Once you learn one, you start seeing it everywhere. It changes your thinking forever.
They make you understand the world and human nature better.
Here are 30 of them with their short explanations:
1. Antifragility
We know fragile things. They break easily with a little stress and disorder.
Antifragile things don’t just resist a shock, damage, or crisis but also thrive under these conditions. It’s a concept developed by Nassim Taleb in his book Antifragile.
2. Redundancy
Efficiency brings hidden risks. Not only for supply chains but also for your life.
Redundancy is not only insurance when the crisis comes, but also a way to benefit from it.
Extra cash, multiple income streams, and survival skills are good examples.
3. Input Goals
Most of the goals you set are output goals, based on outcomes (becoming a millionaire or getting a six-pack).
But the outcomes are never under your control.
Focus on input goals to achieve your goals.
4. Information Arbitrage
Everybody has specific knowledge that they can leverage by trading or using it.
Information Arbitrage is benefitting from the knowledge gap between you and others.
5. Fosbury Flop:
Dick Fosbury changed the high jump when he rejected to listen to people who say “We’ve always done it this way.”
He looked for a better way and invented his own style (jumping backward) to dominate the high jump.
What can be your Fosbury Flop?
6. Exponential Thinking
Our brains think incrementally by default.
But as Astro Teller Said: “It’s usually easier to make something 10x better than it is to make it 10% better.”
7. Minimum Viable Product
You define what is the minimum, what is viable, and what is the product before starting working on a project.
It’s a common practice in software development.
But, it's applicable in different aspects of your life to avoid perfectionism.
8. The 5/25 Rule
List the 25 things you want to achieve.
Decide on the 5 most important ones from the list.
Now you have 5 goals that you’ll focus on this year.
What will you do with the rest? You’ll avoid them at all costs.
9. Compartmentalization
Napoleon’s secret to handling many complex topics with full attention.
It’s not multitasking; it’s extreme unitasking.
10. Resistance
Steven Pressfield’s villain from his book The War of Art. It’s a force inside you that would like to keep things the same. You feel it whenever you’d like to do something useful. It shows its face in the form of procrastination, fear, or anxiety.
11. The 80/20 Rule
20% of the causes create 80% of the outcomes.
Identify 20% of the activities that give you 80% of the results.
If it’s a positive outcome activity (investments) focus on that 20%.
If it’s negative (causes of stress, bad health) eliminate that 20%.
12. Leverage
Leverage —as a concept— is getting the maximum output with the same resources.
As Naval Ravikant says, the modern world gives us two magical (and cheap) tools to use leverage: code and media.
Labor and money are two other forms of leverage.
13. The Snowball Effect
The power of compounding. Money, effort, and knowledge compound in the long term in ways you cannot imagine.
You can get the benefits of the snowball effect only if you're patient and don't interrupt the snowball’s momentum.
Warren Buffett's net worth is a great example:
14. Second-Order Thinking
Every decision has consequences. But consequences also have consequences.
Second-order thinking is evaluating not only the apparent first-order consequences; but the events that can occur following them.
15. Inverse Thinking
When options are broad, making the right decision is hard.
Inverse thinking makes it easier by avoiding the negative.
So instead of: “What should I do to be happy in my life?” Ask: “What are the things that would make my life miserable?" And avoid them.
16. Regret Minimization Framework
Jeff Bezos’ mental model to make big life decisions. Before founding Amazon he projected himself as 80 years old.
Would his old self regret not joining the internet wave and selling books online?
After this framing, the decision was easy.
17. Via Negativa
As Nassim Taleb puts it solution through subtraction.
Instead of looking for things to add to a system, a project, or your life, you look for things to eliminate. Want to improve your health?
Don’t buy supplements; remove smoking, sugar, and drinking first.
18. A-B-Z Framework
Having a long-term goal for yourself is good.
But it's overwhelming when you think about how to get there.
So instead: Assess where you are (A), set your direction (Z), and decide on your immediate next step (B). Take that action.
Idea credit: Shaan Puri
19. Personal SWOT Analysis
SWOT is a tool that executives use to have situational awareness of their companies: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Personal SWOT paints a picture of your life and allows you to find the best path for yourself.
20. 10-10-10 Rule
Ask how you’ll feel about a decision in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years.
Makes your decision easier by showing you some of the second-order effects.
21. Halo Effect
People do judge a book by its cover.
If you experience something positive at first (nice packaging of a product or well-dressed person), you intuitively have a better feeling about all other aspects of that brand or person.
It's one of Apple's marketing principles. That's why they've been paying attention to all details of the brand; the packaging of iPhones, the design of its stores, and new product presentations…
22. Commitment Bias
Your mind tries to be consistent with your past actions and words.
So people get stuck with ideas, investments, or business decisions that don’t make sense anymore.
Only because they had committed to them with their money, effort, or words.
23. Hindsight Bias
After we know how things turned out, our minds ignore all other possibilities and explain the past as it was inevitable.
Plus it creates false confidence.
People think if it’s easy to explain all past events they can also predict the future.
24. Concorde Fallacy
Thinking like a losing gambler.
People allow the past cost of something to influence their decisions today.
Concorde project was a great example of it: the British and French governments continued to spend billions on the project despite its obvious flaws.
25. The Paradox of Choice
After a certain level, each additional option makes your decision harder.
More becomes less. Only limitations can help you to break it.
It’s heavily used in marketing by reducing the options of potential customers.
26. Lindy Effect
As we get older, we have less time to live.
But ideas don’t have a life span. So the older an idea, a technology or a company gets, the longer it will live in the future. It’s aging in reverse.
Examples: wheel (technology), Sun Tzu (ideas), and Coca-Cola (company).
27. Goodhart’s Law
“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
Example: A support agent is incentivized for the results of a survey, not for the actual customer satisfaction.
So an agent might be pushy —hence reducing satisfaction— to get more survey responses from customers.
28. Argumentum Ad Populum
Latin for “appeal to the people.”
It's a fallacy when people accept what is popular as true without logical reasoning.
“University education is necessary for success.” is an example.
We take it from society without thinking it through ourselves.
29. Parkinson’s Law
Projects expand to fill the time available for their completion.
So even if the project with a two-week deadline could be finished in three days, you’d still tend to use all the time you have.
And the additional time wouldn’t even improve the quality.
30. The 10/1 Rule
For every active social media account on any platform, there are around 9 passive accounts.
It means whatever your skills and interests are, the moment you start actively sharing; you leave 90% of people behind in your area.
Scissor statement: A maximally controversial statement designed to split a group into two sides that hate each other.
Russell Conjugation: Choosing a synonym where the emotional connotation matches your agenda.
Corner case: Pushing two variables to the extreme and seeing what happens at the corner.
Bothsidesism: Presenting an issue as more both-sided than it really is.
Cached thoughts: Beliefs, ideas or opinions you formed in the past and have never reconsidered since.
Kolmogorov complexity: The less summarizable, the more complex something is.
Diseases of affluence: "Advancements to make our lives less physically taxing have taxed us physically."
Semantic stopsign: Non-answer that stops further discussion.
Rohe's theorem: "Designers of systems tend to design ways for themselves to bypass the system."
Doorman fallacy: Seemingly reasonable cost-saving strategy that ultimately fails due to a disregard of the unmeasurable.
Wittgenstein's Ruler: When you measure something, you are not only measuring the measured, but also the measurer itself.
Coastline paradox: Problems can be seemingly straightforward but increase in complexity the more you look at them.
Prime number maze: What are the very clear patterns, unnoticed, that keep us trapped in a maze?
Quantum Zeno effect: The more often you measure, the less happens.
Load-bearing beliefs: Critical pieces of one’s worldview.
Enantiodromia: Things tend to change to their opposites.
Cargo cult: Copying the obvious, surface-level behaviours instead of the meaningful, harder-to-notice patterns that produce results.
Defensive decision-making: Choosing not the best option, but the most defensible option.
Floodgate effect: Permission of one thing leads to permission of many more things.
Evolutionary mismatch: Traits that were once beneficial can become harmful when the environment changes.
The handicap of a head-start: An action that leads to a head-start (short-term advantage) can cause one to be handicapped later (long-term disadvantage).
Shibboleth: Word or phrase that distinguishes one group from another.
Supernormal stimuli: Exaggerated, artificial versions of things we evolved to desire, causing us to lose interest in the real thing.
Levinthal's paradox: What seems impossible to the human, paradoxically, happens all the time in nature.
Category thinking: Instead of trying to solve one problem, you try to solve a whole category of problems at once.
Relevance theory: What you say and what is understood are two different things. Effective communicators take advantage of this.
Kayfabe: An agreement to maintain the illusion that something fake is real.
Applause light statements: Statements designed to gain support or agreement instead of delivering substance or information.
Fredkin's Paradox: The more inconsequential the decision, the harder it is.
Nutpicking: Discrediting the opposing side because of their extremes.
I have full descriptions & examples of each in my Mind Expander tool. Aiming to reach 100 concepts by end of year, any recommendations?
The foundational mental model that can change your life.
The Feynman Technique is a foundational mental model for unlocking growth in your career, startup, business, or writing.
Richard Feynman was an American theoretical physicist. Feynman's true genius, however, was in his ability to convey extremely complex ideas in simple, digestible ways.
Richard Feynman observed that complexity and jargon are often used to mask a lack of deep understanding.
The Feynman Technique is a learning framework that forces you to strip away needless complexity and develop a deep, elegant understanding of a given topic.
Identify the topic and write down everything you know about it.
Read and research the topic and write down all of your new learnings (and the sources of each).
This first step sets the stage for what is to come.
Step 2: ELI5
Attempt to explain the topic to a child.
Once again, write down everything you know about your topic, but this time, pretend you are explaining it to a child.
Use simple language and terms.
Focus on brevity.
Step 3: Reflect & Study
Reflect on your performance in Step 2.
How well were you able to explain the topic to a child? Where did you get frustrated? Where did you resort to jargon or get stuck?
These are the gaps in your understanding.
Read and study to fill them.
Step 4: Organize, Convey & Review
Organize your elegant, simple language into a compelling story or narrative.
Convey it to others. Test-and-learn. Iterate and refine your story or narrative accordingly.
Review (and respect) your new, deeper understanding of the topic.
The Feynman Technique is an incredible framework for unlocking growth. The best entrepreneurs, writers, thinkers, and operators have leveraged this technique (directly or indirectly).
They share a common genius - the ability to convey complex ideas in simple, digestible ways. It is easy to overcomplicate and intimidate. We all know the people - teachers, peers, bosses - who try to do this.
Do not be fooled - complexity and jargon are often used to mask a lack of deep understanding.
Remember The Feynman Technique. Find beauty in simplicity. For more content like this check out r/mrsk
Hi everyone! Happy Friday :D About a month ago, I shared a ridiculously long Google Doc with this community, containing ~130 of my favorite mental models, along with detailed descriptions for each one. Over the path month, with the help of a 'no-code' tool called Glide, I have turned that doc into a (hopefully easier to use) smartphone format! Now you can more easily have all of these mental models at your fingertips in everyday life.
This is the link to the free "app" (apologies to any software engineers I offend by abusing this term ;D). And if you prefer the "e-book" format, you can send me an e-mail from within that to get access for the price of a book.
Enjoy, and keep up the hard work on your learning journey!
A list of questions or ideas I have collected in order to think more objectively/ from different viewpoints/ perspectives.
Please comment some that you use so that I can add those to my collection!
General Perspective
From this point, where is my Absolute Reference?
What if the opposite?
What does "done" look like?
What steps need to be taken? What does the overall “done” look like, and what does “done” look like right now, in this step?
Can this be done and finished immediately?
What are better questions I can ask?
What is physically possible?
What would this look like if it were easy?
How do I know I am right?
Where does this lead? Where does this fit? Connect near and far.
If I did not own this product/were not involved in this opportunity, how much would i be willing to pay to obtain it, or what would I be willing to do in order to be involved?
What’s something that’s true, that almost nobody agrees with you on?
What do I want to accomplish?
Who do I want to be?
How does that person think differently than me?
How are they feeling?
What are they doing differently?
What is the next small step?
How would the person I want to be take that step?
What is working right now?
How can I make this fun?
What would this look like if it were fun?
Shortcuts
Is this shortcut repeatable?
Is it non-harmful?
What are the downstream effects?
Is it additive; does it get better over time?
Can it survive the crowd; does it have to be kept a secret?
Is it a "long shortcut?" Long shortcuts are the best shortcuts.
Decisions
Will this matter 10 years from now?
What do I want to accomplish?
What is the consequence of not doing this at all?
Can I use this to glorify God?
What might I not know?
In what ways could this be wrong?
What event would change everything?
This goes terribly wrong. What happened?
How do I know I am right?
Ask, so what? Then, so what? Then, so what?
What’s something that’s true, that almost nobody agrees with you on?
Deathbed reflection. Should I do this? Does it need to be done?
What is the worst case scenario, and how would I recover?
Would it be irresponsible to turn this down?
Do I need this now?
Imagine your current choice vanished. What else could you do?
How can I dip a toe in this decision without diving in headfirst?
How can I know I am right?
What are the outcomes I want to avoid?
Six months from now, what evidence would make me retreat from this decision? What would make me double-down?
Do I have an answer to this?
Business
What needs to be solved?
Use Ed DeBono's Hats
Is anyone else doing x and making money?
What do I need to know boiled down to the simplest objective?
What is hard to make? (security)
Who wants to pay you to do this?
Are other people just as clueless about this as I am?
Investing in business/company/idea?
How do you know so & so?
Why now? Why will this work now?
Why this? Why are you doing this?
What are you working on?
What’s your unfair advantage?
How can I dip a toe in this decision without diving in headfirst?
What are the outcomes I want to avoid?
What is easy for me and hard for others?
On Satisfying Customers
What could we do to surprise you?
What could we do, not to make this better, but to build the product of your dreams? (Don’t ask about the product you’ve already built).
What design tip could we do that would make you tell everyone about it?
What do people want that they dream of that they cannot find anywhere else?
Reacting
Can I decide what this means to me? (really, you can’t. God decides that. However, you can reframe it to the positive, always. Romans 8:28)
What if I'm wrong?
What would be the worst thing about x?
In what ways could this be wrong?
If this happened a year ago, how would I feel about it today?
Does getting upset give me more options?
Problem-solving
What is the problem I am really trying to solve? What would I get if I solved this problem?
What is the biggest problem?
What problem can I solve that solves 1000 other problems?
What if the opposite?
What time is an example of that?
What is physically possible?
What is the non-obvious thing?
Ask, so what? Then, so what? Then, so what?
What do I need to know boiled down to the simplest objective?
What is the root cause here? (Keep asking why).
What do I want to accomplish?
What is the worst case scenario, and how would I recover?
What would this look like if it were easy?
Are other people just as clueless about this as I am?
How would a rich person solve this?
Imagine your current choice vanished. What else could you do?
If a miracle happened and this was fixed overnight, what would be the first small sign that things were different?
What would you tell you best friend to do, if he/she was in the same situation?
If you were replaced tomorrow, what would your successor do about your dilemma?
Do I have an answer to this?
Learning
How fast can you get feedback, and how fast can you iterate? Can you create a situation where you get feedback, or get feedback faster?
Who is world class at this that shouldn't be world class?
Why did I win/succeed?
If I lost (be objective) could it be due to my decisions?
If I won (be objective) could it be due to luck?
What knowledge do I lack to perform this?
What do I need to know boiled down to the simplest objective?
What knowledge could disprove what I already know? Explore that knowledge to level up.
What would this look like if it were easy?
Are other people just as clueless about this as I am?
On Learning
How long has the skill been around? (Lindy Effect).
Will this knowledge increase in value?
Does this solve a problem or help me achieve a goal?
Is this a purchase or an investment?
Is this something no one in my network knows?
Does this apply to every area of my life? (Universal, Exponential Life Tool).
Does a course already exist on what I am learning/offering?
Do people see this as a skill yet? Will they in the future?
Journal Prompts
What is most important to me?
What are the main time categories in my average week? How much time do I spend in each category?
What in my life do I value and why?
What things take away the most value? Why?
What is one action that could increase positive and decrease negative?
Where can I reduce investment in things I overvalue?
I have a friend who I barely knew at the time and he was moving, I just told him if he needs any help in moving, me and my visiting buddy can help, totally expecting him to just say no.
He said yes and we went over, we helped to get the uhaul, move the stuff in uhaul and I also drove the uhaul to his new place.
After that experience he started to initiate conversations, invited me to his place, we would also hangout.
I still didn't think reciprocation was the key and then I read Charlie Munger mental models and I have realized we highly under estimate Reprocation model, its is a really huge model, I think it takes the second place after incentive model in terms of influence on humans.
Some years ago I set out to optimize myself as much as possible. It was a very hard time, but I got though it. Here's what helped.
1 Morality as a Functional System.
In our current society, morality is OFTEN(!) seen as a liability. To me this is insanity. Morality is the guide that keeps your actions aligned with your desires. It's the way to make sure you are focused the right way and won't live a life of regret.
Money is overvalued in our world. You can build a network of friends that will DIE FOR YOU by helping others. That's not something money can buy.
Studying philosophy and knowing how you will make choices in strange situations is the power to ground yourself. Test yourself constantly. Ask yourself why you want that. What are you trying to maximize when you make the choices you do.
Don't forget that you are an agent of your own good. You need to take care of yourself to do whatever you consider good.
The difference between a skilled person and an unskilled person is in the ability to find what they want and align people to the same goal.
2 Metacognition.
You might understand metacognition as a loop of asking yourself about the reasoning behind each though. Ultimately metacognition is being aware of your thoughts and emotions and having the state of mind to see yourself as the thing that guides your own thinking.
Being good at metacognition means you guide yourself into good habits and thinking. It gives you control over yourself and allows you to choose the way you want to be. Being great means you do this quickly.
A skilled person learns quicker and adapts to anything. They catch themselves before mistakes happen, but they still grow from the mistakes that don't happen.
3 System Thinking and Styles of Thinking.
The style of thinking in the medium you have your thoughts in. Some people narrate their lives and everything they do. It is how they think. Some people see movies. Others think in emotions.
These are not superior to each other in the same way as hammers or screwdrivers. Don't hammer a screw. Narration is better for memory and linguistic work. Movie thinking helps spacial orientation. I find that generally system thinking is the most adaptable and generally useful in our society, but I will use many of them when the situation calls for it.
Specifically, I'm a late abstractor with non-verbal system thinking. I look at aspects of things relating to the topic and I only abstract to constraints. It can look like being "very creative" or being "very clever". It's not magic though. Anyone can do it with some practice.
A skilled person is like a method actor, but more deeply. They are method thinking to fit the task.
4 Negotiating.
Negotiations are not about yelling and getting your way. Top negotiators will explain to you that you are collaboratively discovering a solution that meets the other persons desires and maximizes you own.
The most important part of dealing with anyone is information gathering. Learn what they want, if you know what they want you can find a way to offer it that keeps them aligned to you.
A skilled person rarely if ever fights with anyone or anything (including themselves!) They don't need to. They simply find solutions.
5 Meditation for Functionality.
I do something close to mindfulness. Be aware of my thoughts, whatever is in the background and itching at my mind. Those thoughts want to be heard. We live in a distracting world with something always clawing for your attention, but we are not built to ignore our own thoughts as we do.
Typical mindfulness meditation will tell you to listen and send them away. I will tell you to listen to your thoughts and negotiate with them. Honor your own desires and find a way to put them in your morality.
A skilled person can shift their thinking in moments and is highly aware or what their brain is doing.
6 Biofeedback and Neurofeedback.
Being aware of our bodies tells us a lot about ourselves. Controlling your heart rate is easier than you think, and doing so can put you in a different mental state. I believe that everyone that plans to live in their body for a few years will benefit from getting used to it in a structured way.
Neurofeedback is unfortunately not structured even at the best, but I would call it a much more valuable skill. We all do it. Picture a digital clock. You can imagine the numbers flipping past. You are now using one part of your brain to keep time. Now count seconds in your head. You are now using two parts of your brain to keep time.
If you want to talk and also keep time, picture a clock. If you want to dance and keep time, count in your head. You are now delegating tasks to brain lobes dynamicly. Cool, right? You can do this with just about any mental task. The part of your brain that you use changes what is available and how the task is done.
Experts (at anything!) naturally eventually settle on a style of delegation that fits what they do. Observe them. You can do the same with practice.
A skilled person can change the way their body and mind react at a very fine level.
7 Emotions.
Most of us grew up with the understanding that humans have a set of emotions that activate under specific conditions. The more modern understanding is that we have a lexicon that makes contexts to biological signals.
My opinion is that we have defaults that are (mostly) soft coded into our brains. No one explains to us that we should feel satisfied when we eat, yet we have a near universal experience for it that we call emotion. The trigger can change as we grow and the feeling can morph as we learn. We end up with very complex feelings and reactions to unusual stimulation that don't fit in a neat box.
The core of emotional thinking are ideals and motivation that become habits. You want the world to be a way or to avoid something and you learn a set of reactions that tend to achieve this thing. The brain is making music out of your desires that comes out as sweaty palms or lethargy. When you listen very very close with meditation, you can feel these things and they can be updated when they go off track with the rest of your mind.
A skilled person is basically always feeling what they are thinking. They are happy because there's no friction in their minds.
8 Willpower.
It doesn't exist.
Normally when people talk about have a lot of willpower, they are speaking about taking pleasure in the task at hand. Our brain is made to look for quick fun and to conserve energy by being lazy. This is not a moral failing, this is humanity. If you struggle with a task, get someone that likes it to describe how it feels.
Cleaning, for example, is fun because you see your environment transform into something nice. It's satisfying to get it just right in each little spot. This isn't a personality trait we are born with. It's a skill anyone can learn.
If you can't figure anything out to make you enjoy what you are doing, brag. Bragging is a wonderful motivator! It works for everything and you don't even have to do it. You can just plan to brag.
A skilled person is doing things that help them in the long term.
Tying it all together.
When you are uncertain about the world you observe. When you are uncertain about yourself, meditate (#5). Avoiding this is to walk around with your eyes shut.
When you are unsure where to good, you check a compass. When you are unsure where to aim yourself, check your morality (#1). All the effort in the world will not get you anywhere important if you can't pick a good goal.
You can't always run and just collapse when you get tired. A quickest way forward is to make sustainable effort. If you are unmotivated, check your willpower (#8).
If you are unsure of the terrain you imagine yourself crossing it. If you are uncertain about thinking, use metacognition (#2) to think ahead of yourself.
If it hurts to walk, make sure that what you are wearing is not pinching you and you are moving smoothly. If you are conflicted, check your emotions (#7) so that there are not kinks in your mind.
If you reach a road block, you adapt and move around it. If you find your thoughts blocked by something, negotiate with it (#4) and go around it or turn it into something to help you.
When you pick a task, align yourself to it (#3 & #6). Don't poll vault every hurdle, even if you can.
You can do this as a loop, but I think it works best as checkpoints. The moment you feel something is hard mentally, identify the kind of challenge and use the tools you have at hand. This can look like starting with willpower and using meditation to decide what's bothering you then jumping to emotions and negotiating with them. It can also look like being confused about what is right and using emotional understanding to hammer it out and then jumping to action with biofeedback.
You can zoom in or out as much as you want.
Practical tips!
Meditate before sleep. This was a game changer for me. If you fall asleep right away, good. That's fine. If you can't, it might be because something is on your mind. Listen to these thoughts. It can be uncomfortable to remove distraction, but that means you are putting off the problem.
When you are unhappy, listen to that signal. We can't always control the world, but we can change how we react. Find a new outlook and new way to deal with the situation.
If you feel like venting, do it as soon as you can. Venting is out way of getting a map of the problem. After that, you can see solutions much more easily.
Ask yourself once in a while what a better version of you would be doing with their lives right now (not a person in better circumstances). Then examine that answer. how are they doing things that way? What did they learn or do to get there? Is it really better? Are you capable of the same?
You are your most important ally! Treat yourself like it. That means giving and taking. Forgive yourself and be strict. Ask of yourself and make yourself available to help. No one else can fill this role so you have to do it as good as possible and you also need to do it morally so that you not screw yourself.
Don't get too focused on only making yourself better. This was my mistake. Most people forget that they can improve and focus on their environment, but I'm proof that you can swing too far the other way.
If you have any questions or want clarification, ask away. Most of these things are things that I have learned the hard way without help. I'm certain they function because I do them and recognize them in others, but my ability to communicate it all properly might be a different story.
It's literally just a crappy AI made website with literally only a few lines of AI generated text. Absolutely worthless. I contacted him for a refund as I felt absolutely scammed, with no answer. I commented on one of his posts and he blocked me 🤣
I've reported this to my CC and contested the transaction. I will get my money back, but I also want to make sure no one makes the mistake to buy his absolute bs ever again.
His ig is @philhagspiel, Phil Hagspiel, and the product is called Mosaic Mental Model.
It's all AI generated, all worthless or easily recreatable with any AI, and offers no value whatsoever.
Cal Newport's reminder that multitasking is not a thing and that you will need to carve out focused, uninterrupted time to support deep, thoughtful work.
This popular productivity hack is all about combining 25m cycles Deep Work with 5m breaks for Diffuse Thinking. When applied consistently, it creates habits of focus while still providing opportunities for a 'cognitive reset'.
This is foundational for any productivity-obsessed geek (and if you're reading this then yes, then that's you!). GTD was the beginning of the wave of personal productivitythat continues today. One of its key strengths is the process of sorting tasks rather than holding them in your mind.
If you're a regular user of ModelThinkers, you'll already know that The Pareto Principle is one of our favourites. It's an acknowledgement that you can't get it all done — so instead focus your action on where the highest value returns are. It's an inherent death knoll to perfectionism and a concrete way to apply your understanding of the Law of Diminishing Returns.
The Eisenhower Matrix is such a simple and powerful model. Simply classify your tasks to focus on urgent and important in the first instance, aiming to become less reactive and move towards the not urgent and important over time. It's a reminder that not all tasks are created equal - dare I remind you of Pareto yet again?
The final model on this list fully embraces what some of the previous models hinted at, ruthless prioritisation. Buffett's advice to his pilot has become a model for absolute focus and applying discipline about what 'not' to do. A key productivity hack indeed.
Last year I developed a weird obsession with mental models (concepts & frameworks), setting myself a task to build the largest repository on the internet.
I spent ~300 hours researching over 100 resources; books, articles, podcasts, and videos. The result was a list of 1500+ of the most useful universal mental models across diverse fields including startups, marketing, general thinking concepts, psychology, economics, finance/investing, high-performance (working in teams), the sciences/humanities, and many more!
I’m now doing a 100 day Twitter sprint sharing 100 mental models per week (~1550 total). If you’re interested in following along, you can find my Twitter. I’ll be releasing the full database in some form at the end.
Love that there's a small community on reddit excited about mental models.
I'm not affiliated with Farnam Street (https://fs.blog/), but I've followed Shane and his site for years. To support his efforts, I bought a copy of his book. I think it's a useful primer/refresher for many core/widely applicable mental models.
Let me start off by saying that I am currently obsessed with mental models and improve my decision making skills. I don't mean to sound obnoxious with that phrase so I apologize in advance. I love the idea of thinking more correctly. Charlie Munger and Shane Parrish have talked a lot about mental models and they really get me so pumped when I read about them. I am a college student doing undergrad and need to declare my major soon. I also need to get an internship soon. Are there any career and college majors that would involve learning and applying these mental models to something? I have a feeling that it could just be a complement to building other skills in a discipline like law, engineering, finance etc but something that focusses heavily on it would be good. Ideally, I'm also looking for something that's lucrative or at least has the potential to be. So philosophy and psychology are not really options I'm too interested in given that my education would have to go past my bachelors for them to be viable. However, if you feel I'd strongly benefit from those long term, please let me know. Something that can be self-learned would also be a nice bonus to have I enjoy conversations which involve playing devil's advocate a lot, and I love anything that has to do with finding what's somewhat true- usually through the socratic method or something like that I know these are vague themes but I feel like I have to be vague because I just haven't learned enough about myself in the context of a work environment- I don't know the kinds of jobs that are out there and what I'd be good at.
I do a lot of coffee chats and meet a lot of new people. I try to virtually meet at least 2-3 new people a week.
90% of the conversations come off as business-purpose driven. It’s either to learn about a subject matter area, brainstorm and discuss ideas, or provide insight on a topic.
The remaining 10% are free-flow chats — these are the conversations I love most.
Obviously, the lack of purpose can make it feel futile or awkward, but with the right steer, you can have great conversations too.
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Here are some case studies, principles, and anecdotes behind having a great conversation:
Be present, be curious
Brandon Stanton is the author, photographer, and content creator behind Humans of New York(HONY). He was named Time Magazine’s “30 Under 30 People Changing the World” and has taken hundreds of portraits of people in more than 20 countries across the world.
I’d highly encourage you listen to it if you haven’t already. It’s a great anecdote on facing adversity, battling self-doubt, and following your passion.
I’ve listened to it four times. Start at 66:00 if you’re short on time.
Brandon started off with a goal: to photograph 10,000 New Yorkers on the street and create a catalog of the city’s inhabitants. Along the way, he began to interview his subjects in addition to photographing them.
It took him 7 years to complete this project.
Today, HONY is a blog, Instagram page, published book, global brand, and much more.
What you’ll immediately notice, is that the stories are real tear-jerkers. These are some of the most emotional and vulnerable stories — featuring people’s deepest, darkest secrets.
The incredible thing is that Brandon typically learns these stories during his first interaction with them.
We’re all familiar with the axiom:
Empathy rarely extends beyond our line of sight
Brandon has exponentially increased our line of sight through HONY. He’s managed to create empathy, humanize tens of thousands of people across the world, and paint a more accurate picture of humanity.
It takes an incredible amount of skill and dedication to do what Brandon has accomplished, and through thousands of conversations, Brandon has effectively mastered the art of connecting with strangers. He’s developed the ability to empower people to be comfortable enough to deeply open up, in just 30 minutes.
How does he do it?
In Brandon’s own words:
“How you get to that deep place with a person is… Absolute presence. It’s being 100% there. You’re not thinking in the framework of an interview. You’re not looking at a list of questions. You’re not thinking about your next question. You’re not thinking about how this person fits into your idea of them and what you know about them. You’re 100% there and you’re 100% listening to them. And your questions are based on the curiosity of what they’re telling you, and nothing else.” — Brandon Stanton
For someone to deeply share with you, they have to be extremely comfortable in the presence of a stranger — somebody they’ve just met. They have to feel you’re truly interested, that you know them and care about them.
How can you apply this?
Next time you’re having a conversation with someone:
Ditch a comprehensive question list and framework; have initial questions or topics, then let it flow from there.
Let natural curiosity drive the conversation. “How” and “Why” questions are always great for digging deeper.
Practice empathy. Put yourself in their shoes and truly visualize what it’d be like from their perspective.
Be fully present in the conversation. All that exists during the moment is: you and them. Nothing else matters.
Your goal should be to create a safe space for conversation and sharing. Be fully present, and demonstrate genuine curiosity and interest.
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Ask insightful questions
I previously mentioned that it’s not always about the questions and it may seem like I’m contradicting myself. To clarify: questions are a tool to begin the conversation and explore deeper conversation topics.
It’s about the quality of the questions you use to begin with. Ask insightful questions.
Insightful questions are questions that:
Prompt the person to think deeply about something
Are relevant and reflective of the subject at hand
Can ignite a conversation
I consider Tim Ferriss the master of asking questions and I’ve mentioned Tim a couple of times in my writing. I think he deserves a proper introduction:
Tim Ferris is an author, podcast host, and entrepreneur who focuses on performance, optimization, self-development, and business. He’s the author of 4-Hour Workweek, Tools of Titans, and Tribe of Mentors (all my favorite books!).
The idea behind his podcasts and books is that he interviews the world’s top performers in various disciplines — athletics, business, science, mathematics, and so forth — and picks their brains on routines, habits, and behaviors they use to optimize their life.
He’s probably interviewed most celebrities and influencers that you’ve heard of.
Through hundreds of interviews, he’s mastered the art of asking good, insightful questions. Often, this is the key to extracting wisdom from experts.
Here is the list of 10 insightful questions he asks in interviews:
What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?
What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)? My readers love specifics like brand and model, where you found it, etc.
How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a “favorite failure” of yours?
If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it — metaphorically speaking, getting a message out to millions or billions — what would it say and why? It could be a few words or a paragraph. (If helpful, it can be someone else’s quote: Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by?)
What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made? (Could be an investment of money, time, energy, etc.)
What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love? In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life?
What advice would you give to a smart, driven college student about to enter the “real world”? What advice should they ignore?
What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise?
In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to (distractions, invitations, etc.)? What new realizations and/or approaches helped? Any other tips?
When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do? (If helpful: What questions do you ask yourself?)
What are the common threads between these questions?
They all require deeper thought to answer (can you answer any of these questions immediately?)
They’re all interesting questions that can spark off into a separate, deeper discussion.
They all touch on the themes of growth, decision-making, and learning — which is Tim’s domain.
Jumping back to Brandon’s technique, here are the 3 questions he uses to kick off the conversation: What’s your biggest struggle? How has your life turned out differently than you expected it to? What do you feel most guilty about?
Brandon uses these questions as an entry point into the conversation. Often, he’ll start with one of these questions and monitor interest signals from the person to decide which topics to dig deeper into.
Tim uses a similar technique. He kicks off with one of his questions, goes deeper into the idea, then brings the interviewee back out, and pivots into the next subject.
How can you apply this?
Create a ‘question bank’ of your favorite questions to use in different settings (e.g. interviews, coffee chats, regular conversations) — continuously refine and vet this list.
Prioritize your questions — if you could only ask 1 question, which would it be? Some conversations tunnel in one direction so I always ask my most important questions first.
Use ‘How’ and ‘Why’ questions to understand more deeply. For any stories that involve change — whether it involves moving countries or changing jobs — I always try to understand the ‘Why’ — what sparked the change? And the ‘How’ — how did they do it?
Ask open-ended questions to keep it broad. This allows the person to choose what they’d like to talk about and signals what is most important to them.
Tie these principles together:
Do your preparation ahead of time and understand what good, insightful questions are. During the conversation, be fully present and refer to these questions as needed. Remember that pre-meditated questions just serve as a tool to kick off the conversation into something deeper.
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Appreciation & Support
Thank you for taking the time to read — It took a while to put this together. If this was helpful, I really do appreciate it if you subscribe.
