What do you think?
Rate this book
Super Thinking: Upgrade Your Reasoning and Make Better Decisions with Mental Models
Turn yourself into a superthinker and make the right decisions every time.The world's greatest problem-solvers, forecasters and decision-makers all rely on a set of shortcuts that help them separate good ideas from bad. They're called mental models, and in this smartly illustrated anthology, you'll learn hundreds.- Use the 5 Whys model to better understand people's motivations- Prioritize an overwhelming to-do lists with the Eisenhower Decision Matrix- Set up forcing functions to help grease the wheels for changes you want to occurDistilled into a single, digestible, indispensable book, Super Thinking will enable you to make better, more informed decisions in every part of your life.'The most practical book on mental models I've found to date . . . and I've read a lot of them' Reader Review 'You should definitely read this book . . . The concepts inside will expand your world view and give you enough mental tools to become a black belt decision-maker' Reader Review
333 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 18, 2019
2042 people are currently reading
14022 people want to read
About the author
Gabriel Weinberg
12 books387 followersCo-author, Super Thinking. Co-author, Traction. Author, The Great Race. CEO & Founder, DuckDuckGo
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 292 reviews
September 16, 2023
I love mental models but this book can't even install 1 of them to the readers mind. It is a list of 100s of mental models explained in a few sentences.
This should not have been a book but a list of mental models instead, maybe a webpage or something. I'm not sure what was Gabriel thinking turning this into a book but each mental model deserves its own course, practices, posts & examples. Each mental model can be turned in to small books. But cramming 100s of them into a single book like this is just foolish.
Overall I can only recommend this book if you want to go over 100s of mental models in a fast way. But when someone creates a decent mental model list in to a searchable form this book will be history.
Here is my list enjoy: https://mmpractices.com
For more resources related to mental models: https://discord.gg/mdTQnNH
This should not have been a book but a list of mental models instead, maybe a webpage or something. I'm not sure what was Gabriel thinking turning this into a book but each mental model deserves its own course, practices, posts & examples. Each mental model can be turned in to small books. But cramming 100s of them into a single book like this is just foolish.
Overall I can only recommend this book if you want to go over 100s of mental models in a fast way. But when someone creates a decent mental model list in to a searchable form this book will be history.
Here is my list enjoy: https://mmpractices.com
For more resources related to mental models: https://discord.gg/mdTQnNH
November 17, 2019
Before starting it, I had misgivings about whether Lauren McCann and Gabriel Weinberg’s Super Thinking would be worthwhile for me to read. This was mainly because I have already studied a lot of mental models from various fields of research, and also because it seemed a bit too self-helpy for my taste. But my best friend bought me a copy, so I took it up in order to discuss with him.
To its credit, Super Thinking is probably the most comprehensive and up-to-date collection of mental models––”recurring concepts that help us explain, predict, or approach…seemingly disparate subjects” available to modern readers (vii). McCann and Weinberg’s goal is to highlight a variety of “broadly useful” (or “super”) models that serve as mental tools for successfully understanding and navigating the many challenges of life (viii). They claim that the proper application of these models will result in “the ability to think better about the world––which you can use to your advantage to make better decisions, both personally and professionally (viii, emphasis theirs).
The book is clever and well-written, with lots of images, funny comics and unintimidating graphs that provide multiple pathways to content comprehension. Its strongest feature is the sheer number of mental models on offer, and how McCann and Weinberg weave them together in a series of thematic chapters. Although many of the models share overlapping concepts and sometimes feel a bit redundant, the conceptual synthesis on display here is impressive.
I enjoyed the first half of this book much more than the second half. This is because Super Thinking starts out by focusing on how mental models can improve our personal decision-making, whereas it ends with an examination of how they can improve our performance in professional life. I especially enjoyed the first four chapters, which explain how to be “less wrong” in general, how to avoid and effectively deal with unintended consequences, how to spend your time wisely, and how understanding the laws of nature can help us become more realistic, resilient and adaptable.
There were several mental models that were new to me or that I enjoyed revisiting since I’m bad at following them. These include:
––Overfitting (the opposite of Ockham’s razor): “When you use an overly complicated explanation when a simpler one will do” (10).
––Anchoring: “Your tendency to rely too heavily on first impressions when making decisions” (14).
––Optimistic Probability Bias: When you “want something to be true so badly that you fool yourself into thinking it is likely to be true” (33).
––Luck Surface Area: “Your personal luck surface area will increase as you interact with more people in more diverse situations…You need to relax your rules for how you engage with the world” (122).
My enjoyment of Super Thinking took a hit as the book became more and more preoccupied with professional achievement. The latter chapters, which have titles like “Unlocking People’s Potential” and “Flexing Your Market Power,” reveal an unacknowledged mental model that dominates McCann and Weinberg’s approach: Modern America’s hyper-capitalized way of defining “success” through market mechanisms, material gain and labor competition. For example:
"When you are undifferentiated––with no sustainable competitive advantage and therefore no market power––you are completely subject to the supply-and-demand forces in the market, and the price they deliver to you. That speaks to picking an industry in high demand for the long term…It also speaks to the need to differentiate yourself from your peers by developing a unique set of skills that the market values. Then you have the opportunity to demand higher compensation by demonstrating the distinctive value you bring to your employers or clients." (284)
To be clear: I don’t think McCann and Weinberg are wrong about the importance and function of differentiation in the modern labor market. Further, I think their business-related discussions throughout the book are both shrewd and well-intentioned.
The problem is that I have an intellectual aversion to this way of writing and thinking about human beings and the act of living. If mental models really are as powerful and profound as McCann and Weinberg claim (which I believe they are), shouldn’t they serve a higher purpose than merely allowing us to better conform to the strictures of our unfair and arguably broken economic system? Shouldn’t they teach us how to build better families and friendships, better communities and better civic identities? Shouldn’t they unlock our potential to become more compassionate and less judgmental of others, as well as appropriately critical and mobilized in the face of injustice?
Even in the earlier chapters, McCann and Weinberg demonstrate relatively little concern with these humanist goals. Instead, they content themselves with using the best ideas humans have created after millennia of trial and error and centuries of scientific inquiry to help business executives leverage “10x teams” and “activate force fields” that will generate a “sustainable competitive advantage” (248, 302). This disparity between gravity of subject matter and frivolousness of application is alarming, and renders Super Thinking a much less valuable text than it could have been.
This review was originally published on my blog, words&dirt.
To its credit, Super Thinking is probably the most comprehensive and up-to-date collection of mental models––”recurring concepts that help us explain, predict, or approach…seemingly disparate subjects” available to modern readers (vii). McCann and Weinberg’s goal is to highlight a variety of “broadly useful” (or “super”) models that serve as mental tools for successfully understanding and navigating the many challenges of life (viii). They claim that the proper application of these models will result in “the ability to think better about the world––which you can use to your advantage to make better decisions, both personally and professionally (viii, emphasis theirs).
The book is clever and well-written, with lots of images, funny comics and unintimidating graphs that provide multiple pathways to content comprehension. Its strongest feature is the sheer number of mental models on offer, and how McCann and Weinberg weave them together in a series of thematic chapters. Although many of the models share overlapping concepts and sometimes feel a bit redundant, the conceptual synthesis on display here is impressive.
I enjoyed the first half of this book much more than the second half. This is because Super Thinking starts out by focusing on how mental models can improve our personal decision-making, whereas it ends with an examination of how they can improve our performance in professional life. I especially enjoyed the first four chapters, which explain how to be “less wrong” in general, how to avoid and effectively deal with unintended consequences, how to spend your time wisely, and how understanding the laws of nature can help us become more realistic, resilient and adaptable.
There were several mental models that were new to me or that I enjoyed revisiting since I’m bad at following them. These include:
––Overfitting (the opposite of Ockham’s razor): “When you use an overly complicated explanation when a simpler one will do” (10).
––Anchoring: “Your tendency to rely too heavily on first impressions when making decisions” (14).
––Optimistic Probability Bias: When you “want something to be true so badly that you fool yourself into thinking it is likely to be true” (33).
––Luck Surface Area: “Your personal luck surface area will increase as you interact with more people in more diverse situations…You need to relax your rules for how you engage with the world” (122).
My enjoyment of Super Thinking took a hit as the book became more and more preoccupied with professional achievement. The latter chapters, which have titles like “Unlocking People’s Potential” and “Flexing Your Market Power,” reveal an unacknowledged mental model that dominates McCann and Weinberg’s approach: Modern America’s hyper-capitalized way of defining “success” through market mechanisms, material gain and labor competition. For example:
"When you are undifferentiated––with no sustainable competitive advantage and therefore no market power––you are completely subject to the supply-and-demand forces in the market, and the price they deliver to you. That speaks to picking an industry in high demand for the long term…It also speaks to the need to differentiate yourself from your peers by developing a unique set of skills that the market values. Then you have the opportunity to demand higher compensation by demonstrating the distinctive value you bring to your employers or clients." (284)
To be clear: I don’t think McCann and Weinberg are wrong about the importance and function of differentiation in the modern labor market. Further, I think their business-related discussions throughout the book are both shrewd and well-intentioned.
The problem is that I have an intellectual aversion to this way of writing and thinking about human beings and the act of living. If mental models really are as powerful and profound as McCann and Weinberg claim (which I believe they are), shouldn’t they serve a higher purpose than merely allowing us to better conform to the strictures of our unfair and arguably broken economic system? Shouldn’t they teach us how to build better families and friendships, better communities and better civic identities? Shouldn’t they unlock our potential to become more compassionate and less judgmental of others, as well as appropriately critical and mobilized in the face of injustice?
Even in the earlier chapters, McCann and Weinberg demonstrate relatively little concern with these humanist goals. Instead, they content themselves with using the best ideas humans have created after millennia of trial and error and centuries of scientific inquiry to help business executives leverage “10x teams” and “activate force fields” that will generate a “sustainable competitive advantage” (248, 302). This disparity between gravity of subject matter and frivolousness of application is alarming, and renders Super Thinking a much less valuable text than it could have been.
This review was originally published on my blog, words&dirt.
June 24, 2019
When I saw a tweet from Annie Duke saying the world would improve immediately if everyone read this book, I had to check it out. https://twitter.com/annieduke/status/... I wasn’t disappointed. This book is simple, easy to follow and gives mental models that greatly help your decision making. It has a heavy Charlie Munger influence and feel throughout the book which was an added bonus. The authors quote him often and use him and Warren Buffett in several examples. I also appreciated that it was written by the DuckDuckGo CEO as he used some good technology references that I enjoyed. I could write a lot about the different models covered, but I’ll spare an exhaustive list, just know you will have the decision making tools billionaires like Charlie Munger use to simplify complex decisions across a wide array of industries. You will see connections you’d normally miss and have insights that put you in an advantageous position when it comes to judgment and decision making. It’s a great read worth checking out!
July 9, 2019
As I read this book, I would get up and go see myself in front of a mirror and say "You know nothing John Snow" lol. This is one of those books that will change your life, uproot it, twist it, it will literally chew you and spit out. It combines the traditional and machine wisdom/learnings that is well written with examples to understand.
You will think about your friends, family, co-workers, all the events in the past, all the living and non-living. You would remember how some of these mental models were applied on you or how you unknowingly fell pray to them.
This book has something for everyone. Whether you are starting a company, working a normal 9-5 job, parenting, play competitive sports etc., the book offers timeless mental models that will not just make you experience life through a whole new dimension but it will also help you get better at decision making, reading people, dealing with conflict, motivating yourself and others.
You will think about your friends, family, co-workers, all the events in the past, all the living and non-living. You would remember how some of these mental models were applied on you or how you unknowingly fell pray to them.
This book has something for everyone. Whether you are starting a company, working a normal 9-5 job, parenting, play competitive sports etc., the book offers timeless mental models that will not just make you experience life through a whole new dimension but it will also help you get better at decision making, reading people, dealing with conflict, motivating yourself and others.
July 22, 2019
Mental Models applied in real life context.
The book did an excellent job by connecting mental models in real life context using a storytelling style rather an academic listing of the models.
Highly recommend.
The book did an excellent job by connecting mental models in real life context using a storytelling style rather an academic listing of the models.
Highly recommend.
Read
September 15, 2019No star rating - I think it would rely too much on individual context.
ST is a book about everything and nothing.
"Mental models" are framed (named) concepts than encapsulated knowledge and observation to simplify reasoning and problem solving. But the problem is ... they are everywhere, it's hard to classify them, they have very different origins and they are products of very different disciplines or just streams of thought.
That's why this book basically feels like an aggregation of other books summaries. Books of very different origin & audience. Usually - very good books. And usually - very different summary (I think). Why "I think"? Because TBH I haven't found (almost) anything new here - it means I'm revisiting knowledge I've collected "closer to the root". Maybe that's why everything was clear and straightforward, but how could I say whether it's the same for a person who doesn't read that much?
For me, the major question is - does it make sense to create books like that? Books that collect the essential outcomes, the final products of long & deep considerations. To be honest - I'm not sure, but rather not. E.g. the value of Thinking Fast and Slow is much larger than just the concept of two personalities and can't be summarized on few pages.
But, on the other hand, maybe a book like ST will be a beginning of a journey for several people who get inspired reading about all these models. Maybe.
ST is a book about everything and nothing.
"Mental models" are framed (named) concepts than encapsulated knowledge and observation to simplify reasoning and problem solving. But the problem is ... they are everywhere, it's hard to classify them, they have very different origins and they are products of very different disciplines or just streams of thought.
That's why this book basically feels like an aggregation of other books summaries. Books of very different origin & audience. Usually - very good books. And usually - very different summary (I think). Why "I think"? Because TBH I haven't found (almost) anything new here - it means I'm revisiting knowledge I've collected "closer to the root". Maybe that's why everything was clear and straightforward, but how could I say whether it's the same for a person who doesn't read that much?
For me, the major question is - does it make sense to create books like that? Books that collect the essential outcomes, the final products of long & deep considerations. To be honest - I'm not sure, but rather not. E.g. the value of Thinking Fast and Slow is much larger than just the concept of two personalities and can't be summarized on few pages.
But, on the other hand, maybe a book like ST will be a beginning of a journey for several people who get inspired reading about all these models. Maybe.
April 26, 2020
A good collection of mental models extracted from various disciplines, which if applied properly, can help broaden one’s perspective. Very similar to Charlie Munger’s emphasis on breadth of knowledge and when magic happens when a confluence of factors across a broad spectrum manifest themselves in a lollapalooza effect.
A few mental models that stood out:
1. Argue from first principles - go back to basics and figure out what are we really trying to solve
2. Be aware that your views are being framed by people around you e.g. first impressions, media
3. To avoid personal biases or framed perspective, walk a mile in their shoes, try to see from their point of view as impartially as possible using a third person’s view. How are we being perceived by the observer?
4. Learned selflessness - people stop trying when they believe their efforts just don’t cut it anymore or it’s just not worth it anymore. Results in active disengagement
5. Thinking gray - the world is not black and white. Truly effective leaders are able to see shades of gray inherent in a situation and make wise decisions on how to proceed
6. Tragedy of the commons / free riders - stems back to human nature to be selfish and greedy. Especially if the specific action does not come with any negative consequences (financial, social, civic etc). Rules and regulations need to be set to draw the line & they need to be enforced or else another negative norm is set which will make it harder to unwind. Good example on the preschool imposition of preschool late pick up fines that made it okay to ‘pay’ for the teachers’ extra time leading to more late pick ups. When the fine was removed, the numbers didn’t recover because a new norm has been set
7. Asymmetric information e.g. Real Estate agent vs buyer
8. Goodhart’s law - when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure
9. Technical debt - in programming, most coders tend to prioritise short term code fixes over long term, well designed ones. Over time the debts accumulate to make the code clunky and someone in the future will have to fix the mess. Short termism
10. Path dependence. Sometimes the outcome was decided by a path taken earlier. Trick is to recognize points of no return
11. Paradox of choice - over abundance of choice lead to fear of making suboptimal choices & unhappiness. Improve design by limiting choice where possible
12. The top idea in your mind - most people have one or two and their thoughts will drift toward when they’re allowed to. Normally these are things that excite them because they are impactful. However, not many organisations allow time for people to have their minds drift freely into these top ideas and put them into actions. These are the ideas that can move the needle and generate passion amongst people e.g. Google
13. Deep work - allow people to spend time on tackling the really tough things undisturbed. Most people will want to solve problems they know how to solve. These are the B+ problems at best. In the long run, the company will be a B+ company. The A+ problems are hard by definition and require deep unobstructed work and to be a truly top organisation, deep work on top of best people are needed to solve the really tough problems
14. What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important - Dwight Eisenhower
15. Parkinson’s law - work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion
15. Reframe the problem to help look at it from different angles. The shortcuts can normally be found e.g. hackers reframe the problem from ‘How can we best guess your password’ to ‘how can we best get your password’
16. It’s not the most intellectual or strongest of species that survives but the one that is best to adapt to the changing environment
17. Don’t fight with nature - inertia requires significant amount of activation energy. Make sure you have that first
18. Shirky principle - institutions will try to preserve the problem which they are the solution. Reminds me of Ronald Reagan’s autobiography where he shared his encounter with unemployment offices discouraging people to take up jobs but to receive their handouts instead; bureaucracy’s number one objective is to preserve the bureaucracy
19. Flywheel - a rotating disk that is used to store energy to create momentum
20. Homeostasis - organism regulates itself around a certain condition similar to organisations regulating itself around a certain metrics or values
21. Technology adoption cycle - innovators (2.5%), early adopters (13.5%), early majority (34%), late majority (34%), laggards (16%)
22. Metcalfe’s law - non linear growth in network value when nodes are connected to one another
23. Accept that we are surrounded by chaotic system and adaptability is the key success factor. Don’t be lulled into a sense of stability and put effort into creating a perfect system in the stable system that does not exist in the first places. It’s okay to plan ahead, just be aware that all it takes is a flap of the butterfly’s wings to undo the plans
24. Luck surface area - lucky people are not lucky. They tend to spread themselves that covers a wide surface area such that when an opportunity arises, they are there
25. For any issues, you can find people on both sides with ‘numbers’ to back up their position
26. Survivorship bias - surveys are filled by people who care enough to response. E.g. surviving WW2 planes were analysed and reinforced based on where they were hit the most but realised that these were the planes that survived and the places most hit are the ones that need the least reinforcements because Pilots can survive even when those areas are hit hard
27. Bayesian - starting from a prior (intuition) and converge toward the truth. Faster but prone to local optimum. Frequentist - starting from scratch based on cold hard numbers. More accurate only if there big enough and diversified sample size
28. Hysteresis - system’s current state can depend on its history e.g. T cells that help power our immune system, upon activation, would require lower threshold to reactivate
29. Knowns and unknowns (2x2 matrix). Objective is to move as many things it known knowns as possible. Known unknowns (get help from others who know), unknown knowns (get some experience), unknown unknowns (thought experiments, scenario analysis to minimise blind spots)
30. Beware of groupthink. Typically associated to person with the highest demonstration of confidence able to get their bandwagons going with followers jumping on quickly creating a convergent thinking environment
31. Social norms is more powerful than market norms. E.g. one is less likely to want to be paid by neighbours to babysit their kid vs doing them a favour
32. Distributive justice vs procedural justice - equity vs equality
33. Strawman - opponent misrepresent the issue by associating your argument to something else that’s easy to attack and incite emotions
34. Loss leader strategy - one product is priced low to increase the demand for complementary products
35. Sometimes the only winning move is not to play. Not all conflicts need to be tackled head on or resolved. Need to be selective, else it is going to severely drain your resources
36. Generals always fight the last war. Successful people / leaders are where they are because of their past victories and modus operandi which helped them leapfrog the then status quo. Until when they become the status quo
37. Organisations hardly ever have perfect resources nor can they always afford to wait until they have better ones before moving forward. Great people are unlikely to be concentrated in a single organisation. Successful organisations are successful because right people are led in the right way
38. 10x teams or 10x employees. Right confluence of factors to lead to superior performance. However, the output may not be replicated when they switch roles or projects
39. Creating a 10x team requires a leader to understand the difference and nuances. It goes way beyond just putting a body on the job but having the right skills, attitude, personalities within the team. More often than not large organisations have the tendency to trust their processes too much that people feel like they’re just a cog in the machine and hence feel disengaged, instead of creating a 10x team, a 0.1x team was created
40. Three types of people required in different phases of organisation / project life cycles - commando (speed, no rules, create a beachhead), army (large numbers to build systems and infrastructures to extend advantage), police (enforce rules, build stability for growth). Having the wrong group at the wrong time can hurt you a lot more than helps
41. The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing. Successful businesses were started by hedgehogs having a singular focus to be good at one core idea. However for the successful company to survive in the long term, they need foxes. Hedgehogs tend to have a focused world view whereas foxes tend to be more cautious and pragmatic
42. When giving feedbacks with radical candour - Being vague and abstract is much easier because it avoids the hard work of identifying specific examples and the psychological stress of debating the nuances around those specifics. If you care enough for the person, gotta put in the hard work
43. Dunning-Kruger effect - early part of the learning curve is exciting. But it is quickly followed by the reality on how much more do you have to learn before you become the expert and finally the satisfying feeling when the expertise is obtained. Key is to not give up after the initial euphoria. Applies to many things in life, people tend to be happier in their youth and old age
44. Self serving bias - you’re more likely to say that your mistakes could not have been predicted and more likely to apply hindsight bias to be critical of others
45. Being explicit about the cultural norms in a company is one of the most high leverage activities you can do as a leader
46. Manager’s schedule vs. maker’s schedule
47. The only way to generate outstanding returns is to be right and contrarian. Just being right is not enough but don’t be a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian - that’s more dangerous
48. Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare - Japanese proverb
49. OODA loop - observe, orient, decide, act. Air Force Pilots are trained to go through OODA loops quickly during dogfights where there’s no time for analysis
50. Pivoting is difficult because it cuts against organisational inertia, involves openly admitting failures and requires finding a better solution all at the same time
51. Only the paranoid survive
A few mental models that stood out:
1. Argue from first principles - go back to basics and figure out what are we really trying to solve
2. Be aware that your views are being framed by people around you e.g. first impressions, media
3. To avoid personal biases or framed perspective, walk a mile in their shoes, try to see from their point of view as impartially as possible using a third person’s view. How are we being perceived by the observer?
4. Learned selflessness - people stop trying when they believe their efforts just don’t cut it anymore or it’s just not worth it anymore. Results in active disengagement
5. Thinking gray - the world is not black and white. Truly effective leaders are able to see shades of gray inherent in a situation and make wise decisions on how to proceed
6. Tragedy of the commons / free riders - stems back to human nature to be selfish and greedy. Especially if the specific action does not come with any negative consequences (financial, social, civic etc). Rules and regulations need to be set to draw the line & they need to be enforced or else another negative norm is set which will make it harder to unwind. Good example on the preschool imposition of preschool late pick up fines that made it okay to ‘pay’ for the teachers’ extra time leading to more late pick ups. When the fine was removed, the numbers didn’t recover because a new norm has been set
7. Asymmetric information e.g. Real Estate agent vs buyer
8. Goodhart’s law - when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure
9. Technical debt - in programming, most coders tend to prioritise short term code fixes over long term, well designed ones. Over time the debts accumulate to make the code clunky and someone in the future will have to fix the mess. Short termism
10. Path dependence. Sometimes the outcome was decided by a path taken earlier. Trick is to recognize points of no return
11. Paradox of choice - over abundance of choice lead to fear of making suboptimal choices & unhappiness. Improve design by limiting choice where possible
12. The top idea in your mind - most people have one or two and their thoughts will drift toward when they’re allowed to. Normally these are things that excite them because they are impactful. However, not many organisations allow time for people to have their minds drift freely into these top ideas and put them into actions. These are the ideas that can move the needle and generate passion amongst people e.g. Google
13. Deep work - allow people to spend time on tackling the really tough things undisturbed. Most people will want to solve problems they know how to solve. These are the B+ problems at best. In the long run, the company will be a B+ company. The A+ problems are hard by definition and require deep unobstructed work and to be a truly top organisation, deep work on top of best people are needed to solve the really tough problems
14. What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important - Dwight Eisenhower
15. Parkinson’s law - work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion
15. Reframe the problem to help look at it from different angles. The shortcuts can normally be found e.g. hackers reframe the problem from ‘How can we best guess your password’ to ‘how can we best get your password’
16. It’s not the most intellectual or strongest of species that survives but the one that is best to adapt to the changing environment
17. Don’t fight with nature - inertia requires significant amount of activation energy. Make sure you have that first
18. Shirky principle - institutions will try to preserve the problem which they are the solution. Reminds me of Ronald Reagan’s autobiography where he shared his encounter with unemployment offices discouraging people to take up jobs but to receive their handouts instead; bureaucracy’s number one objective is to preserve the bureaucracy
19. Flywheel - a rotating disk that is used to store energy to create momentum
20. Homeostasis - organism regulates itself around a certain condition similar to organisations regulating itself around a certain metrics or values
21. Technology adoption cycle - innovators (2.5%), early adopters (13.5%), early majority (34%), late majority (34%), laggards (16%)
22. Metcalfe’s law - non linear growth in network value when nodes are connected to one another
23. Accept that we are surrounded by chaotic system and adaptability is the key success factor. Don’t be lulled into a sense of stability and put effort into creating a perfect system in the stable system that does not exist in the first places. It’s okay to plan ahead, just be aware that all it takes is a flap of the butterfly’s wings to undo the plans
24. Luck surface area - lucky people are not lucky. They tend to spread themselves that covers a wide surface area such that when an opportunity arises, they are there
25. For any issues, you can find people on both sides with ‘numbers’ to back up their position
26. Survivorship bias - surveys are filled by people who care enough to response. E.g. surviving WW2 planes were analysed and reinforced based on where they were hit the most but realised that these were the planes that survived and the places most hit are the ones that need the least reinforcements because Pilots can survive even when those areas are hit hard
27. Bayesian - starting from a prior (intuition) and converge toward the truth. Faster but prone to local optimum. Frequentist - starting from scratch based on cold hard numbers. More accurate only if there big enough and diversified sample size
28. Hysteresis - system’s current state can depend on its history e.g. T cells that help power our immune system, upon activation, would require lower threshold to reactivate
29. Knowns and unknowns (2x2 matrix). Objective is to move as many things it known knowns as possible. Known unknowns (get help from others who know), unknown knowns (get some experience), unknown unknowns (thought experiments, scenario analysis to minimise blind spots)
30. Beware of groupthink. Typically associated to person with the highest demonstration of confidence able to get their bandwagons going with followers jumping on quickly creating a convergent thinking environment
31. Social norms is more powerful than market norms. E.g. one is less likely to want to be paid by neighbours to babysit their kid vs doing them a favour
32. Distributive justice vs procedural justice - equity vs equality
33. Strawman - opponent misrepresent the issue by associating your argument to something else that’s easy to attack and incite emotions
34. Loss leader strategy - one product is priced low to increase the demand for complementary products
35. Sometimes the only winning move is not to play. Not all conflicts need to be tackled head on or resolved. Need to be selective, else it is going to severely drain your resources
36. Generals always fight the last war. Successful people / leaders are where they are because of their past victories and modus operandi which helped them leapfrog the then status quo. Until when they become the status quo
37. Organisations hardly ever have perfect resources nor can they always afford to wait until they have better ones before moving forward. Great people are unlikely to be concentrated in a single organisation. Successful organisations are successful because right people are led in the right way
38. 10x teams or 10x employees. Right confluence of factors to lead to superior performance. However, the output may not be replicated when they switch roles or projects
39. Creating a 10x team requires a leader to understand the difference and nuances. It goes way beyond just putting a body on the job but having the right skills, attitude, personalities within the team. More often than not large organisations have the tendency to trust their processes too much that people feel like they’re just a cog in the machine and hence feel disengaged, instead of creating a 10x team, a 0.1x team was created
40. Three types of people required in different phases of organisation / project life cycles - commando (speed, no rules, create a beachhead), army (large numbers to build systems and infrastructures to extend advantage), police (enforce rules, build stability for growth). Having the wrong group at the wrong time can hurt you a lot more than helps
41. The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing. Successful businesses were started by hedgehogs having a singular focus to be good at one core idea. However for the successful company to survive in the long term, they need foxes. Hedgehogs tend to have a focused world view whereas foxes tend to be more cautious and pragmatic
42. When giving feedbacks with radical candour - Being vague and abstract is much easier because it avoids the hard work of identifying specific examples and the psychological stress of debating the nuances around those specifics. If you care enough for the person, gotta put in the hard work
43. Dunning-Kruger effect - early part of the learning curve is exciting. But it is quickly followed by the reality on how much more do you have to learn before you become the expert and finally the satisfying feeling when the expertise is obtained. Key is to not give up after the initial euphoria. Applies to many things in life, people tend to be happier in their youth and old age
44. Self serving bias - you’re more likely to say that your mistakes could not have been predicted and more likely to apply hindsight bias to be critical of others
45. Being explicit about the cultural norms in a company is one of the most high leverage activities you can do as a leader
46. Manager’s schedule vs. maker’s schedule
47. The only way to generate outstanding returns is to be right and contrarian. Just being right is not enough but don’t be a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian - that’s more dangerous
48. Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare - Japanese proverb
49. OODA loop - observe, orient, decide, act. Air Force Pilots are trained to go through OODA loops quickly during dogfights where there’s no time for analysis
50. Pivoting is difficult because it cuts against organisational inertia, involves openly admitting failures and requires finding a better solution all at the same time
51. Only the paranoid survive
November 8, 2024
2024-11-08: A method that Descartes used and Elon Musk uses: asking what do we know is true, getting to the fundamental truths or axioms.
“The central mental model to help you become a chef with your thinking is arguing from first principles. It’s the practical starting point to being wrong less, and it means thinking from the bottom up, using basic building blocks of what you think is true to build sound (and sometimes new) conclusions. First principles are the group of self evident assumptions that make up the foundation on which your conclusions rest - the ingredients in a recipe or the mathematical axioms that underpin a formula.” 4
(meaning a chef can take ingredients and creatively come up with new recipes)
2024-10-16:
Mental Models!
Most of these we don’t think of using and don’t learn in school! Amazing stuff.
In physics, critical mass refers to the minimum amount of fissile material needed to sustain a nuclear chain reaction.
Applying the Concept of Critical Mass to Everyday Life
In decision-making and personal growth, the idea of “critical mass” can be very powerful. Here’s how it applies:
1. Habit Formation and Momentum:
Just like in physics, in life there’s often a “tipping point” where efforts begin to produce exponential results. If you’re trying to build a habit (e.g., exercising, learning a language, saving money), at first it might feel like progress is slow, and it’s easy to lose motivation. However, once you reach a certain point (the critical mass), things start to feel easier, and the results compound. Recognizing that you just need to get past the initial difficult phase can help you stay committed.
2. Building Relationships and Networks:
In business, relationships, or social circles, there’s often a point where enough connections are made that opportunities start flowing naturally. In the beginning, networking can feel slow and unrewarding, but once you reach a critical mass of contacts or social influence, connections start creating more connections, and opportunities expand rapidly.
3. Investing and Wealth Accumulation:
When saving or investing, the initial growth can seem slow, especially when starting with small amounts. But as your investments grow, the power of compounding interest starts to take over. Like critical mass, there’s a tipping point where the returns on your investments begin to significantly outpace your contributions. Over time, your money starts working for you at an accelerating rate.
4. Learning and Skill Development:
Whether learning a new skill or mastering a subject, there’s a critical mass of knowledge or practice hours you need to reach before you can feel truly competent. For example, when learning to play a musical instrument, it might seem like progress is minimal in the beginning, but after a certain amount of practice (critical mass), your improvement starts becoming more noticeable and faster.
How It Helps in Decision-Making
Understanding the critical mass concept can help in several ways:
• Stay patient and persistent: Knowing that initial progress can be slow but that it will eventually compound can help you stay motivated when things don’t seem to be moving forward.
• Invest in the right things: Whether it’s time, effort, or money, focus on activities that have the potential to compound once you reach a critical mass. For example, focus on skills or relationships that can lead to long-term gains.
• Avoid giving up too soon: Many people quit before reaching critical mass because they don’t see immediate results. Recognizing that progress often accelerates after hitting a tipping point helps you keep going when it seems difficult.
By applying this understanding to areas of your life, you can make better long-term decisions, knowing that success often comes after pushing past a certain threshold of effort or investment.
“The central mental model to help you become a chef with your thinking is arguing from first principles. It’s the practical starting point to being wrong less, and it means thinking from the bottom up, using basic building blocks of what you think is true to build sound (and sometimes new) conclusions. First principles are the group of self evident assumptions that make up the foundation on which your conclusions rest - the ingredients in a recipe or the mathematical axioms that underpin a formula.” 4
(meaning a chef can take ingredients and creatively come up with new recipes)
2024-10-16:
Mental Models!
Most of these we don’t think of using and don’t learn in school! Amazing stuff.
In physics, critical mass refers to the minimum amount of fissile material needed to sustain a nuclear chain reaction.
Applying the Concept of Critical Mass to Everyday Life
In decision-making and personal growth, the idea of “critical mass” can be very powerful. Here’s how it applies:
1. Habit Formation and Momentum:
Just like in physics, in life there’s often a “tipping point” where efforts begin to produce exponential results. If you’re trying to build a habit (e.g., exercising, learning a language, saving money), at first it might feel like progress is slow, and it’s easy to lose motivation. However, once you reach a certain point (the critical mass), things start to feel easier, and the results compound. Recognizing that you just need to get past the initial difficult phase can help you stay committed.
2. Building Relationships and Networks:
In business, relationships, or social circles, there’s often a point where enough connections are made that opportunities start flowing naturally. In the beginning, networking can feel slow and unrewarding, but once you reach a critical mass of contacts or social influence, connections start creating more connections, and opportunities expand rapidly.
3. Investing and Wealth Accumulation:
When saving or investing, the initial growth can seem slow, especially when starting with small amounts. But as your investments grow, the power of compounding interest starts to take over. Like critical mass, there’s a tipping point where the returns on your investments begin to significantly outpace your contributions. Over time, your money starts working for you at an accelerating rate.
4. Learning and Skill Development:
Whether learning a new skill or mastering a subject, there’s a critical mass of knowledge or practice hours you need to reach before you can feel truly competent. For example, when learning to play a musical instrument, it might seem like progress is minimal in the beginning, but after a certain amount of practice (critical mass), your improvement starts becoming more noticeable and faster.
How It Helps in Decision-Making
Understanding the critical mass concept can help in several ways:
• Stay patient and persistent: Knowing that initial progress can be slow but that it will eventually compound can help you stay motivated when things don’t seem to be moving forward.
• Invest in the right things: Whether it’s time, effort, or money, focus on activities that have the potential to compound once you reach a critical mass. For example, focus on skills or relationships that can lead to long-term gains.
• Avoid giving up too soon: Many people quit before reaching critical mass because they don’t see immediate results. Recognizing that progress often accelerates after hitting a tipping point helps you keep going when it seems difficult.
By applying this understanding to areas of your life, you can make better long-term decisions, knowing that success often comes after pushing past a certain threshold of effort or investment.
November 8, 2019
I picked this up for two reasons,
1. I've read Gabriel's first book - Traction, and found it immensely helpful.
2. I'm a big fan of mental models. Have read Robert Cialdini, Dan Kahnemann, Dan Ariely, Malcolm Gladwell, Richard Thaler & a bunch of others, including being a regular at Farnam Street. (though haven't been able to consistently use more than a handful of them)
So, picking a book being portrayed as a single treasure trove, from a validated author, seemed like a no-brainer. But, I'd have to say, I'm not extremely impressed by it.
First of all, it's extremely difficult to weave all the mental models into a story-like format rather than just listing all of them out. I can totally understand the amount of work that must have gone into this to infuse storytelling and make it as relatable as possible for readers to understand. And for that I really appreciate the authors.
However, following were some of the things I didn't like,
1. I'm not sure if all the mental models that were talked about in this, are actually mental models in reality. Cases in point - barriers to entry / exit, appeasement, technology adoption life cycle, etc. In my view, they're actual, literal concepts / terms and I'm not sure in what respect are they being referred to as mental models.
2. Given that mental models is still not an extremely prevalent thing and is still finding its roots in the lower echelons of the society (general populace), I think a lot of the more common and predominant mental models covered in the book should have found more explanations. Case in point - Confirmation bias.
I mean if I'm expected to apply these mental models in my life, then surely a couple of paragraphs will not suffice to drive home the point.
3. I'm not sure how much efforts the authors had put in to de-jargonise the concepts. I mean, at a few places, I even found myself (who's always interested in the subject) just aimlessly slogging through the pages to get over it.
4. I also think people who're new to the world of mental models might find it difficult to get a hold of the concepts in this book, because of the above factors. Because when you're talking technical & not easy-to-understand things, you cannot expect to just touch over them and expect people to "get it".
5. And surprising part is even with the lack of the above things, I felt the book still was unnecessarily lengthy. I mean, it took me close to a month to wrap it up, which is usually never the case. And definitely not for a book of 300 odd pages.
And finally, not so much as a concern for readers but for authors, I think, the title of the book is really off-putting to the general public. And it's not my opinion. It's what I observed from the expressions and receptiveness of people when they came to know that I'm reading a book called "Super Thinking".
1. I've read Gabriel's first book - Traction, and found it immensely helpful.
2. I'm a big fan of mental models. Have read Robert Cialdini, Dan Kahnemann, Dan Ariely, Malcolm Gladwell, Richard Thaler & a bunch of others, including being a regular at Farnam Street. (though haven't been able to consistently use more than a handful of them)
So, picking a book being portrayed as a single treasure trove, from a validated author, seemed like a no-brainer. But, I'd have to say, I'm not extremely impressed by it.
First of all, it's extremely difficult to weave all the mental models into a story-like format rather than just listing all of them out. I can totally understand the amount of work that must have gone into this to infuse storytelling and make it as relatable as possible for readers to understand. And for that I really appreciate the authors.
However, following were some of the things I didn't like,
1. I'm not sure if all the mental models that were talked about in this, are actually mental models in reality. Cases in point - barriers to entry / exit, appeasement, technology adoption life cycle, etc. In my view, they're actual, literal concepts / terms and I'm not sure in what respect are they being referred to as mental models.
2. Given that mental models is still not an extremely prevalent thing and is still finding its roots in the lower echelons of the society (general populace), I think a lot of the more common and predominant mental models covered in the book should have found more explanations. Case in point - Confirmation bias.
I mean if I'm expected to apply these mental models in my life, then surely a couple of paragraphs will not suffice to drive home the point.
3. I'm not sure how much efforts the authors had put in to de-jargonise the concepts. I mean, at a few places, I even found myself (who's always interested in the subject) just aimlessly slogging through the pages to get over it.
4. I also think people who're new to the world of mental models might find it difficult to get a hold of the concepts in this book, because of the above factors. Because when you're talking technical & not easy-to-understand things, you cannot expect to just touch over them and expect people to "get it".
5. And surprising part is even with the lack of the above things, I felt the book still was unnecessarily lengthy. I mean, it took me close to a month to wrap it up, which is usually never the case. And definitely not for a book of 300 odd pages.
And finally, not so much as a concern for readers but for authors, I think, the title of the book is really off-putting to the general public. And it's not my opinion. It's what I observed from the expressions and receptiveness of people when they came to know that I'm reading a book called "Super Thinking".
August 18, 2019
Awesome book.
The authors apparently wrote the book for themselves which makes it even more useful and valuable.
I would have personally used even more pictures/graphs to explain and compare ideas/behavior.
A book worth returning to...
The authors apparently wrote the book for themselves which makes it even more useful and valuable.
I would have personally used even more pictures/graphs to explain and compare ideas/behavior.
A book worth returning to...
July 14, 2020
This book is about mental models, which are frameworks of thinking and representations about how things work. Mental models aim to simplify the thinking process and help in decision making and problem solving.
This is a well researched book where the authors integrate an exhaustive compilation of mental models from a wide variety of domains and provide a toolkit for higher-level thinking applicable to various personal and professional contexts. The models are presented in thematic chapters that cover a myriad of topics including cognitive biases, probabilistic thinking, statistical reasoning, game theory, conflict resolution, business strategies, leadership, etc. The authors refer to numerous resources such as Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow, Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational, Cal Newport's Deep Work, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Antifragile.
The breadth of models included in the book, however, comes at the cost of depth in my opinion. As the authors pack hundreds of concepts and models in 300 pages, their explanations are sometimes shallow. Despite the authors' attempt to present a holistic toolkit of mental models, most of the concepts are described in few sentences with insufficient explanations, examples, and model comparisons. Readers, particularly those who are new to mental models, might find the content overwhelming and difficult to grasp, especially when read for the first time.
That said, this is a rich overview of various mental models that suits a wide range of audiences including professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, entrepreneurs, and managers. This is not a book that you read once, as most probably you won't remember much of it. My advice is to read the book slowly and to keep it as a reference guide to the fascinating topic of mental models.
This is a well researched book where the authors integrate an exhaustive compilation of mental models from a wide variety of domains and provide a toolkit for higher-level thinking applicable to various personal and professional contexts. The models are presented in thematic chapters that cover a myriad of topics including cognitive biases, probabilistic thinking, statistical reasoning, game theory, conflict resolution, business strategies, leadership, etc. The authors refer to numerous resources such as Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow, Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational, Cal Newport's Deep Work, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Antifragile.
The breadth of models included in the book, however, comes at the cost of depth in my opinion. As the authors pack hundreds of concepts and models in 300 pages, their explanations are sometimes shallow. Despite the authors' attempt to present a holistic toolkit of mental models, most of the concepts are described in few sentences with insufficient explanations, examples, and model comparisons. Readers, particularly those who are new to mental models, might find the content overwhelming and difficult to grasp, especially when read for the first time.
That said, this is a rich overview of various mental models that suits a wide range of audiences including professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, entrepreneurs, and managers. This is not a book that you read once, as most probably you won't remember much of it. My advice is to read the book slowly and to keep it as a reference guide to the fascinating topic of mental models.
October 18, 2019
I have found my new favorite book, and wrote 278 Anki cards to memorize all these mental models shared in the book.
This is not a book to read casually, you probably wouldn't remember much of it. This is a book to read slowly, study and remember.
Thank you Gabriel Weinberg and Laurent McCann for taking the time to write this book. It will help me for many years to come.
I wish I had it 15 years ago, but life is a never-ending self-improvement experience. Looking forward to changing from cargo-cult scientist to super thinker.
Now, I'll have to find Super Thinking partners to join me on this journey.
This is not a book to read casually, you probably wouldn't remember much of it. This is a book to read slowly, study and remember.
Thank you Gabriel Weinberg and Laurent McCann for taking the time to write this book. It will help me for many years to come.
I wish I had it 15 years ago, but life is a never-ending self-improvement experience. Looking forward to changing from cargo-cult scientist to super thinker.
Now, I'll have to find Super Thinking partners to join me on this journey.
August 14, 2019
أراد الكاتبان من هذا الكتاب جمع ما أسمياه "النماذج الفكرية العليا"* من مختلف التخصصات والمجالات. تلك النماذج أفكارٌ أو مبادئ يمكن تعميمها لتشمل جوانب أخرى من الحياة الفكرية والعملية.
أظنّ أنّ هذا الجمع الموسّع هو ما أوقع الكاتبان في مشكلة الإسهاب غير المبرّر في بعض الفصول والأفكار، وكذلك في مشكلة "التكلّف" في تبيان صلاحية تلك المبادئ لمجالات غير التي وُجدت فيها ولها.
الكتاب بمجمله جيّد، لكنّه دون المأمول منه عنوانًا وموضوعًاـ كما أنّه لم يرقَ ليكون مرجعًا ولا ليكون دليلًا عمليًا في مجالات فصوله.
-------
* super-thinking mental model
أظنّ أنّ هذا الجمع الموسّع هو ما أوقع الكاتبان في مشكلة الإسهاب غير المبرّر في بعض الفصول والأفكار، وكذلك في مشكلة "التكلّف" في تبيان صلاحية تلك المبادئ لمجالات غير التي وُجدت فيها ولها.
الكتاب بمجمله جيّد، لكنّه دون المأمول منه عنوانًا وموضوعًاـ كما أنّه لم يرقَ ليكون مرجعًا ولا ليكون دليلًا عمليًا في مجالات فصوله.
-------
* super-thinking mental model
September 8, 2019
Back in the late 1980s, I stumbled across a book entitled Cultural Literacy: What every American needs to know. I wasn’t sure whether this was more brilliant or bonkers: how could you ever hope to capture everything a person should know about their world into a single book? But on the other hand, how handy is that?
To be fair, Super Thinking doesn’t attempt to cover every aspect of life, only mental models, but it feels similarly ambitious and dizzying. It contains more than 300 models – an average of around one per page – ranging from everyday concepts such as Parkinson’s Law and unforced errors to ones that were entirely new to me, such as data dredging and hysteresis.
As a former reference books editor, I did spend a fair proportion of my listening time shouting at the narrator ‘This should have been a dictionary!’ That certainly would have been an easier book to write. But on reflection I have to admit Weinberg and McCann took the right approach in weaving the models into a narrative framework. Dictionaries are great when you know what you’re looking for, but Super Thinking excels at showing you the thinking apparatus you didn’t know you needed (which is in itself a nice illustration of ‘unknown unknowns’ – the Johari model). Also, dictionaries can easily be replaced by listicle web pages: this book, not so much.
They group the models into broad categories – problem solving, change, decision-making, conflict, leadership etc – and provide background and context for each model, turning what could be an interesting but abstract collection of ideas into a practical toolkit with worked examples.
And just as a good toolkit enables you to carry out tasks more effectively than you could with your bare hands – at least, if you know how to USE those tools – so having a mind equipped with at least a smattering of these models will help you make sense of the world more effectively. Once you know these patterns you see use cases for them everywhere: the Eisenhower matrix helps you prioritise your tasks for the day; understanding confirmation bias will remind you to test your senior management team’s recommendations more critically than you otherwise might; being aware of Hick’s Law (ie the more choices someone has, the longer it will take them to make a decision) will ensure you keep your website navigation clean and lean.
It’s hard to pick favourites from so many, but three that particularly stuck in my mind and that I’ve drawn on even in the few days since I finished are:
• luck surface area – you can make the choice to get ‘luckier’ by expanding your exposure to the potential for luck, by embracing openness and putting yourself in front of new people and new situations
• Commandos, infantry and police – the three types of people needed on the ground in successive waves of an invasion. Commandos (start-up founders) move fast, they do whatever needs to be done to get the job done. Once they’ve established a beachhead (ooh look, another model) the infantry (leaders) come in and set up the new rules and processes. And once the new status quo is established, it’s over to the police (managers). Don’t ask a commando to do the policing, or vice versa.
• Sayre’s Law – ‘In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake.’ Originally formulated with academic politics in mind, it’s worth keeping in mind any time you feel yourself being sucked into an argument generating more heat than light.
In short, this is a superb introduction to metacognition – thinking about thinking – and a smart way to get yourself an unfair advantage in pretty much every area of life.
To be fair, Super Thinking doesn’t attempt to cover every aspect of life, only mental models, but it feels similarly ambitious and dizzying. It contains more than 300 models – an average of around one per page – ranging from everyday concepts such as Parkinson’s Law and unforced errors to ones that were entirely new to me, such as data dredging and hysteresis.
As a former reference books editor, I did spend a fair proportion of my listening time shouting at the narrator ‘This should have been a dictionary!’ That certainly would have been an easier book to write. But on reflection I have to admit Weinberg and McCann took the right approach in weaving the models into a narrative framework. Dictionaries are great when you know what you’re looking for, but Super Thinking excels at showing you the thinking apparatus you didn’t know you needed (which is in itself a nice illustration of ‘unknown unknowns’ – the Johari model). Also, dictionaries can easily be replaced by listicle web pages: this book, not so much.
They group the models into broad categories – problem solving, change, decision-making, conflict, leadership etc – and provide background and context for each model, turning what could be an interesting but abstract collection of ideas into a practical toolkit with worked examples.
And just as a good toolkit enables you to carry out tasks more effectively than you could with your bare hands – at least, if you know how to USE those tools – so having a mind equipped with at least a smattering of these models will help you make sense of the world more effectively. Once you know these patterns you see use cases for them everywhere: the Eisenhower matrix helps you prioritise your tasks for the day; understanding confirmation bias will remind you to test your senior management team’s recommendations more critically than you otherwise might; being aware of Hick’s Law (ie the more choices someone has, the longer it will take them to make a decision) will ensure you keep your website navigation clean and lean.
It’s hard to pick favourites from so many, but three that particularly stuck in my mind and that I’ve drawn on even in the few days since I finished are:
• luck surface area – you can make the choice to get ‘luckier’ by expanding your exposure to the potential for luck, by embracing openness and putting yourself in front of new people and new situations
• Commandos, infantry and police – the three types of people needed on the ground in successive waves of an invasion. Commandos (start-up founders) move fast, they do whatever needs to be done to get the job done. Once they’ve established a beachhead (ooh look, another model) the infantry (leaders) come in and set up the new rules and processes. And once the new status quo is established, it’s over to the police (managers). Don’t ask a commando to do the policing, or vice versa.
• Sayre’s Law – ‘In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake.’ Originally formulated with academic politics in mind, it’s worth keeping in mind any time you feel yourself being sucked into an argument generating more heat than light.
In short, this is a superb introduction to metacognition – thinking about thinking – and a smart way to get yourself an unfair advantage in pretty much every area of life.
did-not-finish
May 27, 2020The title (“Superthinking”) is more accurate than the subtitle (“The Big Book of Mental Models”). The book was about tools for thinking more generally than mental models. What I was looking for with mental models are metaphors that can be applied cross-discipline for understanding a situation or system, it had a little bit of that but mostly covered cognitive biases as well as some statistical reasoning. I think there are better books that provide more focus on the latter two so I was mostly looking for the former. For me this meant the book felt like it was sitting at too many levels of abstractions. For example, confirmation bias is useful to know but not necessarily in the same metaphorical way as a concept like critical mass.
I think it would have been better served as a Pattern Language like book where it’s more of a library of tools that also show how the tools link and relate to each other instead of the more typical non-fiction form. I think it might have also worked better as articles instead of a book.
Lastly it’s to business and tech focused for me I would rather have more mental models that draw from more varied fields like music, cooking, or sports instead.
I think it would have been better served as a Pattern Language like book where it’s more of a library of tools that also show how the tools link and relate to each other instead of the more typical non-fiction form. I think it might have also worked better as articles instead of a book.
Lastly it’s to business and tech focused for me I would rather have more mental models that draw from more varied fields like music, cooking, or sports instead.
December 18, 2020
This book is poor. It is ultimately the mishmash of startup hype and doesn't teach you new things. But it does teach some things wrong.
At the start I was getting hopeful that oh, good, a pretty useful list of all sorts of ways to think about all sorts of problems. So that list is useful a bit. But the explanations...
When it got to systems thinking and laid out approximately two sentences about how "you should think about the system as a whole" without a word about its parts, the relationships of the parts and the premises and what happens to parts, relationships and the whole if the premises change. That was the end of my suspension of disbelief. I wish for everyone not to pay for this book.
At the start I was getting hopeful that oh, good, a pretty useful list of all sorts of ways to think about all sorts of problems. So that list is useful a bit. But the explanations...
When it got to systems thinking and laid out approximately two sentences about how "you should think about the system as a whole" without a word about its parts, the relationships of the parts and the premises and what happens to parts, relationships and the whole if the premises change. That was the end of my suspension of disbelief. I wish for everyone not to pay for this book.
November 3, 2019
Packed with short descriptions of all the mental models the founder of Duck Duck Go feels are essential to know. He mentioned in a podcast interview that this grew out of notes he had written for employees.
I’m not sure how to rate this, as it feels a bit like rating an encyclopedia. Yes, it certainly packs a lot of mental models, but is also pretty exhausting to read, and has to be digested in small bits, as you are introduced to a new idea on every page. Then again, that’s the opposite of the usual fault of popular books — those where one idea gets 300 pages where 3 would do.
I’m not sure how to rate this, as it feels a bit like rating an encyclopedia. Yes, it certainly packs a lot of mental models, but is also pretty exhausting to read, and has to be digested in small bits, as you are introduced to a new idea on every page. Then again, that’s the opposite of the usual fault of popular books — those where one idea gets 300 pages where 3 would do.
September 16, 2019
Had high hopes for this book, as I need some more mental models in my life. I devour a ton of information, and can often have trouble recalling or applying it. This book was more common sensical best practices for leading efficient careers, relationships or organizations. A few things I knew before, but most stuff was putting a label on things that are common sense, theories from first year courses in social sciences or business. Took me a while to get through, and we'll see if any of it sticks
December 12, 2019
This is a fabulous book by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann which explains over a hundred mental models. Mental models help us to think better about the world and help make better decisions. But including a hundred models in a book is not an easy task. So the book is a bit short on explanations and how to use these models in daily life. However, not all models are useful for a person so I'm free to choose the ones which I find more useful to me and keep adding to my repertoire slowly.
October 9, 2020
A lot of objections I see people having with this book is that it brushes over a lot of mental models without going into the details of it.
But I don't think that was what this book was written for. This book is an introduction to over 200 mental models (I know this, cause I've made note of each one of it) and it serves as one good guide to base your decisions on.
Good stuff. Although it does get heavy at times.
But I don't think that was what this book was written for. This book is an introduction to over 200 mental models (I know this, cause I've made note of each one of it) and it serves as one good guide to base your decisions on.
Good stuff. Although it does get heavy at times.
December 22, 2020
يتحدث الكتاب عن نماذج تساعد في التفكير
الكثير من الكتب الأخرى تقدم هذه النماذج بطرق مختلفة، لكن هذا الكتاب يتميز في طريقة عرضه للنماذج من حيث تقسيمها لعدة أنواع وطرح الأنواع كقصة، وليس كتعداد.
وبذلك فإن الكتاب يظهر الترابط بين النماذج المختلفة وكيف تقوم بدعم بعضها البعض
الكثير من الكتب الأخرى تقدم هذه النماذج بطرق مختلفة، لكن هذا الكتاب يتميز في طريقة عرضه للنماذج من حيث تقسيمها لعدة أنواع وطرح الأنواع كقصة، وليس كتعداد.
وبذلك فإن الكتاب يظهر الترابط بين النماذج المختلفة وكيف تقوم بدعم بعضها البعض
July 4, 2019
The most practical book on mental models I've found to date.. and I've read a lot of them.
November 6, 2025
IM FREEEE!! never, ever read this book, so fucking boring. Only powered through reading it for work so I could count it towards my goodreads yearly goal
Read
December 5, 2025If you're new to this topic, this is a great summary. If you've already read all these sort of books (Black Swan, Thinking Fast, You Are Not So Smart,...), there is nothing new to be found.
May 23, 2021
Read this book. It will instantly make you smarter.
October 18, 2019
I agree with people who said that it's not really a book on mental models. It could have took a name of Thoughts on things. Because actually makes some reflections on various aspects and define problems and how to think about them. I was expecting more a book that related to Poor Charlie Almanac, with a set of mental model which can help to relate with the world. The author has attempted to explain too much in very few pages, who actually leads to have very little added info on on many different things.
May 24, 2021
This book has a lot to offer about how to approach problems in life. It has a lot of good knowledge and I would love to re-read
August 25, 2019
Another Blinkist... The titles in this book might sound big and intimidating, but how the author has explained them and provided an example for each made the concept so simple and relatable.
I might buy/get the actual book to add it to my collection.
I might buy/get the actual book to add it to my collection.
February 24, 2020
Nothing groundbreaking (to be honest I was expecting more), but it was nice to read about all of the popular mental models together in one place.
Read
April 22, 2023The book has a surprisingly small amount of new knowledge for me, an engineer in my thirties.
The book doesn’t feel like a book, more like a catalogue with a list of all the significant concepts authors found valuable enough to describe.
But the fifth chapter has a decent definition of how to read experiment results, I’ll re-read it and will read more on the subject as it seems to be genuinely hard to grasp the described concepts if you haven’t studied them before, and at the same time, it looks important and valuable.
The book doesn’t feel like a book, more like a catalogue with a list of all the significant concepts authors found valuable enough to describe.
But the fifth chapter has a decent definition of how to read experiment results, I’ll re-read it and will read more on the subject as it seems to be genuinely hard to grasp the described concepts if you haven’t studied them before, and at the same time, it looks important and valuable.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 292 reviews