Mental Models & Mastery

How will I feel about this in 10 minutes / 10 months / 10 years?

Basics first (health/finances), then depth (mastery/impact), then altruism (widening circle).

A group decides on a course of action that nobody actually wants, because everyone assumes others prefer it.

Inattention or forgetfulness caused by low attention, hyperfocus, or distraction.

Deriving general rules from specific examples; the leap from instance to concept.

The minimum energy needed to start a reaction; same idea for starting habits or initiatives.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

We attribute our own actions to situations but others' actions to their character.

Your capacity to learn, unlearn, and relearn faster than the environment changes.

The brain evolved to reason adaptively, not always truthfully, to reduce the cost of errors.

A problem whose solution requires people to change their values, beliefs, or habits — not just apply expertise.

We solve problems by adding, even when subtracting would be better.

Holding a different — and correct — set of tools than everyone else.

Predicting how we will feel in the future, usually inaccurately.

We favor people who are similar to us or who like us.

Assuming that if one option is true, another must be false, when both can be true.

What an environment offers an actor for action — handles to grip, surfaces to sit on, paths to follow.

Presuming a purposeful actor behind events that may have no actor at all.

Someone who incites others to take illegal or rash action, often to expose or discredit them.

What cannot be settled by experiment is not worth debating.

A finite set of well-defined instructions for solving a problem or performing a computation.

Every model simplifies reality; some are still useful.

Researchers favor conclusions aligned with their school, team, or sponsor.

Cumulative physiological wear from chronic stress.

Combining substances to create a new material stronger than its parts.

Forgetting to compare an offer with the next-best alternative.

Outcomes that could have happened but did not.

Sacrificing for others without expecting a personal reward.

Preferring options with known probabilities over options with unknown ones.

Emotional override of rational processing.

Overthinking a situation so that decision-making stalls.

The first number on the table silently sets the range for every number after it.

Pairing a sensory cue with a desired internal state until the cue reliably evokes the state.

Over-reliance on the first number that hits the table.

Malcolm Knowles's principles of adult learning: self-direction, experience as resource, readiness, problem-centered orientation, intrinsic motivation.

Using personal stories or isolated examples instead of evidence.

Systems that gain from disorder.

Claiming something is true or better because most people believe it.

Assuming something is true because it is probable or possible.

Exploiting price differences between markets for risk-free profit.

Using an authority's opinion as evidence, regardless of its merits.

Concluding that a claim is false because the argument for it is flawed.

Claiming something is true because it has not been proven false.

Saying it often enough until objections fade.

Drawing a conclusion from the absence of evidence rather than its presence.

Sun Tzu's ancient treatise on strategy, deception, and positioning.

Tversky & Kahneman's classic: identical outcomes flip from 'risk averse' to 'risk seeking' when framed as lives saved vs. lives lost.

Assuming qualities of one thing transfer to another because they are associated.

Masking the sponsors of a message to make it appear grassroots.

Conflict between belligerents with very different resources and tactics.

Amishi Jha's research: attention is a finite, depletable, but trainable cognitive resource — short daily mindfulness measurably improves it.

Our perception is shaped by what we selectively pay attention to.

Disagreement grows more extreme as the parties think more about the issue.

Replacing a hard question with an easier one without realizing it.

Systematic errors in explaining the causes of behavior — yours or others'.

Favoring suggestions from automated systems over conflicting human judgment.

Relying on examples that come to mind easily, not on actual frequency.

Dacher Keltner's research: the emotion of encountering vastness reliably reduces self-focus and inflammation, and increases prosociality.

Start from the desired future and work backward to the steps that make it inevitable.

Combine extreme safety with extreme risk; avoid the middle.