The Great Mental Models

Multidisciplinary thinking is the holy grail of decision-making.

An engineer often thinks in terms of systems by default. A psychologist will think in terms of incentives. A business person might think in terms of opportunity cost and risk-reward.

Each of these people sees part of the situation, the part that makes sense to them. None of them, however, see the entire situation unless they are thinking in a multidisciplinary way.

The quality of our thinking is largely influenced by the mental models in our heads.

A mental model is a representation of how something works. We use models to retain knowledge and simplify how we understand the world.

Being able to accurately describe the full scope of a situation is the first step to understanding it. The more lenses used on a given problem, the more reality reveals itself. The more of reality we see, the more we understand. The more we understand, the more we know what to do.

In life and business, the person with the fewest blind spots wins. Removing blind spots means thinking through the problem using different lenses or models. When we do this the blind spots slowly go away and we gain an understanding of the problem. And understanding is everything.

This series is about chunks of knowledge from different disciplines that can be simplified and applied to better understand the world.

Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Systems, Mathematics…

(from the book)

When I picked the first volume of The Great Mental Models, I couldn’t stop till I finished the third volume. Took me around 2 months to read them all.

It is timeless wisdom. It is delightful to read. It will change how you make sense of the world.

My top 3 books ever.

Shane Parrish & Rhiannon Beaubien & Rosie Leizrowice Absolutaly brilliant work.

Do you also try to improve your decision-making? How do you go about it? Let me know!

Happy reading! 📙