Browse all entries
Every published model, bias and explainer — cross-linked and cited.
Anchoring
The first number you see quietly drags every later estimate towards it.
Read entry → Cognitive biasAvailability Heuristic
We judge how likely something is by how easily examples come to mind.
Read entry → Mental modelCircle of Competence
Know the boundary of what you actually understand — and operate inside it.
Read entry → Mental modelCompounding
Small gains that build on themselves grow slowly, then astonishingly fast.
Read entry → Cognitive biasConfirmation Bias
We seek, favour and remember evidence that fits what we already believe.
Read entry → Cognitive biasDunning–Kruger Effect
The less skilled we are at something, the more we tend to overrate our skill at it.
Read entry → Mental modelFirst-Principles Thinking
Break a problem down to what you know is true, then reason up from there.
Read entry → How to thinkHow to Think About Decisions Under Uncertainty
Judge decisions by the quality of the process, not the outcome — and think in probabilities, not certainties.
Read entry → How to thinkHow to Think About Incentives
To predict behaviour, look at what people are rewarded for — not what they say.
Read entry → How to thinkHow to Think About Risk
Separate the probability of an outcome from the size of its consequences — and respect ruin.
Read entry → Mental modelInversion
Solve a problem by asking how to guarantee the opposite of what you want — then avoid that.
Read entry → Cognitive biasLoss Aversion
A loss hurts about twice as much as an equivalent gain feels good.
Read entry → Mental modelMargin of Safety
Build in a buffer so that being wrong — and you will be — doesn't ruin you.
Read entry → Mental modelOpportunity Cost
The true cost of any choice is the best alternative you gave up to make it.
Read entry → Mental modelSecond-Order Thinking
Ask "and then what?" — trace the consequences of your consequences before you act.
Read entry → Cognitive biasSunk-Cost Fallacy
Continuing something because of what you've already spent, not what it's now worth.
Read entry → Cognitive biasSurvivorship Bias
Judging from the winners you can see, while the losers who'd change the story are invisible.
Read entry → Mental modelThe Map Is Not the Territory
Every model is a simplification of reality — useful, but never the thing itself.
Read entry →