Mental Model Monday and other tools for thinking.
Reading atomic habits now and the core insight is that small actions compound. Just like your interest, doing something small day after day will result in phenomenal progress. 1% progress per day will make you 37 times better at the…
Nevertheless, they were helpful for me, and what’s good for the goose is good for the reader. And at least no one has told me they used Ultralearning and it completely ruined their life….which actually might be a blog post…
I have five months in Berlin before the end of the year. I am currently unemployed but I am comfortable financially. This situation will last until the end of the year, uncomfortably. I don’t like inactivity, and I don’t like…
Probably the one great mental model for self improvement. One of the most difficult to fully grasp. I struggle with it, and only through experience have I gotten better. Last night I read a great talk by Peter Kaufman on…
Yesterday I received Maria Popova’s weekly newsletter “Brain Pickings” and I enjoyed it so much I read it to my wife before bed. You can read the newsletter here and I encourage you to subscribe. The reason I enjoyed last…
This is one of the most overrated mental models in the world. People often miss this because it’s not clear that kindness is helpful to achieving goals. We live most of our lives in cutthroat competition with other people, companies,…
Go follow @Buster on Twitter. He’s an ex-Twitter, ex-Amazon, and ex-Slack product manager. His writing on cognitive biases informs a lot of what I try an use in the workplace and in my life. He’s also super responsive on Twitter,…
Lots of people recommend Robert Cialdini’s book Influence, The Art of Persuasion. I read it a few years ago and I liked it. I’m revisiting it now with a different perspective, and the first couple chapters are great. I think…
This week’s mental model is pulled directly from the great Shane Parish. His weekend post on “knowledge compounding” is similar to how I’m structuring my year. This year over each quarter I am doing a ‘crash course’ in some topic…
I’ve started reading about behavioral economics. The first book I picked out is Misbehaving by Richard Thaler. He says that the foundational principle for behavioral economics is the endowment effect. I’m thinking a lot about that these days. Here’s a…
We all take shortcuts in life if we can. Shortcuts take less effort, and that saves energy. Saving energy is a positive outcome. An example of the path of least resistance is this: The principle of least effort is a broad theory that covers…
We want the outcome of the habit without doing the habit. I heard that in James Clear’s “Atomic Habit” book, and it relates. Over the past few years I’ve struggled to organize my thoughts and stay focused on my goals…