Mental Models I Find Repeatedly Useful

Hanlon’s Razor — “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by carelessness.” (related: fundamental attribution error — “ the tendency for people to place an undue emphasis on internal characteristics of the agent (character or intention), rather than external factors, in explaining another person’s behavior in a given situation.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs — “Maslow used the terms ‘physiological’, ‘safety’, ‘belongingness’ and ‘love’, ‘esteem’, ‘self-actualization’, and ‘self-transcendence’ to describe the pattern that human motivations generally move through… [though there is] little evidence for the ranking of needs that Maslow described or for the existence of a definit

Strategy vs Tactics — Sun Tzu: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

Power-law — “A functional relationship between two quantities, where a relative change in one quantity results in a proportional relative change in the other quantity, independent of the initial size of those quantities: one quantity varies as a power of another.” (related: Pareto distribution; Pareto principle — “for many events, roughly 80% of th

Divergent Thinking vs Convergent Thinking — “Divergent thinking is a thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. It is often used in conjunction with its cognitive opposite, convergent thinking, which follows a particular set of logical steps to arrive at one solution, which in some cases is a ‘co

Containment — “A military strategy to stop the expansion of an enemy. It is best known as the Cold War policy of the United States and its allies to prevent the spread of communism abroad.”

High-context vs Low-context Culture — “In a higher-context culture, many things are left unsaid, letting the culture explain. Words and word choice become very important in higher-context communication, since a few words can communicate a complex message very effectively to an in-group (but less effectively outside that group), while in a low-conte

Cognitive Biases — “Tendencies to think in certain ways that can lead to systematic deviations from a standard of rationality or good judgments.” (See list of cognitive biases)

Introversion vs Extraversion — “Extraversion tends to be manifested in outgoing, talkative, energetic behavior, whereas introversion is manifested in more reserved and solitary behavior. Virtually all comprehensive models of personality include these concepts in various forms.”