Welcome to The Door to E. A series-style newsletter for people obsessed with exploring, explaining, and expanding ideas to unlock human potential. Each week, I publish around 3 chosen series that share ideas, experiences, and stories to help you design your life.
This is an overarching “mini book” that acts as a portal to other posts I’ll make around mental models.
Thank you for reading, and please forward this mini-book to anyone who you think needs to walk on the journey.
Dear friend,
How do you think?
Seems kinda odd with a hard-hitting question right off the bat, but I’ve wondered about this for a long time. Better yet how did people make their living off of thinking and I’m just learning about it.
I remember once, on a random Tuesday, a guy on Twitter messaged me asking my help to help him diversify his $100K education business.
After about 40 minutes he got his answer… but something puzzled me. Why did I know the answer to his question?
Why do I, a writer, know the answer to his heavy question?
I’ve also been praised for my questioning capabilities before… but I never knew why I was halfway decent at it.
At Least not until I read about frameworks like Occam's razor and first principle thinking. And naturally being a curious nut, I'm following that trail as far as I can.
What are mental models?
Think of them as mental shortcuts or heuristics that guide thinking, decision-making, and problem-solving processes.
And you can build them. But ones that are naturally in effect at all times are based on our perceptions, beliefs, experiences, and learning, and they shape how we interpret new information and make sense of the world around us.
And it’s not as if these come in the form of hard set templates as well, they could be theories, analogies, metaphors, schemas, rules of thumb, and conceptual frameworks.
Why bother learning some?
The concept of mental models has been alive ever since Plato and Aristotle tried to understand the world.
However, the formal study began in the 20th century with emerging ideas like cognitive psychology.
But since then we’ve got people like Kenneth Craik, who proposed the idea of mental models as internal representations of external reality that facilitate perception, reasoning, and problem-solving.
And Herbert Simon and Daniel Kahneman advanced the study by investigating cognitive biases and heuristics and writing books like THINKING FAST AND SLOW.
Today mental models are recognized as powerful tools for understanding, interpreting, and navigating the web of the world.
Published Articles in Mental Models Wednesday
Final Words
Overall, mental models serve as cognitive tools that help you reduce the cognitive load it would take to make sense of complex information, make decisions, and navigate the world more effectively.
The fun part though is their applicability. There’s a ton of them in every subject on the planet right from business to macroeconomics.
And as I plan to run a business and be an author, this is like having a Swiss army knife to avoid mental pitfalls.
But it’s not as If these are all that exist, if I find more, I’ll add them to the thinking toolbox too.
Until then,
See you on the thought train
S