The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability.

Invention and discipline are not opposites in serious inquiry. Guessing is essential, but a useful guess stays tethered to what could plausibly be the case, which is what separates a hypothesis from a story. The restraint is less a limit on creativity than the thing that makes creativity testable.

Apply that to your own speculating. When you catch yourself constructing an explanation for somebody’s silence or a decision that went against you, ask what the likeliest version is rather than the most dramatic. Then ask what would show you were wrong.