The Great Mental Models
General Thinking Concepts
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The Great Mental Models
Buy Now for £18.99
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Narrated by:
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Shane Parrish
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By:
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Shane Parrish
About this listen
The old saying goes, "To the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail". But anyone who has done any kind of project knows a hammer often isn't enough.
The more tools you have at your disposal, the more likely you'll use the right tool for the job - and get it done right.
The same is true when it comes to your thinking. The quality of your outcomes depends on the mental models in your head. And most people are going through life with little more than a hammer.
Until now.
The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts is the first book in The Great Mental Models series designed to upgrade your thinking with the best, most useful and powerful tools so you always have the right one on hand.
This volume details nine of the most versatile all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making, your productivity, and how clearly you see the world. You will discover what forces govern the universe and how to focus your efforts so you can harness them to your advantage, rather than fight with them or, worse yet, ignore them.
©2019 Shane Parrish (P)2019 Audible Originals, LLC.Listeners also enjoyed...
As others have mentioned, the narration could be better. But it's not terrible - I had no problem following the argument. And it is always nice to hearing words in the voice of the author.
Inspiring!
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Great synthesis of some very useful mental models
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Here are the key concepts: avoid blindspots in your thinking by applying the following rules:
1) keep in mind that the model is not the reality; the map is not the territory, because the description of a thing is not the thing itself;
2) strengthen and expand your circle of confidence; in order to make the best decisions, gain indepth knowledge in the area of your pursuit; it usually takes years of practice and expertise to be confident without a delusion; and it need to be regularly updated;
3) in order to separate reliable knowledge from assumptions, repeatedly ask yourself "Why?"; question your assumptions; consider the alternatives; think in terms of first principles, ie. reduce the problem to the first principles - the basic rules that you understand;
4) run thought experiments: "What if...?", "Suppose..."; they are devices of the imagination used to investigate the nature of things;
5) use second order thinking: think further ahead (beyond the immediate consequences of the given action) and think holistically; make an effort to consider the second and third order effects, so you can make better decisions and even prevent disasters;
6) use probabilistic thinking: think in probabilities, ask yourself, what is more likely to happen, and accept that the events with low odds of happening (like 10%) do occur, esp. when you least expect them; do not conflate the 90% odds with the certainty of occurrence and the 10% odds with the certainty of non-occurrence;
7) inversion - approach a situation from the opposite end than the natural starting point; flip the problem around and think backwards;
8) Occam's Razor - simpler explanations are more likely to be true than the complex ones;
9) Hanlon's Razor - we should not attribute to malice that which is more easily explained by stupidity, ignorance or laziness.
My favorite quotes:
- "If you're in a leadership position, you need to observe and chronicle the results of your decisions and evaluate them based on what you were trying to achieve. You need to be honest about your failures in order to reflect and learn from them."
- "Keeping a journal of your own performance is the easiest and most private way to get self-feedback."
- "You can't improve, if you don't know what you're doing wrong."
Very informative
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Short, Dense and very lucid.
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This will upgrade your thinking several notches!
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