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- Newsletter Week 41 | 2021
Newsletter Week 41 | 2021
Courage, Mental Models, and Productivity
Hey there.I hope you've had a great week.
What I've Made For You
Book notes: Courage is Calling by Ryan HolidayFantastic book. I'm excited to read the entire series: courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom.
Mental Models
I have, for a long time now, been accumulating Mental Models.
A mental model is either an effective skill or knowledge structure that can be applied and adapted in various situations.
It is very much like an algorithm to solve a particular pattern of problems (problems similar in nature), although they may span a variety of fields.
I have previously shared some on this newsletter. Here are some more interesting ones.
What is elementary, worldly wisdom? Well, the first rule is that you can't really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang 'em back. If the facts don't hang together on a latticework of theory, you don't have them in a usable form. You've got to have models in your head. And you've got to array your experience — both vicarious and direct — on this latticework of models. You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and fail in life. You've got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head.
— Charlie Munger
Occam's Razor
If there are multiple, equally good explanations, the simplest one is usually the right one.
Hickam's Dictum
In a complex system, problems usually have more than one cause.People can have more than one disease at a time.
Gall's Law
Gall's Law states that all complex systems that work evolved from simpler systems.If you want to build a complex system that works, build a simpler system first, and then improve it over time.
The Map Is Not The Territory
This is not a mental model per se; it's more of a heuristic.
All models are wrong (but some are useful). If we are surprised by some occurrence, it is not the world that is weird, it's our view of it that is. Reality is reality; your perception is your perception.
I'd also like to share some articles with you that, if you found this interesting, you'd also find interesting:
Both sites are fantastic sources of information.
Opportunity Cost
You should keep opportunity cost in mind. Pursuing one thing means that you are choosing to not pursue another.By reading X, you choose not to read Y.
Improved task management
I've recently gone back to Todoist... again. While there are many features I still desire, Todoist is simply amazing at what it does.
The app allows for quick capture like no other system I've ever used. And as David Allen says in Getting Things Done:
Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.
Capturing ideas, tasks, and other to-dos have freed up much mental space for me. It allows me to have a greater focus, yet still know that I won't forget whichever idea I had while doing it. This reduces The Zeigarnik Effect (unfinished tasks clutter our mind), which really helps with freeing up capacity for the task at hand.
The natural language date input feature is also incredible. Our group has project work every Tuesday and Thursday, so I just told it to create a task for “every tuesday, thursday at 9 ending 2021-12-22”. Then it'll repeat every time we have group work until the project is delivered. Simply amazing.
Quote
True good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.
— Marcus Aurelius
To your success. Regards,
Christian Bager Bach Houmann