Mental Models
Decision and reasoning frameworks — thinking tools you can reuse across problems.
Mental model
Circle of Competence
Know the boundary of what you actually understand — and operate inside it.
Mental modelCompounding
Small gains that build on themselves grow slowly, then astonishingly fast.
Mental modelFirst-Principles Thinking
Break a problem down to what you know is true, then reason up from there.
Mental modelInversion
Solve a problem by asking how to guarantee the opposite of what you want — then avoid that.
Mental modelMargin of Safety
Build in a buffer so that being wrong — and you will be — doesn't ruin you.
Mental modelOpportunity Cost
The true cost of any choice is the best alternative you gave up to make it.
Mental modelSecond-Order Thinking
Ask "and then what?" — trace the consequences of your consequences before you act.
Mental modelThe Map Is Not the Territory
Every model is a simplification of reality — useful, but never the thing itself.