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Nov 16, 2022: Another Perspective On Mental Models

Class Recording

Timestamps

00:00 Intro

01:14 We Are All Always Creating Mental Models Of The World On An Unconscious Level

01:47 These Models Help You Simulate Reality

03:58 These Models Co-Create Reality Automatically

09:18 But This Unconscious Process Is Imperfect

23:27 Being A Mental modeler Is About Making This Process Conscious And Deliberate

24:39 … And It’s About Knowing Model Limits/Holes

26:46 Summary + Q/A

30:45 Reflection: Where You Might Be Experiencing Broken Mental Models?

35:35 Breakouts

54:10 After-Breakout Sharing

57:37 Action Steps

1:00:10 Mental Model Categories

1:08:17 Exercise

Class Summary

In our last class, we talked about some of the lessons learned and today, I want to talk about mental models from another perspective.

We Are All Always Creating Mental Models Of The World On An Unconscious Level

For example, you could have a model of me in your head and use it to ask a question—for example “Hey Michael, what's your favorite mental model?” There are many other things you probably already have models of in your head…

  • You have a model of your house in your head
  • You have a model of your pets and family

These Models Help You Simulate Reality

These models are helpful because they can help us simulate reality. For example…

  • Ask your model of me…
    • What mental model is most important?
    • What did I have for breakfast?”
  • Spatial model
    • Could you walk to the TV in your house and touch it with your eyes closed?

This helps us not be surprised by reality. When reality on the outside syncs with our mental models, it's okay, that's what we expected and prepared for. We can simulate a model of our day and interact with people in our head. If we get surprised, it's a signal that maybe there's something wrong with our model.

These Models Co-Create Reality Automatically

We're not getting in sensory information from our environment and starting to decode them from scratch every time. Even sensory information are partially determined by our mental models. Anil Seth, a neuroscience researcher from the UK, gave a great TED talk Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality that explains how the models that we create automatically co-create our reality.

But This Unconscious Process Is Imperfect

This process is often right, but it’s also often wrong. Imperfection nuance:

  • Our mental model making process has been refined over our evolutionary history.
  • It’s right most of the time.
  • But, our world is becoming more and more different than our evolutionary past.
  • So it makes more and more mistakes.

Types of errors we make:

  • Visual illusions
  • Cognitive biases
  • Limited information (perspectives / time)

Being A Mental Modeler Is About Making This Process Conscious And Deliberate

As you're trying to take an unconscious process that you accept automatically, blindly, how do you become conscious of it? In other words, how do we become conscious mental modelers?

What mental modelers do:

  • Notice
  • Collect
  • Categorize
  • Prioritize (useful, universal, long-lasting)
  • Improve
  • Create

… And It’s About Knowing Model Limits/Holes

As I've spent more time learning about and developing mental models, I've also adopted humility: a big part of the process is understanding the limits of models.

What we don’t know is much larger than what we do know. Even as we learn more, the size of what we don’t know increases faster.

Every model is imperfect. The goal is to be less wrong.

We shouldn’t hold on that tightly to our models. We should proactively try to prove them wrong.

Action Steps

  • Collect and apply top models
  • Understand model problems
    • Misapplication
    • Over-application (hammer/nail, attachment)
    • Model is wrong
    • Missing model
    • Misweighting of model’s importance
    • Blindspots

Mental Model Categories

One of the quickest ways I've seen to get value from mental models and to simplify a little bit is to go one level meta into the skills we use every day because we know that we’ll likely use them forever. So, if we make a small improvement to each action, it will compound.

Meta skills we can improve on every day:

  • Prioritization (importance, time)
  • Learning (practice)
  • Communication (persuade, teach, connect, collaborate, mentorship)
  • Behavior change (hacks / habits)
  • Willing to make mistakes
  • Problem-Solving
  • Emotional Regulation
  • Decision-Making
  • Thinking Better
  • Visioning
  • Energy (rest/recovery)
  • Self-awareness.

What would you add to this list?

Then, think about which of these categories are most important to you. Here are some model prioritization criteria:

  • Frequency of use
  • Usefulness when applied (resolving pain)
  • Universality
  • Longevity (will it be true in 50 years?)
  • Relevancy
  • Success rate

What other criteria would you use to prioritize mental models to learn?

What are the top mental models within the categories?

Where do you have mental model gaps? Where you are missing models in certain categories?

#1 Hack

With many of the skills we use every day, we’re NOT working on improving them.

You won’t improve unless you are deliberate. With almost any skill, at first we usually improve rapidly, but over time we get to the place of being good enough at it and we only focus on performance rather than improvement. I call that hitting an OK Plateau.

image

Here’s the #1 hack to avoid the OK Plateau with the skills you use often:

  • Make a small improvement on tasks every time you do them
    • You remember more of the details
    • There’s motivation
  • Don’t just improve the skill, improve the model