Useful Thinking Frameworks and Mental Models
Exploring frameworks in their context.
If you subscribe to Shane Parrish's Farnam Street newsletter, you are likely familiar with his fascination with mental models. In fact, in 2019 he started publishing The Great Mental Models, which now runs four volumes.
I've been fascinated with ideas and mental models, too, but I collect them in a different way: in my Brain, slowly, building context over time. Here's what I've curated over some 27 years:
Here's a Brain Tour that follows everything I clicked on in my Brain in the video above. You should be able to go off-roading at any point (say by clicking on "Laws" when you get to Goodhart's Law), then get back to the Tour.
If you want to work without a net, here's a direct link to Useful Thinking Frameworks and Mental Models in my Brain. Aaaand here's what that map looks like, trapped on this page:
TheBrain software records some metadata, so I know when I added or modified each Thought in my Brain. For example, I didn't create the big collective thought Useful Thinking Frameworks until October 2015, but I added many of the models now under before that. For example, I added the OODA Loop in 2004 and the Cynefin framework in 2008. Russ Ackoff's Idealized Redesign went in way back in 1998, very early in my use of TheBrain.
Then in 2015, I apparently had the idea to create the larger topic umbrella of Useful Thinking Frameworks. That led to my curating the different Thoughts that fit that theme, wherever they were tucked away in my Brain, and connecting them to the new hub Thought. Nowadays that thought is a notable landmark in my Brain(s), so I always know to connect new, relevant things to it.
Knowledge should accumulate
This is what happens when knowledge accumulates, as I believe it is meant to. Alas, we usually fail to do so. Most of our writings are ephemeral and disconnected. Even when we write things that are more permanent online, they are lightly woven into the broader context.
This has civilizational consequences. We Are an Amnesic Society.
Alas, this exploration in my Brain is only an example of one person's knowledge accumulating over time. The process is more powerful when groups do it, but that's challenging at the moment — and of course a topic for future posts.
I'd love to know what thinking frameworks and models you prefer and what models I've missed, how I might arrange these differently, and what stories you might tell around these items. And if anyone undertakes a systematic comparison of my Brain's links and Shane's books' contents: wow!
This article is cross-posted on Substack here, Medium here and LinkedIn here. It's also here in my Brain.