Mental Models, to use Daily

A mental model is a term people use to recall a specific behaviour, framework or heuristic.

So, even when we think we are not following a mental model, we are subconsciously following one! To make mental models work for us, we need to replace the ones that harm us with the ones that can make things reproducible.

Two people, who made mental models, mainstream are?Shane Parrish?via his?blog?(must read!) and?Charlie Munger?via his?USC Commencement Address?(must see!)

I first heard about Mental Models while listening to the commencement speech. It took me down the rabbit hole of how to incorporate them into my daily life to make better decisions.

Here are the 5 Mental Models I use daily to reduce my cognitive load

5 minute Principle

When too many things are swirling in my brain at the same time, I tend to dump them on a list, to free up my mental bandwidth. It helps at the time but creates a demon in the form of a long to-do list, which creates an overwhelming sensation of things not being achieved in life.

5 minutes helps avoid this challenge. Now whenever I think of doing something and feel it can be done in 3 to 5 minutes,?I do it right away. Examples of such tasks could be following up on an item on Slack or responding to a couple of starred e-mails.

This makes sure that I do not have an overwhelming to-list at the end of the day to tackle.

Invert, always invert

People who know me, also know that I am a huge fan of inversion as a mental model. The premise of inversion is simple: often, by considering what we want to avoid rather than what we want to get, we come up with better solutions.

It is like Munger says

“All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there”

Inversion is at its core forces us to avoid stupidity, yet at the same time able to challenge our?fast brain.

Occam’s Razor

Also known as a Principle of Parsimony, Occam’s Razor is a problem-solving heuristic. It is often used to select competing explanations.

Occam’s razor states that we should prefer the simplest explanation with the least moving parts, the one which is easier to falsify, easier to understand, and more likely, to be correct.

This framework is not a law but a mindset

If all else is equal, it’s more likely that the simple solution suffices.

Or as Einstein would say “an idea should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

Occam’s razor helps in reducing my cognitive load during the time of making decisions with insufficient information.

Hanlon’s Razor

Hanlon’s Razor is named after Robert J. Hanlon, who submitted this to a joke book. It is said to be inspired by Occam's razor.

Hanlon Razor states that we should not attribute to malice something which can be more easily explained by stupidity

Hanlon’s Razor is in my daily tool kit because, in a complex world, it helps me avoid extreme paranoia by accepting the fact that mistakes are only human.

Applying Hanlon’s razor helps my mind default to the fact that if a mistake has happened, it is not knowingly, but by lethargy or misunderstanding. It helps me move faster and not linger on a human fallacy.

Minimise opportunity costs

Opportunity cost is the tradeoff we make when we make a choice. All our lives, whenever we make a choice to spend our time or money or resources, we are making a choice to not spend these resources elsewhere.

We live in the world of trade-offs

Opportunity Cost is calculated as:

Opportunity Cost = Value of the (Forgone Option — Chosen Option)

The key is to minimise the above cost.

To do that, we should stay focused on the task which gives us the highest leverage, instead of focusing on too many tasks at the same time.

Doing too many things may make us feel productive but will not move the needle if they are not minimising the opportunity costs.

These are the mental models I use daily to reduce my cognitive bias. What did you find most effective amongst them? I’d love to hear them.

-----

Originally published at ankurdinesh.medium.com