Mental models are shortcuts that help you think better. One of the most famous ones is Pareto’s principle which says that for many phenomena, 80% of effects come from 20% of inputs. Management consultants love mental models: BCG matrix helps you with manage a portfolio of businesses, Porter’s five forces model helps you think about competition and Peter Principle helps you understand why organizations become full of incompetent managers.
Mental models are abstractions of reality. They’re like proverbs. For example, “Actions speaks louder than words” tells us that revealed preferences carry more information than stated preferences (something economists now take for granted). It’s a fun exercise to go through popular proverbs and decide if these old mental models are still useful in our interactions in the modern world. ...