• Introduction
• Benefit #1: Mental Models Have Staying Power
• Benefit #2: Mental Models Are Universal
• Benefit #3: Mental Models Are Foundational

Introduction

This chart summarizes one of the biggest challenges we all face when it comes to learning: information overwhelm.

Information overwhelm is what happens when exponentially increasing volumes of content intersect with our limited human capacity to consume it.

Information overwhelm is real! Social media content doubles every year. Digital information increases tenfold every five years. Academic research doubles every nine years.

So, what’s the consequence of this great abundance?

Overwhelm. Analysis Paralysis. FOMO. Anxiety. Distraction.

When it comes to content, it's not just that we're distracted by clickbait headlines with mediocre content, which are just themselves a vehicle to sell ads. The problem is also that there is way more GOOD content that we'd like to consume than we actually have time for. Therefore, we stress over what to consume, because we fear missing out.

Researcher Barry Schwartz calls this phenomenon the Paradox Of Choice, and it’s becoming bigger and bigger of a deal. Take a look at the number of searches on Google from 2004 until now for the word 'overwhelmed':

All of this begs the question:

There are millions of books, articles, videos, and podcasts. How do I choose what to read in the time I put aside for learning?

Enter mental models.

In my Learning Ritual course, I teach that there are three categories of knowledge that we should all focus on:

• Curiosity-based
• Goal-based
• Mental Models

Following our curiosity lights our inner fire and leads to unexpected insights that bubble up from our unconscious. Many of the greatest discoveries in human history have come from curiosity. Goal-based learning is about getting super clear on the most important roadblocks to your most important goals and then using knowledge to remove those obstacles.

Mental Models are the forgotten third category. They help us build a robust foundation of knowledge that we can use forever in every area of our life. Let me explain:

Benefit #1: Mental Models Have Staying Power

When it comes to deciding what to learn and master first, most people decide to focus on what's changing the fastest, instead of what isn't changing at all. That's where mental models come in. Mental models are a critical category of knowledge that gets more relevant over time, not less.

Most knowledge, on the other hand, is decaying at faster and faster rates. One academic study, for example, found that the decay rate in the accuracy of clinical knowledge about cirrhosis and hepatitis was 45 years. In other words, if you’re talking to a 70-year-old liver specialist who hasn’t updated his skills, you have a 50 percent chance of getting bad information. Engineering degrees went from a half-life of 35 years in 1930 to about 10 years in 1960.

Benefit #2: Mental Models Are Universal

Mental models can be applied across a wide array of different domains. Each mental model we discuss in the course can be applied to hundreds of areas. How's that for a return on investment? You learn one concept and you can apply it across many domains.

Benefit #3: Mental Models Are Foundational

The power of foundational knowledge is explained really well by Physicist David Deutsch (one of my favorite thinkers):

In the video, Deutsch goes on to give an example, “All buildings stand on the same theoretical foundation; namely the laws of physics and the laws of engineering and architecture. And so, architecture therefore ultimately shares the same foundations, via physics, with such apparently very different fields as pharmacology, let’s say, which is indirectly related to physics via biochemistry and chemistry.”

In other words, if you have a strong foundation of mental models, you now have a foundation to learn any topic more deeply. When you enter a new field, you're going to have a head start, because you'll already understand many of the foundational ideas. People without foundational knowledge often just have shallow knowledge and plateau in their learning as a result.

Knowledge grows like a tree. It starts of with one trunk. That trunk then has many branches, which then has many branches, which then has many branches, and so on. So when Charlie Munger or David Deutsch say that they focus on the fundamentals, they're saying that they focus on trunks rather than twigs. This way, no matter how big the tree ultimately grows, by focusing on a trunk, you're building up a base of durable knowledge that will help you understand each twig across the entire tree.