The Importance of Building Mental Models and How to Do It

I’m currently re-reading The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman. I’ve read the book years ago, but I recently felt the need to read it again. The book summarizes important principles for businesses that it calls “mental models”. The term “mental model” was popularized by Charlie Munger, the investment partner of Warren Buffett. In short, mental models are the frameworks that you use to understand the world. Your mental model of something is your understanding of how it works. Based on that understanding, you can then make decisions. Here is why building mental models is important: With good mental models, you can have an accurate understanding of a situation and make the right decisions. It’s an important thing to have, isn’t it? But building mental models isn’t something that you can do just once and then be done with it. Instead, it’s something that you need to do continually. You need to constantly upgrade your mental models. It’s similar to developing software. Microsoft Excel, for instance, has been developed for many years now. It gets better and better over time. You should do something similar with your mental models. You should keep learning and improving your understanding of the world. How should we build mental models then? Well, here are three tips on how to do that. 1. Find Some Role Models When it comes to building mental models, I believe that having concrete examples is a good starting point. That’s why I reco...
Source: Life Optimizer - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Learning Thinking Source Type: blogs