Announcement: Mental Models for Busy Professionals 🧠

Wisdom Letter #135

Hello and welcome to The Wisdom Project, a noise-canceling filter for your mind.

This is Wisdom Letter #135, today we are talking about mental models for busy professionals.

If you’re new, consider signing up for weekly wisdom letters.

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Why Mental Models matter 🧠

The best in the world are not the ones who know the facts and figures, but those who can make sense of them to improve their perspective and subsequently their decision making.

Mental models are how we make sense of what we see and observe.

They are the lens through which we observe the world.

If you want to see something clearly, you need to get a better lens.

But the lens you use will depend on the object you want to see:

• A telescope to look at the stars

• A microscope to look at microorganisms.

• And a lens for everything in between.

Mental models are like that.

They are the lens through which you look at the world.

Depending on the problem you want to solve, or the decision you want to take, you will need to use a specific mental model.

With that in mind, we have an important announcement today:

Most of the content around mental models is geek-speak - meant for wall street and not for the man on the street.

Making sense of all of that heavy content is too consuming.

Not everyone has that kind of time in today’s world.

This is the problem we are attempting by writing a book about mental models ourselves.

It is simple, crisp, and to the point.

And it will cover the most essential mental models busy folks need to know to make 10X better decisions in life.

The book is called - Mental Models for Busy Professionals.

Mental models that will help you make better decisions in the areas that matter - Health, wealth, and relationships.

Check it out, you can pay whatever you want to get it 👇

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Recommendations

Staying on the theme of mental models, we have 2 recommendations for you this week.

First Principles Thinking

If you are making something new, the first principle method is your best friend.

You are required to question everything that is considered “common knowledge” and derive it from the fundamentals.

This is how Elon Musk made SpaceX and Tesla, and this is how you can build your next product.

Watch and learn:

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Psychology of Human Misjudgment

Aditi • Mental Models @Hi_Aadi

Trying to be less dumb every day is a better goal than being smarter every day.

Knowing about our biases and what leads to poor decisions is the most effective way to avoid them in the future.

You don’t have to be an expert in behavioral psychology to know about these biases.

Charlie Munger’s famous speech - “Psychology of Human Misjudgement” is a good primer on common biases that we suffer as humans.

With simple examples, this is a piece that we should read over and over again.

Once we start seeing through our biases, we are less likely to misjudge.

Here is a short video on the speech (watch with captions for better clarity)

Read the full transcript of the speech here -

Psychology of human misjudgment

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Tweets to make you think 🤔

Ayush 🙏 @ayushtweetshere

I never suffer from writer's block. This 3 part system makes sure that I always have interesting ideas to write about: 1. Consuming a lot 2. A note-taking system that works. 3. The transformations in my life. Let's break it down:

Ayush 🙏 @ayushtweetshere

Have you seen a vegetable?🥔 It grows and grows and grows until it rots and dies. Vegetables don't make mistakes coz they don't do anything. Make some mistakes, do stuff, don't be a vegetable.

Ayush 🙏 @ayushtweetshere

The real question today isn't if something can be built or not. The real question is - is something worth building or not? Does it satisfy your curiosity? Does it solves someone's problem? Does it have the potential to make you money?

Aditi • Mental Models @Hi_Aadi

People who brag about their strong desire to learn are often not learning anything at all. They are not looking for learning, they are looking for proof that shows them as a learner. - An expensive degree/course - Stack of books - Good read challenges Etc

Ayush 🙏 @ayushtweetshere

What's the best advice someone has given you?

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This Week that year:

• Have you heard of Survivorship Bias? Some ways it's holding you back - A Short Primer | Wisdom Letter #83

• Pearls of Wisdom - 3 | Wisdom Letter #31

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Cheers,

Aditi & Ayush

PS: