“A good decision is risking a little for the opportunity to gain a lot. Similarly, a bad decision is risking a lot for the opportunity to gain little.”
Mark Manson
In The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, the angel investor talks about the value of collecting mental models. For those unfamiliar, mental models are a series of principles that help you during decision-making. You can learn new mental models from a variety of disciplines, but according to Naval, the best ones often come from evolution and game theory. Also, you can adopt mental models from people like Charlie Munger, Benjamin Franklin, or Nassim Taleb. I’ve been compiling mental models from some of my favorite authors in the form of notecards for years. I review those notecards often, but especially when I have to make important decisions.
Decision-making is an art, but no one teaches us how to do it, at least not overtly. As a consequence, we end up with mental models that don’t serve us right or we rely on our memory to think about what happened in the past and try to predict what will happen in the future. This is an inefficient way of making decisions. Don’t ignore the fact that decision-making is a discipline that has been studied for a long time and that you can benefit from what other people learned. There are numerous books on decision-making and reading at least one of them can change how you think. This is a way to update your operating system and once you do so, you’ll make decisions without having to second guess yourself or feel a sense of regret.
The idea of collecting mental models is a relatively new concept to me. Compiling them though has been a life-changing experience. If you don’t know where to start, here are some book recommendations: