Shane Parrish – August 2025

Alright, question one. What’s the one mental model or thinking framework that you found most leaders completely misunderstand or misapply even when they think they’re using it correctly? (JP) It’s a bit of a complicated question in a way.

I think what tends to happen is a bit of domain dependence, and so people can see a model in one way and then they don’t see it in another way. I’ll give you an example of that because it’ll make it more tangible for everybody. I think of inversion as a great example of this. Most people think about this in a purely domain way. They think about it at work, what are the things we want to avoid with this project, but not necessarily at home or in life. So for example, they’ll fire people who are maybe bad for business or not living up to the standard that they have, but they’ll keep people in their personal lives who are bad for their lives or people who have habits that they don’t want to have or people who are on a different path than they’re on. One of the questions I always ask my kids, I think for some of you who are parents, you can’t really tell your kids not to hang out with somebody because the minute you do that, what the kids hear is that you don’t trust them.