Mental models are the secret to making the best out of the world around you

But there is a million of them...

A guide to my favorite mental models:
Marketing

Luck Surface Area:

“When you do something you’re excited about you will naturally pull others into your orbit.

The more people with whom you share your passion, the more who will be pulled into your orbit.”

Orbits are powerful in marketing, business or life
Sales

Hunting whales vs flies:

5 types of sales prospects

1) Whales
2) Elephants
3) Deers
4) Rabbits
5) Flies

How can you hunt 1,000 whales, 10,000 elephants, 100,000 deers, 1,000,000 rabbits or 10,000,000 flies?

Who do you want to hunt? Why?
(no animals were harmed writing that last tweet)

It's time for a non-hunting mental model for this

Any one have ideas?
Military

Winning Hearts and Minds:

“In which one side seeks to prevail not by the use of superior force, but by making emotional or intellectual appeals to sway supporters of the other side.”

Key: if you speak to people's hearts and the minds, you are speaking to human nature
Marketing

Compromise effect:

“A person is more likely to choose the middle option of a selection set rather than the extreme options”

Point: many startups live or die because or pricing

Price accordingly
Strategy

Sustainable Competitive Advantage:

“Structural factors that allow a firm to outcompete its rivals for many years.”

Never lose sight of developing a stronger sustainable competitive advantage

Key word: sustainable
Explanation

First principles thinking:

Think like a scientist. Start with questions like

1) What are we absolutely sure is true?
2) What has been proven?

Dig deep until you have uncovered undeniable truths about a situation
Physics

Half life:

“The time required for a quantity to reduce to half its initial value."

-- What's the half-life of a tweet? Short and sweet
-- What's the half-life of your product? Hopefully long

Understanding half-life is undeniably important
Brainstorming

Paradigm shift:

“A fundamental change in the basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific discipline.”

This term is overused (I know, I know) but is still an incredibly powerful concept
Goodhart’s Law https://twitter.com/SahilBloom/status/1398639350288637965
Brainstorming

Maslow’s hammer:

“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

Point: You are either a hammer, a nail or completely different
Reasoning

Likely

"Thinking that just because something is possible means that it is likely"

Just because you think it might happen, doesn't mean it will

This induces fear & stress

It happens to me and probably happens to you

Good to keep an eye on it
Negotiation

Active listening:

“Requires that the listener fully concentrates, understands, responds and then remembers what is being said.”

Point: the best negotiation tactic is to shut up and listen
Military

Beachhead:

“A temporary line created when a military unit reaches a landing beach by sea and begins to defend the area while other reinforcements help out until a unit large enough to begin advancing has arrived.”

Every great startup begins as a beachhead
Learning

Spacing Effect:

“The phenomenon whereby learning is greater when studying is spread out over time, as opposed to studying the same amount of time in a single session.”

Point: you don't need to read 52 books in 52 weeks
Music

Coda:

“A term used in music primarily to designated a passage that brings a piece to an end.”

Great stories need an ending, some sort of call-to-action

That means your product, your landing page or your YouTube video
The end

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