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…
Category: How Brands Win
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…
Trade In The Modern Era: Information Arbitrage
In the old days, trade was hard. Imagine traveling from one city to another on horseback for days. Or sailing with your ship without seeing the land for months, eating the same dried food or fish every day. But it was also lucrative. Traders were buying goods cheaply in one city, and selling them for…
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…
Parkinson’s Law Meaning, Examples, and How to Overcome It
Parkinson’s Law means that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. Imagine you have two weeks to complete a project. How likely would you deliver the task earlier than the deadline? If your answer is not likely, you’re not alone. Because even if the project with a two-week deadline could be finished in three…
Via Negativa: Steve Jobs’ Favorite Mental Model For Problem-Solving
Via negativa is a mental model that looks for solutions not through addition, but through subtraction. Steve Jobs loved cutting things out. When he returned to Apple as CEO, before creating any new product, he killed dozens of existing products. And focused the company on what it does best. Later on, he made one of the…
Second-Order Thinking: How To Make Better Decisions In Life
Second-order thinking is a useful mental model to make better decisions in life. First, a story from China will show you why it’s crucial to use second-order thinking for major decisions. Then, you’ll find practical tips on how to apply second-order thinking. Every decision has consequences When Mao Zedong declared war on sparrows with Four Pest Campaign in China,…