Make Big Decisions

The most important skill anybody can learn is the ability to learn rare and useful skills on-demand. Across warfare, AI, learning sciences, business, philosophy and animal intelligence, there is almost the same exact loop. I call this the Learning Loop mental model, and it is the fundamental learning process of the universe.

Research shows that when we teach what we learn, we learn faster. This is known as the Explanation Effect and it even applies when we teach concepts to ourselves by journaling, mind mapping, or talking out loud.

When you have a good mental model that gives you a way of doing the research efficiently, one focused hour of effort can yield gems. The Knowledge Mining model shows how to do research that brings us more growth and more profit.

The ultimate sign of mastery is being world-class in what you do automatically. This model will help you understand how to go from conscious competence to unconscious competence to leverage the power of intuition.

Connecting your brain with other people’s in the right way is multiplicative, not additive. Using network science research, learn how to filter who to build deep relationships with and how to rapidly build deep relationships built on mutual growth.

A digital garden is a public repository where you share your sawdust. In this manual, we’ll take a deeper look into digital gardens and do a step-by-step walkthrough of one of the apps that make them possible.

Rather than one specific model, the Sculpting Success model is more of a supermodel. It is designed to help you answer the following question about career success and life impact: Given that we all have the same amount of hours in a day, what makes the most successful people in the world create so much more wealth and impact (sometimes a million times more) than others?

We live in a culture that celebrates abundance. The idea of “more is better” is everywhere around us—in food, clothes, apps, information, possessions, money, and more. Therefore we tend to think of addition as a key to our definition of success. But there’s a paradox at work that we almost never hear about. Sometimes, we get more value, success, and results when we subtract rather than add.

Recent research from the field of AI makes the case that, to accomplish something big, you do NOT set ambitious goals and then work backwards. Rather, follow the stepping stones right in front of you that give you the most novel paths forward, even if you aren’t sure exactly how that stepping stone will pay off in the future. From that new stepping stone, you look for the most novel path forward again.

We’ve all heard about goal setting and some of the most common techniques (for instance, SMART goals and BHAGs). In this Mastery Manual, we’re going several layers deeper and we’re also looking at the new research within the field of goal theory, and some of that research overturns previously held conventional wisdom. Read this manual to learn all about it.

What should you learn next? One of the reasons this question is so difficult to answer is because the choices are literally endless. The Multiplier Skills Mental Model gives you a formula for choosing what learning hurdle to conquer next.

The Subtraction Learning Method is the mental model Success By Subtraction applied to learning. It’s one of the most useful mental models but, as it often happens, it can be challenging to apply it. That’s why we did a series of 3 classes to help you practice this method and we organized a 7-day learning challenge that you can now do on your own.

Selling Your Sawdust is the process of turning the by-products of your learning process that you’d normally throw away (which, in my experience, is over 90% of notes) into products that can be valuable to other people.

When it comes to being a world-class entrepreneur or scientist, being a polymath might actually be the rule rather than the exception. Learn how to enjoy the benefits of being a polymath while avoiding the disadvantages.

We live in an age of opportunity shock—too many opportunities, too little time. This model helps you decide what to do when there’s a new opportunity that could potentially be huge but you’re busy and you don’t want to waste time pursuing a flop.

When it comes to mastering a skill, it’s more practical to think 100 hours, not 10,000. By picking the right micro-skills and stacking them, you can reach mastery 100x faster and continue building success upon success.

Quick introduction to mental models and their usefulness.

Michael’s article on most useful and universal mental models with an infographic.

Learn how to get the most from your membership.

As we're moving into this increasingly changed future, in which we seem to be living out Ray Kurzweil’s Law Of Accelerating Returns, we’ve noticed that the opportunity follows certain patterns. In this manual, we discuss six principles of opportunity to help you build a model of how it works and how it evolves through time.

When you have a product or you're buying a product, you can look at it through the metaphor of your hiring the person to do a job for you, and that job could have functional aspects and emotional aspects.

The offer isn’t the only thing that makes something sell. A lot of times, especially in a smaller company or startup, a lot of what people are buying is not just the product — in many ways, they are buying you. So in this manual, we’re going to talk about selling you.

When it comes to rapidly changing environments, forget the 10,000-Hour Rule. Thomas Edison, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and other great innovators follow the 10,000-Experiment Rule, and you can start with it with the help of this manual.

The rookie mistake many business owners make in their marketing is to just promote themself. Instead, you should work on educating your prospects. Once you educate them on how things work in your domain and what it’s like to work with you, they’re more likely to develop trust in you and buy your products or services.

How can I get in front of as many eyes as possible and get as many people as I can to know about my work, my projects, and the services or products I offer, all with minimal costs? That’s the challenge this model addresses.

“Think like a customer” is a simple idea/skill, and it’s also the key skill you need in order to get customers. In order to create a product people want and market it in a way people understand, you first have to understand the customer. This manual will help you understand how.

To communicate effectively within someone in a buying state, we need to understand who our buyers are and what makes them unique and identify their #1 specific psychological-emotional motivator. In other words, we want to identify our specific buyers’ hot buttons.

Maybe you’re already familiar with the Pareto principle, or the 80/20 rule, which states that 20% of inputs create 80% of outputs. This guide is probably the most condensed and in-depth explanation of the 80/20 rule that has ever been created. It features 5 application strategies, many life hacks that you can copy, and 5 live workshops so you can really internalize this model and use it in literally every area of life.

You can think of positive feedback loops as a chain reaction of dominoes falling, gaining momentum, and becoming exponentially larger over time until they knock over the final “goal” domino with your money, business, health, learning, and relationships. They show us that small, consistent actions can create results that resemble linear progress at first—until they spike exponentially, creating virtually guaranteed, mega results.

Rugh draft of models related to futurism

List of top books on habit forming.

MIT researchers discovered a simple neurological loop at the core of every habit, a loop that consists of three parts: A cue, a routine and a reward.

One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behavior on top.

The Fogg Behavior Model shows that three elements must converge at the same moment for a behavior to occur: Motivation, Ability, and a Prompt.

In this session, we’re going to talk about examples of reinvention and get a sense of what reinvention looks like.

We’re discussing reinventing learning itself. What does it really mean to learn and to reinvent learning in our lives?

In this session, we’re discussing initiation and crossing the threshold into your transformation and into your reinvention.

In this session, we’re discussing reinventing in the emotional and social domain.