A Dinner With Elon Musk And The Power of Power Laws

Imagine a friend inviting you to dinner. He texts you: “I’m organizing a dinner with 8 people and the average net worth of attendees is $22 billion.” What would you think? Besides wondering when your friend met that many rich people, you’d expect to be the least wealthy among invitees. But you arrive at dinner and…

RICE Scores: A Simple Method For Project Prioritization

“This is done, what’s next?” That’s what you ask yourself after finishing a project. It seems trivial, but it’s the most important question that defines your results over the long term. Why? Well, most people believe productivity is doing a lot. But that’s an illusion. Real productivity comes from doing the work that brings you the best results. So it’s…

Force Field Analysis: Make Big Changes Easier (With Examples)

What is Force Field Analysis Force Field Analysis is a strategic analysis and decision-making method developed by Kurt Lewin. In this article, you’ll find two personal examples to see how you can use Force Field Analysis in your life. Every decision requires a change. Think about it. If you decide to gain muscle; you have…

Nassim Taleb’s Optionality: Unlimited Gains With Limited Costs

Optionality is a mental model to make decisions that create possible unlimited gains with limited costs. Nassim Taleb explains the importance of optionality in his book Antifragile. In this article, you’ll find a short story to see how optionality works and then three ways to increase optionality in your life. Is it possible to turn…

Think Laterally: Apple’s Ad Masterpiece and How to Think “Different”

Lateral thinking is a mental model to find creative solutions to complex problems. In 1997, Steve Jobs returned to Apple to revive the company from the ashes. And they wanted a new campaign to announce Apple was back. Apple’s competitor IBM’s slogan was “Think.” So as a response, the ad agency came up with the famous…

Luck Surface Area: How to Get Lucky In Life (Without Being Rich)

Luck surface area is a mental model that explains it’s possible to increase your chances to get lucky in life. If there was a magic potion that makes people lucky, it would be expensive. But people would still buy it. After all, everybody wants to get lucky. Now, since we don’t have such a potion, are there other…

Personal SWOT Analysis: How To Analyze Your Life Like A CEO

What is Personal SWOT Analysis Personal SWOT Analysis is a framework to analyze your situation in life to make better long-term decisions. Think about it. You’re a one-person company. You have: And if your life resembles a company, it’d make sense to manage your life like a CEO, right? Of course. Now, executives use a…

Hindsight Bias Meaning, Examples, and How to Avoid It

Hindsight bias is a fallacy where people feel they knew how things would turn out after the events occurred. Take yourself back to December 2019. A new decade is about to start. Who was expecting a pandemic that’d keep us under lockdown and change how we live for years? Who was expecting a war in…

10x instead of 10% – Exponential Thinking

10% faster, 15% more, 5% less… Our brains think incrementally by default. That’s why many people focus on making things slightly better. You can see it every day. Hiring 10 more employees, spending $10k more on ads, opening one more shop… And the best-case scenario, they get what they planned for: an incremental improvement. But…