You make decisions on a daily basis about your career, family, friendships, health and investments; these choices shape your life.
But how much have you thought about how to think?
There are common threads and collective wisdom across disciplines. These common threads create mental models, which are frameworks for understanding the world. Mental models allow us to apply insights from a variety of unrelated fields, using reasoning by analogy to make better choices about our lives.
For example:
Critical mass is a concept from physics that can be applied to our understanding of microeconomics or entrepreneurship.
The availability heuristic and filter bubble are concepts that we can use to check in with ourselves whenever we’re assessing risk in our businesses, careers or personal safety.
Loss aversion and information aversion are notions that, when articulated, allow us to understand why we hesitate to learn more about investing during recessions.
Mental models can make us better thinkers. Warren Buffett’s business partner, Charlie Munger, says he relies on mental models to evaluate businesses and make investing choices.
What we know is that we’ll never be right. But mental models can help us become less wrong.
On today’s episode, Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann join us to discuss Super Thinking, their book about how to use mental models to improve the skill of thinking.
Enjoy!
Resources Mentioned:
- Super Thinking, by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann
Thanks to our sponsors!
Radius Bank
Do you want your money to make more money? Then check out Radius Bank’s free high-interest checking account. You earn 1.00% APY on balances of $2,500 and up. There are free ATM’s worldwide, no monthly fees, and they’ll rebate ATM fees charged by other banks! To get started, head over to radiusbank.com/paula.
Policygenius
Policygenius is the easy way to get life insurance. In minutes, you can compare quotes from top insurers to find the coverage you need, at a price you can afford. No matter how much – or how little – you know about life insurance, you can find the right policy at Policygenius.
Lumen5
Think your business might benefit from video, but have no clue how to go about producing a video? Lumen5 makes creating beautiful videos for your business simple. Sign up for a free account at lumen5.com/paula and get 50% off your first month on any of the paid plans.
Rothy’s are great for travel!
Rothy’s shoes are stylish, sustainable, and comfortable for every day wear, anywhere. They come in four styles, their lineup is updated often, and I love that they make flats from recycled plastic water bottles! If you want to order a pair, go to rothys.com/paula.
Jenna
Re: Getting someone’s biography vs. asking them what you should do –
Sometimes you get really low quality answers when you just ask what you should do. When I was transitioning into my current industry, I asked the question “What should I do to transition into this field? What should I do to get better in this field?” I would get low quality answers like “I just read a lot!”
I find it useful to ask both questions. I can draw my own conclusions about the patterns that overlap in their journey to success, and also make my own conclusions about the special circumstances that led to their success over others. By asking “what should I do?”, I also get some ideas about new directions and new things that are working.
Brittany Young
Great episode- I wonder if the book has many visual inputs/ examples of some of the listing techniques, such that you need a hard copy to fully understand, or if the audiobook is useful as well?
Allison
Would have loved to hear more from Lauren in this episode. Gabriel was clearly dominating the conversation by jumping in to answer so quickly. Maybe share the interview with your co-author?
Amanda
I was hoping to download this to have my students listen to an excerpt of this interview for class but when I click the download button it gives me a download error saying “source file could not be read.” I’ve tried a couple different browsers and both mac and PC operating platforms and it seems this file is unreadable? Are others having this problem?
Erin @ Team Afford Anything
Hi Amanda – I was able to download it on a Macbook using Chrome. I’m not sure if there was a bug with the system yesterday, but I’m not able to test it on any other browsers as I’m away from my office. I’ll email you the file so that you can share it with your students!