Mental Models for Career Changes
Career changes are some of the biggest moves we will ever make, but they don’t have to be daunting. Using mental models to make decisions we determine where we want to go and how to get there. The …
Mental Models
Mental Models For a Pandemic
Mental models help us understand the world better, something which is especially valuable during times of confusion, like a pandemic. Here’s how to apply mental models to gain a more accurate picture …
Using Models to Stay Calm in Charged Situations
When polarizing topics are discussed in meetings, passions can run high and cloud our judgment. Learn how mental models can help you see clearly from this real-life scenario. *** Mental models can …
Prisoner’s Dilemma: What Game Are you Playing?
In this classic game theory experiment, you must decide: rat out another for personal benefit, or cooperate? The answer may be more complicated than you think. *** What does it take to make people …
How to Use Occam’s Razor Without Getting Cut
Occam’s razor is one of the most useful, (yet misunderstood,) models in your mental toolbox to solve problems more quickly and efficiently. Here’s how to use it. *** Occam’s razor (also known as the …
Externalities: Why We Can Never Do “One Thing”
No action exists in a vacuum. There are ripples that have consequences that we can and can’t see. Here are the three types of externalities that can help us guide our actions so they don’t come back …
Poker, Speeding Tickets, and Expected Value: Making Decisions in an Uncertain World
You can train your brain to think like CEOs, professional poker players, investors, and others who make tricky decisions in an uncertain world by weighing probabilities. All decisions involve …
Understanding the Limitations of Maps
Maps are flawed but useful. For instance, we can leverage the experiences of others to help us navigate through territories that are, to us, new and unknown. We just have to understand and respect the …
Scientific Concepts We All Ought To Know
John Brockman’s online scientific roundtable Edge.org does something fantastic every year: It asks all of its contributors (hundreds of them) to answer one meaningful question. …
Friedrich Nietzsche on Making Something Worthwhile of Ourselves
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) explored many subjects, perhaps the most important was himself. A Farnam Street member directed me to the passage below, written by Richard Schacht in the introduction …
Blog Posts, Book Reviews, and Abstracts: On Shallowness
We’re quite glad that you read Farnam Street, and we hope we’re always offering you a massive amount of value. (If not, email us and tell us what we can do more effectively.) But there’s a message all …
Charlie Munger on Getting Rich, Wisdom, Focus, Fake Knowledge and More
“In the chronicles of American financial history,” writes David Clark in The Tao of Charlie Munger: A Compilation of Quotes from Berkshire Hathaway’s Vice Chairman on Life, Business, …
The Green Lumber Fallacy: The Difference between Talking and Doing
“All that glitters is not gold,” the saying goes. The aesthetics of things often fool us. People we call ignorant might not be ignorant. People we call smart might not be smart. The Green …
Using Multidisciplinary Thinking to Approach Problems in a Complex World
Complex outcomes in human systems are a tough nut to crack when it comes to deciding what’s really true. Any phenomena we might try to explain will have a host of competing theories, many of …
What Are You Doing About It? Reaching Deep Fluency with Mental Models
The mental models approach is very intellectually appealing, almost seductive to a certain type of person. (It certainly is for us.) The whole idea is to take the world’s greatest, most useful …
Bias from Disliking/Hating
(This is a follow-up to our post on the Bias from Liking/Loving, which you can find here.) Think of a cat snarling and spitting, lashing with its tail and standing with its back curved. Her pulse is …