The “I was blind and now I see” moment. What's your mental model?
“I was blind and now I see” are the first words of the fictional character of Eddie Morra, in “Limitless” after ingesting a drug called NZT-48. This drug allows Eddie to analyze details and information that wasn’t clearly available before. I can’t help but see the similarity with Mental Models, they help us see better, account for biases and make better decisions.
Do you remember the time you:
- Wondered if switching careers was a good move?
- Wanted to grab the attention of a potential romantic partner?
- First had to interview someone to join your team?
What attributes did you look for? How did you process them? Did you miss any information before making the decision? What would you do differently today with what you know now?
There are a myriad of important decisions we need to make in our lives and oftentimes we are missing a few factors and rush into conclusions. Maybe we seek the right advice from the wrong people, we are not all the same and even for the same person the right or wrong decision may differ by only factoring in age among other dimensions.
We all operate under our own mental models, think of it as our own Operative System. We all make decisions based on our criteria (and experience) the same way algorithms process information to provide programmed outputs. We do it mostly intuitively at first and keep learning and improving these mental models as we pass through the comfort zone of what we have to decide.
Even the most experienced professionals need to evolve their own mental models to keep improving their decision making processes and mental model repository.
Only if we could crowdsource this mental models repository. Mental models that work well for certain people, and could be personalized given the characteristics of each individual... I’m just in love with platforms that efficiently crowdsource information to help the community.
I’d love to hear from you :) Is there any important decision you need to make and need guidance? Do you have a Mental Model that can help someone make better decisions? I’d love to hear your story and make it part of “makingmyself.com”
I tend to find there's a small subset of mental models that many people come back to over and over again.
Most of those are in FS blog/book or repeated as quotes on twitter about a biography someone finally read about Musk, Bezos, Franklin, or even Jobs.
https://fs.blog/mental-models/#general_thinking_concepts
I don't think you need a defined list of mental models to come to the same realizations. Experience is what defines those mental models in your life. While they may have a popular name and definition, yours may slightly differ. The journey is what makes the mental model relevant.
Limitless is a great show but you are on the wrong track with mental models.
Scientists discovered that human brains actually shrunk a bit after learning to communicate in groups. The overhead of the larger go it alone brain no longer had evolutionary benefit (here is a theory about it).
So a site where we can get help with tough problems is great but "We all operate under our own mental models" is probably not true. None of us is going it alone in any real sense.