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    Mental Models: 16 Versatile Thinking Tools for Complex Situations: Better Decisions, Clearer Thinking, and Greater Self-Awareness
    Mental Models: 16 Versatile Thinking Tools for Complex Situations: Better Decisions, Clearer Thinking, and Greater Self-Awareness
    Mental Models: 16 Versatile Thinking Tools for Complex Situations: Better Decisions, Clearer Thinking, and Greater Self-Awareness
    Ebook135 pages2 hours

    Mental Models: 16 Versatile Thinking Tools for Complex Situations: Better Decisions, Clearer Thinking, and Greater Self-Awareness

    By Peter Hollins

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    About this ebook

    16 simple yet versatile thinking models to solve problems, make decisions, and engineer insight.



    Mental models are like giving a treasure map to someone lost in the woods. They provide instant understanding, context, and most importantly, a path to the end destination. Now imagine having such a map for all problems and decisions in your life.


    Make complex decisions with speed and confidence; stop being fooled by false alarms.



    Mental Models: 16 Versatile Thinking Tools sheds light on true intelligence: it’s not about knowledge and knowing the capitals of all the countries in the world. It’s about how you think, and each mental model is a specific framework on how to think smart and with insight. You can approach the world by trying to analyze each piece of information separately, or you can learn mental models that do the work for you.


    Emulate the world's top thinkers (dead and alive).



    Peter Hollins has studied psychology and peak human performance for over a dozen years and is a bestselling author. He has worked with a multitude of individuals to unlock their potential and path towards success. His writing draws on his academic, coaching, and research experience.


    Stop ramming your head into the wall and take on an entirely new perspective.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPublishdrive
    Release dateSep 29, 2019
    ISBN9781694935014
    Mental Models: 16 Versatile Thinking Tools for Complex Situations: Better Decisions, Clearer Thinking, and Greater Self-Awareness
    Author

    Peter Hollins

    Pete Hollins is a bestselling author and human psychology and behavior researcher. He is a dedicated student of the human condition. He possesses a BS and MA in psychology, and has worked with dozens of people from all walks of life. After working in private practice for years, he has turned his sights to writing and applying his years of education to help people improve their lives from the inside out. He enjoys hiking with his family, drinking craft beers, and attempting to paint. He is based in Seattle, Washington. To learn more about Hollins and his work, visit PeteHollins.com.

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    Reviews for Mental Models

    4.5/5

    27 ratings4 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Brilliantly written. Ruthlessly practical and extremely useful and relevant for daily living. Grab a copy now!!!
    • 4/5
      Nicely written with layman's clear english and terminology. Presents just enough models so as the reader doesn't get overwhelmed. Some of the models I was already aware of, others were new to me and I look forward to trying them out. My favourite model, the OODA loop, also got a good mention.
    • 5/5
      Great book. Invaluable tips that will aid in your future development. Thank you!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      An enjoyable read. For me, the real meat of the book was in its second half. I would actually recommend this book to people I know if they are interested in psychology and mental strengthening. I may go buy a physical copy just to annotate and have on my shelf at home. It is a book that is great to come back to and review as it will be a good tool to use when I need to orient myself before large decisions or when life gets overwhelming.

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    Mental Models - Peter Hollins

    Think.

    Table of Contents

    Introduction

    Chapter 1. PROBLEM-SOLVING

    #1: The Bow and the Arrow

    #2. The Unseen System

    #3. Invert, always invert

    #4. Lucking into Solutions

    Chapter 2. DECISION-MAKING

    #5. Wear a Different Hat

    #6. It’s a WRAP

    #7. Process Versus Outcome

    #8. OODA Looping

    #9. Measuring Opportunity Cost

    Chapter 3. CLARITY OF THOUGHT

    #10. Real Risks

    #11. Make Sure You’re Normal

    #12. Visualize Arguments

    Chapter 4. THE REALITY FILTER

    #13. Kill Your Ego

    #14. Distinguish the Map from the Territory

    #15. Metacognition

    #16. Perspective Isn’t Reality

    Summary Guide

    Introduction

    What is a mental model? Is it a literal model for how everything in the world works? This dictates that you can just plug in variables from your life, and a set of instructions would be spit out. This would be similar to what’s known as the Grand Unified Theory of Physics, otherwise known as the theory to life, the universe, and everything. And just like the Grand Unified Theory of Physics (for now, anyway), a model of the world doesn’t exist. It would be nice to uncover an equation or map that would allow us to navigate life more effectively and with better decisions each time, but no model exists that can capture all of life’s complexities.

    I know, it’s rather disappointing.

    This leads to a rather simplistic realization: if life cannot be broken down so easily, we need multiple mental models, ideally ones that can apply to multiple situations and are versatile. A mental model is a blueprint or set of guidelines that explain a situation and tell you how you should act. The more mental models we gain, the better suited we are for making optimal decisions as a result of knowing just what variables to pay attention to.

    An easy way to illustrate the importance of mental models is through rugby. A person that has never encountered the sport of rugby before would be lost, and it would simply seem like a jumble of huge bodies throwing themselves at each other. However, what if this person understood the rules of soccer, as well as the rules of American football? Those sets of rules are actual mental models in disguise—guidelines for how certain situations work and how to progress within that particular context—and thus rugby could quickly be understood as a combination of soccer and American football.

    It’s not exact, but it’s an approximate explanation to provide a quick understanding of the context and expectations, and that’s what we are looking for when we are learning mental models. Life is full of unfamiliar terrain, and the more kinds of tools and maps we have in our rucksack, the better off we will be for navigating and orienting ourselves in whatever direction we want. In rugby, we want to score the ball, not commit penalties, and beat the other team.

    In other areas of life, we might want to know the optimal ways to earn more money, save time, or even dress better. We need different guidelines to fuel those types of decisions. And so we need more mental models.

    Biologist and author Robert Sapolsky sums up this situation in a rather succinct manner. He asks, Why did the chicken cross the road? It turns out that however you answer is a reflection of who you are, your experiences, and what you choose to focus on.

    If you ask me, I might say that the chicken crossed the road because he was bored and saw something worthy of pecking at on the other side of the road.

    But if you asked a psychotherapist, they might say that the chicken crossed the road to realize an unfulfilled desire from his time as a chick. And if you were to ask an evolutionary biologist, they could say that the chicken crossed the road because chickens have a singular drive for mating, food, and safety from danger. If you asked a minister, they might say that the chicken felt a calling to the other side of the road from something beyond his understanding. And if you were to ask a fox, he might reply that it’s because the chicken saw him coming.

    None of these interpretations are technically inaccurate, but they are all incomplete. And that’s what happens when we see life through only a limited set of mental models. We are unable to see the bigger picture and what is more likely to be a balanced and nuanced view of reality. We cannot apply the rules of rugby to financial projections; you might be able to find some parallels, but there’s no reason to fit a round peg into a square hole.

    Thus, the secret to great thinking is to learn and employ a variety of mental models. Charlie Munger, famed for his explorations on mental models and optimizing an approach to life, had this to say on the topic of multiple mental models:

    What is elementary, worldly wisdom? Well, the first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ’em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form. You’ve got to have models in your head. And you’ve got to array your experience—both vicarious and direct—on this latticework of models.

    You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head.

    What are the models? Well, the first rule is that you’ve got to have multiple models—because if you just have one or two that you’re using, the nature of human psychology is such that you’ll torture reality so that it fits your models, or at least, you’ll think it does. You become the equivalent of a chiropractor who, of course, is the great boob in medicine.

    It’s like the old saying, To the man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. And of course, that’s the way the chiropractor goes about practicing medicine. But that’s a perfectly disastrous way to think and a perfectly disastrous way to operate in the world.

    So you’ve got to have multiple models. And the models have to come from multiple disciplines—because all the wisdom of the world is not to be found in one little academic department. That’s why poetry professors, by and large, are so unwise in a worldly sense. They don’t have enough models in their heads. So you’ve got to have models across a fair array of disciplines.

    You may say, My God, this is already getting way too tough. But, fortunately, it isn’t that tough—because eighty or ninety important models will carry about ninety percent of the freight in making you a worldly wise person. And of those, only a mere handful really carry very heavy freight.

    Let’s avoid being the man or woman with only a hammer at their disposal.

    Chapter 1. PROBLEM-SOLVING

    The best place to start with mental models is with those that will be most immediately applicable. In truth, each chapter is immediately applicable, but mental models to solve the problems in your life are probably more urgent than others.

    Again, while they might not apply to every exact problem in your life, they are meant to be approximations. They are the compass where previously you might have had only a stick in the ground to tell the direction based on the sunlight.

    Now, to the person sailing in a boat with no compass or sense of astronomy, the compass is a pretty darn useful tool. The compass even helps if there is no map or anything else on the boat for directions. They will give you a reference point and direction to go, at the very least.

    #1: The Bow and the Arrow

    Use this mental model to detach from the outcomes of your problems.

    The first mental model on problem-solving (and of the book) isn’t actually about the problems that we are facing in our lives. Rather, it’s about positioning yourself internally for success even when things aren’t going your way. Not all problems can be solved, and we must be prepared to deal with that fallout.

    This mental model allows you to remain calm and cool under the direst circumstances—without remaining collected, you don’t stand a chance of thinking your way out of any problem. Even though we may desperately want to move forward, sometimes we must come to the realization that we won’t always get the outcomes we desire.

    They might simply be out of our control, no matter how airtight and insightful our thinking or actions are. We must face the reality that things will usually play out differently from our expectations. And we must be able to handle this in stride so we can continue to solve the next problem.

    So what is the bow and the arrow? It’s an analogy drawn from the philosophy of Stoicism, which is rooted in Ancient Greece. It clearly lays out what we control in this life and what we do not. When we clearly understand the difference, we can let go of most of our anxieties.

    Take a professional archer who has trained for years to reach the pinnacle of his sport. Perhaps he has won an unprecedented six gold medals in the Olympics across all types of archery events. If Legolas, the archer Elf from Lord of the Rings, was a real person, he would go to this archer for

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