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Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out
Becoming a better thinker means understanding the way you think and developing a way of approaching problems that allows you to see things from multiple lenses. These lenses, or mental models, are built on the foundations of physics, …
Memories are the stories that we tell ourselves about the past. Sometimes they adjust and leave things out. In an interesting passage in Think: Why You Should Question Everything, Guy P. Harrison talks about the fallibility of memory. Did …
I’ll elaborate on this below but here are the contrasts between good organizations and bad ones. Which one do you work for? In good organizations people can focus on the work and not office politics. They trust that if they do their …
The most powerful skill we’re never taught is deciding what to ignore. Someone who can concentrate on what truly matters will achieve more than someone who can’t. When everything seems equally important, we waste precious time …
Unlock the power of persuasion with these ten golden rules of argument. Arguments are deceptively difficult. We often believe that presenting facts will logically lead others to our conclusions. But when was the last time someone changed …
The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload, a book by Daniel Levitin, has an interesting section on cognitive overload. Each day we are confronted with hundreds, probably thousands of decisions. Most of which …
The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload, a book by Daniel Levitin, explores “how humans have coped with information and organization from the beginning of civilization. … It’s also the story of how the …
A lot of our day is spent trying to convince people of something. To do this we often make arguments as to why our product or service is better, or, more commonly why our own opinion is right and yours is wrong. But few of us understand the …
What kind of thinking leads to better outcomes? That’s the question that Roger Martin addresses in his excellent book Diaminds: Decoding the Mental Habits of Successful Thinkers. Changing how we think isn’t easy, though. The …
Harold Macmillan beautifully describes the fragility of human memory in the foreword to Geoffrey Madan’s Notebooks, an early 1980s commonplace book. Those of us who have reached extreme old age become gradually reconciled to …
Israeli-American psychologist and Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman is the founding father of modern behavioral economics. His work has influenced how we see thinking, decisions, risk, and even happiness. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, his …
One of the five simple notions to solve problems is the concept of inversion. To solve problems we need to look at them both forward and backward. But how does this look in practice? Let me give you an example that Charlie Munger gave …
In 1996, Charlie Munger gave a talk titled Practical Thought about Practical Thought, where he explained the success of Coca-Cola using the simplest, most fundamental mental models he could find. Ideas from the physical world, biology, …
The path to success often comes through avoiding major mistakes rather than pursuing brilliant moves. This isn’t about being passive – it’s about being thoughtful and disciplined about where and how you compete. Success …
Sebastian Garcia made a mistake, but he couldn’t figure it out. At the 2011 National Junior High Chess Championship, he was looking strong and heading towards a victory. Then he made a mistake, squandering his advantage. A few moves …
A fantastic list of 11 rules from some of history’s greatest minds. These are Prospero’s Precepts and they are found in AKA Shakespeare: A Scientific Approach to the Authorship Question: All beliefs in whatever realm are theories at some …
When was the last time reading the news made you wiser? Not more informed – wiser. We stuff ourselves with headlines and updates, believing that more information makes us smarter. Yet this daily flood of news does the opposite: the …
Keeping a notebook or diary is easy to dismiss. I often hear people tell me that it’s OK for other people, but it’s not for them. I always find this stance curious as the habit of keeping a notebook is common amongst exceptional …
We’ve all heard of Parkinson’s Law — “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” I bet you’ve lived this. After all, who hasn’t sat in an hour-long meeting that really ended after …
Via Seeing What Others Don’t: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights (Kindle) To improve performance, we need to do two things. The down arrow is what we have to reduce, errors. The up arrow is what we have to increase, insights. …
Rolf Dobelli’s book, The Art of Thinking Clearly, is a compendium of systematic errors in decision making. While the list of fallacies is not complete, it’s a great launching pad into the best of what others have already figured …
Peter Bevelin‘s first book, Seeking Wisdom from Darwin to Munger, is one of the best books you’ve probably never heard of. He’s just released another book, A Few Lessons from Sherlock Holmes (Kindle), aimed at those who …
Do you want to come up with more imaginative ideas? Do you stumble with complicated problems? Do you want to find new ways to confront challenges? Of course, you do. So do I. But when is the last time you thought about how you think? Do you …
What can we learn from those near the end of their lives about living today? Karl Pillemer wrote 30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans to provide us with practical advice about how to make the most out of …