Humans are prone to cognitive biases. Don’t rely on your intuition to make important decisions. Instead, understand the most common mental models to improve your thinking. Build your very own metacognition toolkit to face choices with a calm, informed mind.
Popular articles in this category include be careful of the optionality fallacy and the Occam’s razor fallacy, avoid falling prey to illusory correlations, use checklists when you can’t trust your brain. Learn about the curse of knowledge, The Cobra Effect, and Parkinson’s Law.
The “thinking mind” is the part of the mind that seeks to make sense of the world; it analyses situations, imagines scenarios, evaluates solutions, and tells stories. It’s an inherent aspect of what makes us human. However, it’s limited by multiple cognitive bottlenecks. Why does it matter? Because these cognitive bottlenecks limit how much information … Read More
In this interview with Tobias van Schneider, we talked about the memex as described by Vannevar Bush in 1945, how our mind doesn’t think in lists and folders, the use of artificial intelligence to catalog and find the information that matters to us, the concept of memory indexing, how we might think differently if no one was watching, and more.
Picture this: you are having a debate with a colleague regarding the best next steps for a complex project. You both have been presenting your arguments, the tone is friendly, but you cannot seem to agree on the best way forward. So you decide to find a middle ground. Sounds reasonable enough, right? Well, it’s … Read More
Humans love patterns. Sometimes that’s helpful, but other times… Not so much. Apophenia is the common tendency to detect patterns that do not exist. Also known as “patternicity”, apophenia occurs when we try to make predictions, or seek answers, based on unrelated events. Apophenia can lead to poor decision-making. For instance, many people choose their … Read More
We consume an inordinate amount of information, whether it’s blog posts, podcasts, social media content, online videos — a constant stream of data and claims we need to process and assess. When you are pressed for time, how can you quickly tell the difference between a strong argument and a weak argument, and why does … Read More
A few weeks ago, I was having dinner with fellow founders, and I learned about a productivity method that’s deceptively simple but incredibly powerful: the TEA framework, which stands for time, energy, and attention. This approach feels appealing because it is rooted in essential human principles, rather than creating the artificial need for a complex … Read More
Every day, a new video goes “viral”, and an “infectious” idea starts spreading. Mental immunity is a psychological theory that is also known as cognitive immunology. With origins dating back 70 years, this field of research is based on the premise that not only is there an immune system for the body, but an immune … Read More
Being “authentic” has become a bit of an overused buzzword, and has lost some of its meaning. However, despite the concept not being fully mature in a theoretical or experimental sense, early research has shown that authentic leadership may improve team performance compared to traditional management. Authentic leadership is an emerging theory that encourages managers … Read More
Mae Jemison is the first African American woman to orbit the earth. She knew that she wanted to be a scientist since kindergarten. Not only did she grow up reading books about space, but she also loved science fiction books where black women were the heroes of the story. At 16, Jemison graduated from high … Read More
Rosalind Franklin was a groundbreaking scientist whose story is tied to the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA. Franklin and her Ph.D. student used x-ray technology to photograph DNA that showed the molecule’s structure. However, when two other well-known scientists published a paper about the double-helix findings, they never gave Franklin credit for her … Read More