Thread by @yemi_uc

People do not get smarter by reading books or keeping up with the habits of successful people. If they did, that classmate of yours that read 100 books a year would be way ahead of the curve.

People get smarter by developing mental frameworks.

Mental frameworks are the keys smart people use to understand problems and solve it. With this key (mental frameworks) they can solve problems at scale and appear to be more productive than the average person.

The ability to solve a problem within a framework is what often separates that person you consider to be smart and you.

This is where mental frameworks become important. As humans, we make a lot of decisions every day in a very uncertain the world.

The quality of our decisions often dictates the outcome in a situation. Each decision you make is you solving a problem to get a desired outcome.

If you do not have a method to solve problems, you will often end up with bad outcomes.

Imagine you had a math problem, and rather than solve it with a mathematical formula, you had to guess the answer or rely on instincts. If you did that, you will be wrong >99% of the time.

Unfortunately, many of us guess at our decisions or rely on instinct. Hence the outcome you get in many situations will be undesired.

Life is a lot more complex than maths with an infinite amount of problems to solve. Developing methods (mental frameworks) to solve problems will give you your desired outcome more often than not.

So how can you develop and apply mental frameworks? There are scores of frameworks just as there are scores of mathematical formula.

You will not be able to identify every framework nor apply all those you are aware of at scale, but being curious will help you identify them.

To develop a framework, take an activity you often do. Then research (speak to smart people performing these activities), ask how they think around this problem. You are looking for information that does not tell you exactly what to do, but how to think about the problem.

The more conversations where people share their thoughts around a problem you engage in, the wider your arsenal of mental framework gets.

Another way is to find a mentor. This is often what mentors are good for. They often do not give you direct advice. They just signal in the direction you should be thinking because they know that no problem is the same.

For example 1 + 1 is not the same problem as 3 + 4, but a mentor recognizes the right framework to solve the problem. That is using addition to solve 1+1 and 3+4.

As you become conscious of building frameworks and get more knowledgeable about your work, actively form thoughts around the work you do. Why do you do it and does it matter? What are the inputs and the outputs? What are the variables and how do they affect inputs and outputs?

Reading is a good way to build frameworks because other smart people you will never meet are teaching you their own ways to view the world.

If you are not aware of mental frameworks, then reading becomes fictional because there is no real lesson to take away asides the story.

Also, dissociating the outcome from the decision making helps you reflect how good your mental framework is.

Life is complex and full of uncertainties. Having the best framework will not always give you the desired outcome or put you ahead of the curve in particular scenarios, but in aggregate you will come out a winner.

In the beginning, you might apply the wrong framework to a problem, it happens just the same way you might have applied the wrong formula before you learned BODMAS.

This is why dissociating the outcome from decision making is important so that you can observe what is wrong with a clear mind (no regrets), and improve on it.

How to observe your growth in developing mental frameworks.

1. You feel yourself hold more independent, and sometimes original opinions.

2. Without any external stimuli, the way you view the world changes often ( 3 months - 12 months intervals)

I wrote a longer piece on mental frameworks, and how it can teach you to be correct 96% of the time.

Read here: yemijohnson.com/how-to-be-righ…