Thread by @SlowwCo

If you do a thread of the thread master @george__mack, is it called a "meta-mack"?

Top Highlights from "Mental Models 103" @ModernWisdomMe Podcast with @ChrisWillx

(THREAD)

What is a Mental Model?

"Metaphors, analogies, or just ways of taking principles from different disciplines and then trying to keep them in your own mental toolkit that you can apply."

— @george__mack

"If you think of your brain as the operating system, mental models are the different apps that you can install to give you functionality and to improve your decision making."

— @ChrisWillx paraphrasing @george__mack

On Leverage:

"The ability to do more with less."

— @george__mack (referencing how @peterthiel talks about technology)

On Human Efficiency:

A human alone isn’t the most efficient natural creature, but nothing is more efficient than a human on a bicycle.

"We humans are tool builders. We can fashion tools that amplify these inherent abilities that we have to spectacular magnitudes. For me, a computer has always been a bicycle of the mind."

— Steve Jobs

"So that’s how leverage works—by implementing tools because your natural abilities are augmented."

— @ChrisWillx paraphrasing @george__mack

4 Forms of Leverage from @naval (paraphrased by @george__mack):

1. People Leverage (e.g. employees)

2. Financial Leverage (e.g. money)

3. Code Leverage (e.g. Shopify)

4. Media Leverage (e.g. distribution to mass scale without extra work)

Mental Model — Multiplying by Zero:

Any amount multiplied by zero is zero.

"Try and avoid absolute ruin … try and avoid that multiplier by zero." — @george__mack (referencing @nntaleb)

"Mental fluency is associated with truthfulness, and that has such huge implications."

— @ChrisWillx

Mental Model — Linguistic Matrix / Linguistic Red Pill:

"How much of your reality is just shaped by the words that you have available, and the ability to then put placeholders on things?"

(e.g. the words "ego" and "entrepreneur" have many different meanings)

— @george__mack

"You go through your whole life with these words that have been given to you rather than try to create your own vocabulary based off what you’re seeing in reality. You’re always trying to outsource people to make words for you."

— @george__mack

"I learned more from '1984' about the way that I operate than I have from lots of personal development / self-development books."

— @ChrisWillx

"The ability to articulate words … is directly proportional to the quality of your thoughts."

— @ChrisWillx

"If you want better thoughts, you need a bigger vocabulary. The more words that you have at your disposal, genuinely the better the quality of your thoughts is going to be."

— @ChrisWillx

Try changing the word "life" to "time":

"If you’re doing a full-time job that you hate, it's actually a full-life job that you hate."

"Time is itself this weird proxy for the word life. It’s almost a lot more existentialist if you have to use the word life."

— @george__mack

Mental Model — Forcing Function:

"There’s some beauty to having restricted freedom." (e.g. deadlines)

"You're forced to do a certain thing or the pain of not doing it is way greater than the pain of doing it." (simple pleasure/pain incentives)

— @george__mack

Mental Model — Parkinson’s Law:

"Work expands to fill the time given for it." (e.g. why you procrastinate until the last minute)

"It forces you to focus on the minimum viable product." — @ChrisWillx

Mental Model — Global vs Local Maxima:

Local: Focusing on optimizing one specific variable.

Global: Looking at an objective perspective of the whole thing and then optimizing for that.

(e.g. see shipping container origin story of Malcom McLean)

— @george__mack

"Don’t just analyze the move, but analyze the thinking behind the move."

— @george__mack (paraphrasing Garry Kasparov on chess and life)

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, while in practice there is."

— Benjamin Brewster (often attributed to Yogi Berra)

Mental Model — @garyvee "Clouds & Dirt":

The cloud is the high-end (e.g. vision, principles, character).

The dirt is the low-end (e.g. specific tactical things).

Cut stuff in the middle.

"Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away the solution and you get the problem back. Sometimes the problem has mutated or disappeared. Often it is still there as strong as it ever was."

— Donald Kingsbury

"When you read anything that’s ancient but classic … you realize that the problems that you attribute as side-effects of the 21st century are just in-built parts of our nature that everyone’s been fighting with for forever."

— @ChrisWillx

"The opposite of a good idea can also be a good idea. Don’t design for average. It doesn’t pay to be logical if everyone else is being logical. The nature of our attention affects the nature of our experience."

— @rorysutherland

"The riskier option is often in taking no risks."

— @george__mack

"Your unique offering to this world is your power … By synthesizing (everything about yourself), that is your competitive advantage, that is how you move the needle in the world and in your own life."

— @ChrisWillx

"Stay weird."

— @george__mack