to spare himself stress. He finds the opposite: what stresses him isn’t the problems, it’s not having time enough to think them through — to avoid, solve or mitigate them, take the lesson, and close them properly.