Introduction: Acquiring Wisdom

You're only as good as your tools.

It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.

-Charlie Munger

In life and business, the person with the fewest blind spots wins. Blind spots are the source of all poor decisions. Think about it: If you had perfect information, you would always make the best decision. In a poker game where you could see everyone's cards, you'd play your hand perfectly. You wouldn't make any mistakes.

Unfortunately, we have a lot of blind spots. And while we can't eliminate them, we can reduce them. Reducing blind spots means we see, interact with, and move closer to understanding reality. We think better. And thinking better is about finding simple processes that help us work through problems from multiple dimensions and perspectives, allowing us to better choose solutions that fit the objective. The skill behind finding the right solutions for the right problems is one form of wisdom.

This book is about the pursuit of that type of wisdom-the pursuit of uncovering how things work, the pursuit of going to bed smarter than when we woke up. It is a book about getting out of our own way so we can better understand how the world really is. Decisions based on improved understanding will be better than ones based on ignorance. While, inevitably, we can't predict which problems will crop up in life, we can learn time-tested ideas that help position us for whatever the world throws at us.

Perhaps more importantly, this book is about avoiding problems. This often comes down to understanding a problem accurately and seeing the secondary and subsequent consequences of any proposed action. The author and explorer of mental models Peter Bevelin put it best: "I don't want to be a great problem solver. I want to avoid problems-prevent them from happening and do it right from the beginning."

How can we do things right from the beginning?

We must understand how the world works and adjust our behavior accordingly. Contrary to what we're led to believe, thinking better isn't about being a genius. It is about the processes we use to uncover reality and the choices we make once we do.

How This Book Can Help You

This is the first of four volumes aimed at defining and exploring the Great Mental Models-those with the broadest utility across our lives.

Mental models describe the way the world works. They shape how we think, how we understand, and how we form beliefs. Largely subconscious, mental models operate below the surface. We're not generally aware of them, and yet when we look at a problem, they're the reason we consider some factors relevant and others irrelevant. They are how we infer causality, match patterns, and draw analogies. They are how we think and reason.

A mental model is a compression of how something works. Any idea, belief, or concept can be distilled down. Like maps, mental models reveal key information while ignoring the nonessential. For example, you likely have a useful idea about how inertia works, even though you don't know all the technical details.

Mental models help us better understand the world. While this might sound a bit academic, it's not. For example, velocity helps us understand that both speed and direction matter. Reciprocity helps us understand how going positive and going first gets the world to do most of the work for us. The idea of a margin of safety helps us understand that things don't always go as planned. Relativity shows us how a different perspective changes everything. The list goes on.

It doesn't matter what the model is or where it comes from-the question to ask yourself is whether it is useful. The world is not divided into distinct disciplines. For example, business professors won't discuss physics in their lectures, but they should. Velocity teaches us that going in the right direction matters more than how fast you go. Kinetic energy teaches us that your company's velocity matters more than its size when creating an impact in the market. Understanding and applying these insights helps you outperform your competition.

While it helps to think of each model as a map, collectively they act as lenses through which you can see the world. Each lens (model) offers a different perspective, revealing new information. Looking through one lens lets you see one thing, and looking through another reveals something different. Looking through them both reveals more than looking through each one individually.

Whether we realize it or not, mental models help us think at the subconscious level. They shape what we see, what we choose to ignore, and what we miss entirely. While there are millions of mental models, these volumes focus on the ones with the greatest utility-the all-star team of mental models.

Volume 1 presents the first nine models, which are general thinking concepts. Although these models are hiding in plain sight, they are useful tools that you likely were never directly taught. Put to proper use, they will improve your understanding of the world we live in and your ability to look at a situation through different lenses, each of which reveals a different layer. They can be used in a wide variety of situations and are essential to making rational decisions, even when there is no clear path. Collectively, they will allow you to walk around any problem in a three-dimensional way.

Our approach to the Great Mental Models rests on the idea that the fundamentals of knowledge are available to everyone. There is no discipline that is off-limits-the core ideas from all fields of study contain principles that reveal how the universe works and are therefore essential to navigating it. Our models come from fundamental disciplines that most of us have never studied, but no prior knowledge is required, only a sharp mind with a desire to learn.

Why Mental Models?

There is no system that can prepare us for all risks. Factors of chance introduce a level of complexity to any situation that is not entirely predictable. But being able to draw on a repertoire of timeless mental models can help us minimize risk by better understanding the forces that are at play. Likely consequences don't have to be a mystery.

Not having the ability to shift perspective by applying knowledge from multiple disciplines makes us vulnerable. Mistakes can become catastrophes whose effects keep compounding, creating stress and limiting our choices. Multidisciplinary thinking-learning these mental models and applying them across our lives-creates less stress and more freedom. The more we can draw on the diverse knowledge contained in these models, the more solutions will present themselves.

Understanding Reality

"Understanding reality" is a vague phrase, one you've already encountered a few times as you've read this book. Of course, we want to understand reality, but how do we do that? And why is it important?

In order to see a problem for what it is, we must first break it down into its substantive parts, so the interconnections can reveal themselves. This bottom-up perspective allows us to expose what we believe to be the causal relationships within the problem and determine how they will govern the situation both now and in the future. Being able to accurately describe the full scope of a situation is the first step to understanding it.

Using the lenses of our mental models helps us illuminate these interconnections. The more lenses used on a given problem, the more reality reveals itself. The more of reality we see, the fewer blind spots we have. The fewer blind spots we have, the better the options at our disposal.

Simple and well-defined problems won't need many lenses, as the variables that matter are known; so too are the interactions between them. In such cases, we generally know what to do to get the intended result with the fewest side effects possible. When problems are more complicated, however, the value of having a brain full of lenses becomes readily apparent.

That's not to say all lenses (or models) apply to all problems. They don't. And it's not to say that having more lenses (or models) will be an advantage in thinking through all problems; it won't. This is why learning and applying the Great Mental Models is a process that takes some work. But the truth is, most problems are multidimensional, and thus having more lenses often offers significant help with the problems we are facing.

Keeping Your Feet on the Ground

In Greek mythology, Antaeus was the human-giant son of Poseidon, god of the sea, and Gaia, Mother Earth. Antaeus had a strange habit: he would challenge all those who passed through his country to a wrestling match. As in wrestling today, the goal was to force the opponent to the ground. Antaeus always won, and his defeated opponents' skulls were used to build a temple to his father. While Antaeus was undefeated and nearly undefeatable, there was a catch to his invulnerability. His epic strength depended on constant contact with the earth; when he lost touch with the earth, he lost all his strength. The great hero lost to Heracles, who simply lifted him off the ground.

On the way to the Garden of the Hesperides, Heracles was to fight Antaeus as one of his twelve labors. After a few rounds in which Heracles flung the giant to the ground, only to watch him revive, he realized he could not win by using traditional wrestling techniques. Instead, Heracles fought to lift Antaeus off the ground. With the earthly connection broken, Antaeus was separated from the source of his power, causing him to lose his strength. From that point on, it was easy for Heracles to crush him.

When understanding is separated from reality, we lose our powers to make better decisions. Understanding must constantly be tested against reality and updated accordingly. This isn't a box we can tick, a task with a definite beginning and end, but rather a continuous process.

We all know the person who seems to have all the answers. They know how to fix all the problems at work, solve world hunger, and get in shape (if only they wanted to). If you don't test your ideas against the real world-if you don't keep contact with the earth-how can you be sure you understand it? While pontificating with friends over a bottle of wine at dinner can be fun, the only way you'll know the extent to which you understand reality is to put your ideas into action.

Getting in Our Own Way

The biggest barrier to learning from the world is ourselves. It's hard to understand a system that we are part of because we have blind spots, where we can't see what we aren't looking for and don't notice what we don't notice.

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish, swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?"

-David Foster Wallace

Our failures to update our mental models as we interact with the world spring primarily from three factors: not having the right perspective or vantage point, ego-induced denial, and distance from the consequences of our decisions. As we will learn in greater detail throughout these volumes on mental models, all of these can get in the way. They make it easier to keep our existing and flawed beliefs than to update them accordingly. Let's briefly flesh out these flaws:

The first flaw is failure of perspective. We have a hard time seeing any system that we are a part of. We think our angle of perception is the right one and the only one.

Galileo had a great analogy to describe the limits of our default perspective: Imagine you are on a ship that has reached constant velocity (meaning there is no change in speed or direction). You are belowdecks, and there are no portholes. You drop a ball from your raised hand to the floor. To you, it looks as if the ball is dropping straight down, thereby confirming gravity is at work.

Now imagine you are a fish (with special X-ray vision) and you are watching this ship go past. You see the scientist inside, dropping a ball. You register the vertical change in the position of the ball. But you are also able to see a horizontal change. As the ball was pulled down by gravity, it also shifted its position eastward by about twenty feet. The ship moved through the water, and therefore so did the ball. The scientist onboard, with no external point of reference, was not able to perceive this horizontal shift.

This analogy shows us the limits of our perception. If we truly want to understand the results of our actions, we must be open to other perspectives. Allowing for other perspectives is also key to having productive relationships with others.

The second flaw is ego-the part of us that's afraid and always in competition. The ego is easily triggered and never feels satiated. Many of us tend to have too much invested in our opinion of ourselves to see the world's feedback-the feedback we need to update our beliefs about reality. This creates a profound ignorance that keeps us repeatedly banging our heads against the wall. Our inability to learn from the world because of our ego arises for many reasons, but two are worth mentioning here. First, we're often so afraid of what others will say about us that we fail to put our ideas out there and subject them to criticism; this way, we can always be right. Second, if we do put our ideas out there, and they're criticized, our ego steps in to protect us-we become invested in defending, instead of upgrading, our ideas. This is antithetical to growth.

The third flaw is distance. The further we are from the results of our decisions, the easier it is to maintain our current views rather than update them. When you put your hand on a hot stove, you quickly learn the natural consequence of doing so. You pay the price for your mistake. Since you are a pain-avoiding creature, you instantly update your knowledge. Before you touch another stove, you check to see if it's hot. But you don't just learn a micro lesson that applies in one situation. Instead, you draw a generalization, one that tells you to check before touching anything that could potentially be hot.

Large organizations often remove us from the direct consequences of our decisions. When we make decisions that other people carry out, we are one or more levels removed from their consequences and may not immediately be able to update our understanding-we come a little off the ground, if you will. The further we are from the feedback on our decisions, the easier it is to convince ourselves that we are right and avoid the challenge, the pain, of updating our views.