Mental Models: Organizing Knowledge So It Empowers You and Guides You

“You’ve got to have models in your head. … You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head. … the first rule is that you’ve got to have multiple models—because if you just have one or two … the nature of human psychology is such that you’ll torture reality so that it fits your models.”

— Charlie Munger, Vice-Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway.[efn_note]From his 1994 talk at USC Business School entitled “A Lesson in Elementary Wordly Wisdom.”[/efn_note]

“Our view of reality is like a map with which to negotiate the terrain of life. If the map is true and accurate … and if we have decided where we want to go, we will generally know how to get there. If the map is false and inaccurate, we generally will be lost.”

— Psychiatrist and author M. Scott Peck, from The Road Less Travelled.[efn_note]CHECK that this is the source.[/efn_note]

What Is a Mental Model?

You Already Use Them. But You Were Likely Never Taught How, Nor How to Build Good Ones.

Mental models are a lot like maps. When you navigate roads and streets, you use a map. Imagine travelling to a new city today and not using an app like Google maps. The app gives you an instant visual of the roads in the city and the highways how to get there. The visual is of course is a depiction of the roads and streets, not the actual city and highways themselves. When you look at the map, it gives you an instant mental model of how to navigate that reality.

You similarly use a kind of map or mental model when you navigate other aspects of life and reality. Imagine that you have to make a really important decision. A mental model for decisions would effectively give you a map for how to navigate the key factors you ought to look at in order to arrive at your destination: a good decision.

Suppose, for example, that you have to make a decision about whether to take a new job, or start a new relationship, or make a big investment. How do you make your decision? Do you have an organized method? Do you just pull out one of those Pros vs Cons lists and jot down ideas?

If you do have a method, how good is it? Has it been tested? Does it evaluate the right factors? Does it have any factors or do you just go by gut feeling?

Most of us never got taught how to make decisions. The industrial model of education certainly didn’t cover this. In short, we weren’t taught how to develop a sound mental model for how to make decisions.

[Oct 15: Idea from o/n. Use the metaphor and analogy of using Google maps … it gives you an instant model of the roads in your city or the highway you’re travelling. It quite literally is a map. That map is not the actual city or highways. It’s a depiction of the city or highways. [OCT 24: Done. This is now in the above first para.]

Even before Google maps, we used written maps for hundreds of years. To navigate the real world, we need a map.

The same is true when navigating other aspects of the real world.

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The Problem: ‘If All You Have is a Hammer, Everything Looks Like a Nail.‘

[OCT 25: BASIC IDEA: YOU NEED TO make a great link asap with the work on Organizational Change … and the 4-Phase Model … and the EBOOK now for sale.

It would make sense to start doing that HERE … by giving an EXAMPLE of a good mental model.

Eg. What’s an Example of a Mental Model? … Example … what do you currently think about when facing the need to bring about a major change in your organization? The traditional approach in the 20th century was one of two options: try to wing it, or call in the change experts.

But the results even then were usually abysmal. Companies that tried to wing it typically failed to change. And even many organizations that brought in expensive change experts failed as well.