Welcome to the 20th issue, time flies, belly fat resists and existence hurts.
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🧠Mental Models Part1 - Inversion
Attention please:
This part is a new extension to my newsletter. A series. Something to add on to every other week. First part will be on mental models. I will be trying to shorten the tweet/article and video part of the newsletter to fit the length allowed by the e-mail providers :) Let me know what you think about the new extension.
There are must-know frameworks for thinking better like:
1. Inversion
2. Feynman technique
3. Analogy
4. Occam's Razor
5. Hanlon’s Razor…
This list will go on, I have +300 mental models listed, noted and evaluated just by myself. I wonder how many more there are that I did not discover yet. Humanity surely spent a lot of time thinking about how to think, after finding itself deep in the mud again and again.
Every article screams at you to say the number one skill you have to gain to be able to get ahead in the 2020s is Complex Problem Solving. I have been hearing the same thing for about 8–9 years now.
This topic is funny though. Everybody says it is important but nobody says anything about how you can improve your thinking skills.
We need frameworks, like some checklists. Before you approach a problem, you need to know what are the strategies you are going to implement. One framework, or mental model, whatever you may like to call it, is not enough to give the correct ideas sometimes. However it will certainly give you new perspectives, ideas, and lenses. What we all need is a new way to look at problems. You cannot solve the problem with the mindset that created it.
Inversion is my number one. Inversion is an approach to problem-solving that was popularized by investor and partner of Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger. Using this approach helps you understand what your solution should avoid instead of focusing on what to accomplish.
The father of inversion dates back a little more than Munger. German mathematician Carl Jacobi was a sound scientist at his time. He employed a sound strategy to be able to solve difficult problems with his motto, "Invert, always invert." Man muss immer umkehren.
“Instead of looking for success, make a list of how to fail instead–through sloth, envy, resentment, self-pity, entitlement, all the mental habits of self-defeat. Avoid these qualities and you will succeed. Tell me where I’m going to die so I don’t go there.” - Charlie Munger
Say we are on a project, trying to roll out a new wallet extension to our app. 6 months deadline. Flash forward to 9 months after. Ask yourself:
What are the reasons that this project failed?
What are the production level bugs we did not notice?
What parts of the project we could not estimate well?
What are the initial complaints we received from the customers?
What did we do worse than rival company B?
What could we do better?
What parts of the hidden customer requests we missed?
What were the reasons for extension to development processes?
What are the obstacles that caused us delay and this failure?
What are the possible reasons that our customers are not using this feature?
What are the possible reasons that our customers are not adopting this feature?
This technique is not just good for business settings of course. Let’s say you are trying to lose weight. Think you have failed after 3 months of trying. Ask yourself:
What are the reasons that I could not lose weight?
What are the reasons that I could not stick to my plan and get disciplined?
Why did I eat too much?
What were the things that I could not say no to?
The list can go on. The important thing is, you create the question. Your goal. Turn it upside down. Consider yourself a failure. And ask: What went wrong?
Further reading.
🐦3 Tweet Threads
Inflation 101:
50 Naval links, visualised for stronger influence.
Looking for podcast suggestions, Alex got you covered.
📘 1 Book Summary:
The Comfort Book - Matt Haig
Do not think that the person who is trying to console you lives effortlessly among the simple, quiet words that sometimes make you feel better. . . . But if it were any different he could never have found the words that he did. - Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Matt Haig, the author of the book, tells the story of how they got lost with hist father in the forest and how they made it by just following a straight path. Life is like this sometimes. Continue on following the straight path. You will get there. Bird by bird, obstacle by obstacle.
If we keep going in a straight line we’ll get out of here. Walking one foot in front of the other, in the same direction, will always get you further than running around in circles. It’s about the determination to keep walking forward.
I smell Stoicism in the air. Shakespeare was one of the Stoics. There is nothing good or bad only thinking makes it so. Remember. Rehearse it inside if necessary.
When Hamlet tells his old university buddies Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” he doesn’t mean this in a positive way. Shakespeare’s prince is in a foul and depressed mood, but with reason. He is talking about Denmark, and indeed the whole world, being a prison. For him, Denmark really is a physical and psychological prison. But he is also aware that perspective plays a part in this. And that the world and Denmark aren’t intrinsically bad. They are bad from his perspective. They are bad because he thinks they are.
Author suggests some music to comfort your nerves. Here are my top five from the selection:
“O-o-h Child”—The Five Stairsteps
“California”—Joni Mitchell
“Somewhere Over the Rainbow”—Judy Garland
“Enjoy the Silence”—Depeche Mode
We are more than the pain itself. There are empty rooms inside us. Never associate yourself with only one feeling you have.
And as soon as we notice all that space inside us, we have a new perspective. Yes, there is room for a lot of pain, but there is room for other things too. And indeed, pain might be a total asshole, but it can inadvertently show us how much space we have inside. It can even expand that space. And enable us to experience the equivalent quantity of joy or hope or love or contentment at some future point in time.
Love this idea : sideways momentum. We are always looking forward, trying to be going one step more and more. However it is also important to learn some sideways momentum. A process where you just chill and take it all in. Realizing every bit.
Forward momentum is great. But we also need sideways momentum. For instance, I just sat down and ate a pear. I have no idea what the future holds but I am very grateful that I am alive and able to sit on a sofa and eat a pear.
Here comes my favorite existential quote: forward going, backward looking.
Life is “understood backward; but it must be lived forward” (Søren Kierkegaard)
Whenever you feel too much of something, just remember no feeling is final unless you lose your breath. Here comes another strong quote from Milke.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. - Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours
The past is gone. Maybe it was just a simulation put in your head. How can you be sure that there was a past you lived in? And the future? Future is only a series of nows. So be aware, the only thing you have is now.
We are where we need to be. We have never lived in the past. There is no past. There is no future. There is just a series of presents. One after the other. And although there are an infinite number of meditations and online tutorials teaching us how to “inhabit the present,” we already do this without trying. We always inhabit the present. “Forever is composed of nows,” as Emily Dickinson told us. So being “in the now” is something we don’t have to work at. When we are imagining our future or mourning the past we aren’t in either—we are inhabiting the present, and only the present, because a memory or dream is remembered or dreamed with the tools and texture of the present. It is always today. Yesterday and tomorrow are also todays.
Do not follow the status quo. Think weird, turn things upside down. Invert the problem. World needs more maniacs.
It is good to be weird. It is good to be eccentric. It is good to be separate from the crowd. The philosopher John Stuart Mill thought it was almost a civic duty to be eccentric, to break the tyranny of conformity and custom. But even if we don’t feel outwardly eccentric, we all have eccentric parts
Probability. The law of the universe. Everything around us and inside us changing.
In other words, a key defining feature of the universe, of nature, of our environment, of us, is uncertainty. There is always a space for chance. As something begins to change or move, it changes with a degree of the unknown, whether it is light through a slit in a barrier or a hurricane or a brain cell. The universe is, essentially, an ever-evolving possibility. While fear might want us to imagine the worst is certain, the future—like everything else—remains uncertain, unpredictable, open, free. And even the very smallest event in the maze that is our lives can result in the most unexpected outcome.
And yes, here comes a Marcus Aurelius quote a good one indeed. I included this quote in my upcoming book “Stoic Guide” available in September 2022. Another quote worthy tattooing on your body. Our life is what our thoughts make it.
“The universe is change,” wrote Marcus Aurelius. “Our life is what our thoughts make it.”
I noted this quote, stored it and wrote it down by hand. We are not the clouds, we are the sky.
The weather outside and inside us is never permanent. People talk about dark clouds over them. But we are never the clouds; we are the sky. We just contain them. The clouds are just the present view. The sky stays the sky.
Remember there will always be other days and other feelings. You, 99.9 percent, will not remember how you feel right now.
Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious life you have been issued. Whether you’re going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.
-Anne Lamott, Berkeley commencement address
Maybe the strongest quote is this from the book. Nothing really ends. How true it is. Chills. Literal chills.
Love becomes grief. Grief becomes memory. Wounds become scars. Doing becomes being. Pain becomes strength. Noon becomes night.
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Thank you, big hugs.
📝 2 Articles:
Here is 37 great documentary recommendations from Tim Ferriss.
Here is a great look at how the structure of the population is changing.
My highlights:
Globally, populations are aging, as people have fewer children and Boomers move into mass retirement.
The underlying structure of everything we know about economic theory is based on the concept of expansion, Zeihan said, and at the root of this expansion is population growth. Since the 1500s, the global population has grown larger every year, right up until the present.
The foundation of economic growth is the idea that consumption is stable or rising, and that finance will rise right along with it. We have no experience of anything else in the modern era. We never see anything close to this post-pandemic era.
📺 1 Video:
How and why Barcelona was structured in the way it was? I adored the architecture of it.
📽️ 1 SERIES / FILM or DOCUMENTARY:
In this section, today’s suggestion is a strange documentary: Tim’s Vermeer. It depicts the story of an engineer who tries to solve how Vermeer did his paintings. There must have been a strange way designed and incorporated by him.
The most strange thing is the amount of obsessiveness the engineer has with the mystery way of Vermeer. It made me wonder what would happen if I could be so obsessive about something.
📜 2 Quotes:
“Never memorize what you can look up in books.”
— ALBERT EINSTEIN
“When dealing with people, remember that you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotions.“
— DALE CARNEGIE
📱 1 Useful App/Website/Tool
Robots are coming for you. How afraid you should be? Let’s see from the site, will robots take my job?
Here is the results for management analysts. Take a look at some risky options and some sound ones to prepare yourself for the upcoming threats.