I realized the benefits to be gained from a formal list of mental model heuristics drawn from the decades of published research on the subject. So, I revisited the literature and sketched a list of eight heuristics for designing to support mental models.
What you allow your milieu to feed into your mind is what you will be processing. It is what will carve the pathways of your brain. This is perhaps well-understood, in theory if not in practice.
But it is equally important to consider who and what you are sending output to.
Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time.