I have always had a vague recollection of mental models, perhaps on thinking about HOW to think.

Recently, I was pointed to a book, called The Great Mental Models by Shane Perris , and it put into words the vague recollection and grasp I had on mental models, which I relied on reflexivly and intuitively.

I find it, often, its hard to think! You are lost in the details, and consequences of your decision and the follow up actions. I have to get away from these compunding factors to think clearly about the problem or task at hand.

I realize, I often fall back on first principal thinking, but in reality that's only one way of many, in how to approach a problem, and other models may work better to certain situations.

The models:

• Inversion Principal

• Always invert

• First Principals

• What is the thing you can't reduce?

• 2nd (and perhaps, third) order affects

• What are the affects of ths your action, and what are the affects of those affects?

• Circle of Confidence

• Probablistic Thinking

• Occam's razor

• Simplest systems, with the least moving parts, are the most likely to be true

• Hanlon's razor

• Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity

• Thought Experiments

• The Map is not the Territory

• Our representations (maps, models, words, beliefs) of reality are not reality itself (the territory); they are simplifications that can be useful but are incomplete and can lead to errors if mistaken for the complex, actual world

I am going to be writing more in depth about this.