A collection of mental models that shape how I make decisions. Physics, psychology, chemistry, biology, mathematics, economics and art. ### **First Principles Thinking** Break down complex problems into their most basic elements and rebuild from there to create innovative and effective solutions by eliminating assumptions and biases. ### **Second-Order Thinking** Consider the long-term impact of actions by analysing potential ripple effects and secondary outcomes beyond immediate consequences. ### **Opportunity Cost** Consider the potential gains lost when resources are not allocated to their best possible use. ### **Unforced Error** Recognise that an unforced error is a mistake made due to one’s own actions or decisions, rather than external pressures, often stemming from lapses in focus or judgment. ### **Amara’s Law** Understand that people tend to overestimate the impact of technology in the short term but underestimate its long-term effects, affecting predictions and strategic planning. ### **Confirmation Bias** Recognise that people tend to favor information that confirms their preexisting beliefs and ignore or downplay information that contradicts them, influencing judgment and decision-making. ### **Inversion** Approach situations by considering the opposite of the natural starting point to uncover potential pitfalls and alternative solutions. ### **The Map is Not the Territory** Recognise that models and representations are simplifications of reality and can miss critical details, necessitating a careful examination of the actual situation. ### **Occam’s Razor** When presented with competing hypotheses, choose the one that makes the fewest assumptions for more straightforward and reliable decision-making. ### **Hanlon’s Razor** Avoid attributing actions to malice when they can be adequately explained by stupidity or incompetence, ensuring more accurate and fair decision-making. ### **Cognitive Dissonance** Recognise that people often change their attitudes to reduce the discomfort of holding contradictory beliefs or values, which can influence and bias decision-making processes. ### **Paradox Mindset** Embrace and leverage situations where two seemingly opposing forces or ideas coexist and are both valid rather than trying to resolve or eliminate the tension between them. ### **Principle of Least Action** Recognise that systems often take the path of least resistance or effort, but assess whether this path is optimal or if a more effortful route yields better results. ### **Entropy** Recognise that systems naturally tend towards disorder over time without intentional effort to maintain or create order, impacting long-term planning and decision-making. ### **Relativity** Understand that observations and assessments are influenced by the relative position or context from which they are made, affecting perspective and decision-making. ### **Self-Preservation** Recognise that all organisms strive to protect their own existence and well-being, which can drive behaviour and decision-making priorities. ### **Zero-Sum Games** Understand that in competitive contexts with fixed resources, one participant’s gain is exactly offset by another’s loss leading to win-lose decision-making. ### **Positive-Sum Games** Recognise that in cooperative contexts with variable resources, the collective payoff from collaboration can exceed the sum of individual inputs, fostering win-win decision-making. ### **Incentives** Recognise that all organisms are motivated by incentives that promote survival and reproduction, influencing their decisions and behaviors. ### **The Law of Diminishing Returns** Understand that after reaching an optimal level, further investment of resources into a particular area will yield progressively smaller gains, affecting resource allocation decisions. ### **The Principle of Least Privilege** Ensure that individuals, programs, or systems are granted the minimum levels of access necessary to perform their tasks, enhancing security and reducing risk. ### **Cognitive Load** Recognise that the amount of cognitive resources deployed affects information processing, learning, and task performance, influencing decision-making. ### **Alloying** Combine different elements to create a new substance with properties superior to those of its individual components, optimising decision-making by leveraging diverse strengths. ### **Activation energy** Recognise that certain thresholds of effort or conditions are required to initiate processes or changes. ### **Reciprocity** In complex systems, understand that actions and interactions are often reciprocated with similar intensity, influencing relationship management and strategic decisions. ### **Leverage** Recognise that minimal efforts can produce disproportionately large results when applied correctly through the use of tools or mechanisms, enhancing strategic effectiveness and efficiency. ### **The Streisand Effect** Understand that attempts to suppress or censor information can inadvertently lead to broader dissemination and greater public attention. ### **Hierarchical Organisation** In complex systems, recognise that actors assume roles with varying levels of power and responsibility to manage complexity and coordinate activities effectively, facilitating structured decision-making and operations. ### **Ecosystems** Understand that societies, industries, and organisations function as interconnected environments where diverse actors adapt varied survival strategies, influencing behaviour and outcomes. ### **Tendency to Stereotype** Recognise that the brain conserves mental energy by generalising and categorising information, rather than embracing nuance, which can impact judgment and decision-making. ### **Niches** Recognise that organisms survive by finding and adapting to niches where they can compete effectively, but face significant challenges and risk extinction when multiple species vie for the same limited resources. ### **Replication** Understand that just as DNA is transmitted in biological systems, cultures and organisations perpetuate themselves by passing down knowledge, traditions, and practices, ensuring continuity and stability while adapting to new conditions. ### **Tendency to Minimise Energy Output** Recognise that both biological organisms and humans instinctively conserve energy, minimising mental and physical exertion in a resource-limited world to enhance survival and efficiency, guiding behaviour across various contexts. ### **Equilibrium** Understand that systems, like organisms or organisations, self-regulate to maintain dynamic equilibrium, continuously adjusting to remain functional within acceptable limits despite environmental fluctuations. ### **Scale Sensitivity** Recognise that properties and behaviours of systems change significantly with scale, emphasising the necessity to quantify the level at which we observe, analyse, or predict complex systems to understand their dynamics accurately. ### **Irreducibility** Acknowledge that some complex systems cannot be fully understood by breaking them down into simpler components, as their essential qualities and emergent properties are lost, requiring a holistic perspective. ### **Margin of Safety** Incorporate a buffer in calculations and decisions to accommodate uncertainties and errors, ensuring reliability and reducing risk. ### **Critical Mass** Recognise that systems accumulate resources or inputs slowly until reaching a tipping point, after which they transition rapidly to explosive growth and become self-sustaining, similar to a nuclear chain reaction. ### **Asymmetric Warfare** Understand that smaller, resource-limited groups use unconventional tactics to create impacts, such as fear, that are disproportionate to their capabilities, effectively challenging stronger opponents by playing by different rules. ### **Algorithms** Recognise that algorithms provide clear, unambiguous steps to achieve specific outcomes, filtering out noise to focus on the signal, and ensuring consistent results through reliable processes. ### **Emergence** Recognise that combining different elements in specific ways creates something new and greater than the sum of its parts, encouraging exploration of new combinations and possibilities without needing to predict the outcomes. ### **Seizing the Middle** In decision-making, like in chess, aim to control the central position to maximise potential options and influence the most elements effectively. ### **Social Proof** Recognise that humans instinctively seek safety in numbers and follow social cues, fostering cooperation and culture but risking irrational behaviour if the group engages in it. ### **Narrative Instinct** Understand that humans have an instinct to construct and seek meaning in narratives, a trait underpinning the functioning of nearly all social organisations, from religious institutions to corporations and nation-states. ### **Trust** Recognise that the modern world fundamentally operates on trust, extending beyond familial bonds to include professionals, creating an efficient and high-reward system. ### **Entanglement** Recognise that particles can become interconnected so that the state of one instantly influences the state of another, regardless of distance, highlighting deep, non-local connections in systems. ### **Tragedy of the Commons** Understand that individuals, acting independently in their own self-interest, can overuse and deplete a shared resource, causing long-term harm to the entire group. ### **Seeing the Front** Leaders should personally obtain firsthand information before making decisions to avoid relying on potentially faulty or biased secondhand reports. ### **Two is One and One is None** Always have a backup or duplicate resources in case of failure. ### **Comparative Advantage** Individuals, firms, or countries benefit from trade by specialising in what they do best, maximising productivity and overall gains through efficient resource use and accounting for opportunity cost. ### **Relative Satisfaction** Recognise that human happiness is influenced more by comparisons to past experiences or peers than by absolute conditions, impacting decisions and perceptions of well-being. ### **Randomness** Acknowledge that randomness dominates much of the world, often leading to mistaken attributions of causality to uncontrollable events. ### **Pavlovian Association** Recognise that both animals and humans can develop emotional responses to stimuli based on their association with past experiences, rather than to the stimuli themselves. ### **Pride** Recognise that overconfidence in decision-making can blind you to risks and alternative perspectives, leading to significant errors. ### **Envy** Understand that making decisions based on comparisons with others can result in misguided goals and dissatisfaction, distracting from your true objectives. ### **Wrath** Recognise that decisions driven by anger are often impulsive and irrational, leading to long-term damage to relationships and outcomes. ### **Sloth** Understand that procrastination and avoidance result in missed opportunities and failure to achieve goals due to a lack of timely action. ### **Greed** Recognise that decisions driven by excessive desire for wealth or power can lead to unethical choices and undermine sustainable success. ### **Gluttony** Understand that overconsumption and indulgence in decisions can deplete resources, leading to inefficiency and imbalance. ### **Lust** Recognise that pursuing immediate pleasure or gratification can result in shortsighted decisions with negative long-term consequences. ### **Inception** Understand that people are often resistant to actions they are told to take, but more open and committed when the idea appears to come from themselves, enhancing motivation and cooperation by subtly guiding them to their own conclusions. ### **Perspective Framing** Always frame decisions from the perspective of those most affected, ensuring their needs and concerns are prioritised and addressed. ### **O’Sullivan’s Law** Recognise that organisations not explicitly maintaining a right-wing stance will gradually adopt left-wing ideologies over time. ### **Paradox of People and Progress** Recognise that both the world and individuals can simultaneously be awful, much better than before, and still have significant potential for improvement. ### **Parkinson’s Law** Recognise that work expands to fill the time available for its completion, highlighting the importance of setting deadlines to ensure productivity. ### **Pareto Principle (80/20 rule)** Recognise that roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes, a principle that can be applied to optimise productivity and resource allocation. ### **Anchoring** Recognise that the way initial information is presented can limit an audience’s range of thought or reference, affecting subsequent decisions and judgments. ### **Asymmetric Dominance Effect** Understand that the choice probability of a baseline alternative increases when an inferior option, or decoy, is added to the choice set, influencing decision-making. ### **Third Way Thinking** When presented with two options, seek a third way or alternative path to uncover innovative solutions and avoid the limitations of binary choices. ### **Locus of control** Recognise that individuals perceive their control over events as either internal (believing they can influence outcomes) or external (believing external forces dictate outcomes), which significantly impacts their decision-making, motivation, and resilience. ### **Chesterton’s Fence** Before removing a longstanding practice or regulation, understand the reasoning behind its existence to ensure any changes are made with a full comprehension of the context. ### **Feedback Loops** Understand that complex systems experience feedback loops, where changes in one part affect others and can either maintain balance or create runaway effects, depending on the nature of the interactions. ### **Dynamic Stability** Recognise that true stability in complex systems is achieved through continuous adaptation and change, rather than remaining static. ### **Endowment Effect** Understand that people tend to ascribe more value to things simply because they own them, impacting their decision-making and perceived worth of possessions. ### **Loss Aversion** Understand that people tend to prefer avoiding losses over acquiring equivalent gains, feeling the pain of loss more acutely than the pleasure of a similar gain