The Great Mental Models, Volume Two – by Shane Parrish (Farnam Street)
Recommendation: 9/10. Date read: 1/18/21.
The Great Mental Models series by Farnam Street blows me away. The second book in this series focuses on the hard sciences including chemistry, biology, and physics. They do a tremendous job articulating the laws and models in a way that makes sense for those without a Ph.D. And rather than simply stating the law and sticking with the abstract, they translate how it applies to situations in your everyday life. They explain how laws of reciprocity translate to relationships, the ways in which inertia requires us to overcome the allure of what’s easy, and how an ecosystem translates to the most effective, creative, and collaborative working cultures.
See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.
My Notes:
Relativity:
“The limits of perspective are fundamental to how the world works. Considering multiple perspectives is the best chance we have to understand what is really going on.”
“What matters is understanding the complexity and value of multiple perspectives. No one sees it all. Multiple perspectives layered together reduce blind spots and offer us a more textured and truer sense of the underlying reality.”
Reciprocity:
Life is an iterative and compounding game…it pays to go positive and go first.
“The more people you help, the more people you will have willing to help you.”
“If you want people to be thoughtful and kind, be thoughtful and kind. If you want people to listen to you, listen to them. The best way to achieve success is to deserve success.”
Thermodynamics:
First law of thermodynamics: energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be transferred or changed from one form to another. Consider how this applies in death.
“Entropy reminds us that energy is required to maintain order. You need to anticipate things falling apart and focus on prevention.”
Exposure: “Mixing cultures gives them common ground. We move toward social equilibrium when we share ideas and values that have the same foundations.”
“Art is born out of as well as encapsulates the continuing battle between order and chaos. It seeks order or form, even when portraying anarchy.” John Yorke
Storytelling: “Every act of perception is an attempt to impose order, to make sense of a chaotic universe.”
Inertia:
“We stay at jobs we hate, avoid meaningful conversations with people of different opinions, and almost never change the religion our parents imposed on us at birth. All because it is easier to stay on our current path, however stagnant and unfulfilling it might be.”
Amount of effort required to change a habit is greater proportional to the length of time we’ve had it. This applies to both good habits and bad habits. Once you’ve established decades of good habits, it compounds and becomes difficult to stop your own success. The same applies in the opposite direction.
Velocity:
Direction > speed
“If a man does not know to what port he is steering, no wind is favorable to him.” Seneca
Alloying:
Stacking skills is a force multiplier: “Alloying is about increasing strength through the combination of elements.”
Evolution:
“On the human timescale, adaptability is about recognizing when the way you have done things in the past is becoming less and less successful in a changing environment.”
What got you here won’t keep you here or allow you to get to the next level. Personal growth is a lifelong effort and requires taking new risks: “You can’t stop adapting, because no one around you is stopping…Staying the same as we are often means falling behind.”
“Success is measured by persistence.” Geerat Vermeij
Experimentation for its own sake matters: “We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity.” Marie Curie
Antifragile: “Complacency will kill you. However, it’s not strength that survives, but adaptability. Strength becomes rigidity…Real success comes from being flexible enough to change, to let go of what worked in the past, and to focus on what you need to thrive in the future.”
Ecosystem:
Culture = the key to perseverance. Bill Walsh leading the 49ers: “Walsh recognized that a football organization’s culture is ultimately the system that will determine if a team can sustain the effort needed to win a championship.” Walsh believed, “everyone has a role, and every role is essential.” But they all had to be pointing in the same direction.
“The stronger and more resilient a system, the easier it can adapt and bounce back.” For Walsh it wasn’t about superstars or certain formations, “It was about building a culture that could be flexible in effectively responding to ever-changing environmental pressure.”
Self-preservation:
“Freeze mode usually takes over when the accumulation of stressors is so great that we can no longer really function.”
Man’s search for meaning: “For humans, survival is not merely a binary like dead/alive. We don’t want to just continue breathing, but to have a life that we perceive as having meaning, value, or at least a point.”
Replication:
Commander’s intent: “Sharing the information necessary to empower subordinate commanders on the scene.” Too rigid and the person doing the work can’t adapt and innovate to execute against the strategy when circumstances change. Encourages troops to consider the why behind an order and the underlying strategy.
Four elements of commander’s intent: formulate, communicate, interpret, and implement. The first two are the responsibilities of the senior commander. The second two are the responsibilities of the subordinate commander.
Commander’s must consider four criteria:
Explain the rationale (the why): vision + strategy
Establish operational limits: constraints
Get feedback often: listen and learn
Recognize individual differences: leverage individual strengths
Incentives:
“Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.” Charlie Munger
“An incentive is a bullet, a key: an often-tiny object with astonishing power to change a situation.” Stephen D. Levitt
Least effort principle:
“Change is costly for most organisms. It can be easier to keep doing whatever has guaranteed their survival so far than to try something new that might fail and waste energy or endanger them. The instinct to minimize energy output can lead us to be resistant to change or risk-taking. “
Default thinking tendencies (aka heuristics): “Using this model as a lens helps us better understand our default thinking tendencies, and how our patterns of movement impact our physical environments.”