The Best Mental Models

The Circle of Competence is a mental model that involves developing a knowledge of what specific areas an individual has an understanding of or experience in. Everyone has built up useful knowledge in some area of the world. By realizing where your strengths lie, you can determine the areas where you have very little familiarity and avoid them to... See more

If you don't have the underlying experience, then it just reads like a collection of quotes. It's cool, it's inspirational for a moment, maybe you'll make a nice poster out of it. But then you forget it and move on. Mental models are really just compact ways for you to recall your own knowledge. 

Species tend to adapt to their surroundings in order to survive, given the combination of their genetics and their environment – an always-unavoidable combination. However, adaptations made in an individual’s lifetime are not passed down genetically, as was once thought: Populations of species adapt through the process of evolution by natural... See more

At its core, Occam’s Razor is a principle that suggests that when faced with competing explanations for an event or occurrence, you should select the explanation that makes the fewest number of assumptions.

The map is not the territory is a mental model that reminds us not to confuse a model of a situation with the situation itself.

You may have noticed  students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they  fail in school and in life. You've got to hang experience on a latticework of models in  your head.  What are the models? Well, the first rule is that you've got to have multiple models—  because if you just have one or two that you're using, the... See more