Argumentum ad populum (Latin for “appeal to the people”) is a fallacy when people accept what is popular as true without logical reasoning. We live in a world of arguments. Some arguments shape how we make decisions and how we live without us realizing it. Especially when the majority accepts one as the norm. A…
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A-B-Z Framework: The Right Way to Start
A-B-Z Framework is a mental model to save you from analysis paralysis while starting new projects or achieving your life goals. What is your career target? Building a successful company? Becoming a CEO? Having a long-term goal for yourself is good. But it might be overwhelming when you start thinking about how to get there.…
Napoleon’s Secret for Success: Compartmentalization
Napoleon was a unique person. He spent most of his life on the battlefields. His military genius is well known; he has fought against coalitions of European countries and won most of the battles. His soldiers loved him as he always spent time with them and knew the names of even the low-rank soldiers. He was a…
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…
The Lindy Effect: How Things Age In Reverse (With Examples)
What is the Lindy Effect? According to the Lindy Effect, the older an idea, a technology or a company gets, the longer it will live in the future. It’s aging in reverse. And it’s a useful mental model to understand the world better. Imagine you are in a library. You see hundreds of books one next to…
What is Antifragility (With A Career Example)
What’s the definition of Antifragility? We know fragile things. They break easily with a little stress and disorder. Antifragile things don’t just resist a shock, damage, or crisis but also thrive under these conditions. It’s a concept developed by Nassim Taleb in his book Antifragile. Let’s look at two examples to see how you can use it in your life: Fragile: Little…
Steven Pressfield’s Resistance: A Villain You Have to Fight
Every great story has a villain. The Lord of the Rings has Sauron. Star Wars has Darth Vader. In his book The War of Art, Steven Pressfield created an unusual one. He called it Resistance. We fight with Resistance every day without knowing. It’s intelligent and silent. Usually, it shows its face in the form of procrastination.…
A Life Lesson From The High Jump: Fosbury Flop
Fosbury Flop is a high jump technique discovered by Dick Fosbury. As it changed the high jump forever, later on, it also became a mental model to always look for improvements in business and life. “We’ve always done it this way.” How many times have you got this answer when you ask “why?” I bet…
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,…
Input Goals vs Output Goals (And Why You Need Both)
Everybody set goals. But research shows 92% of people never got to achieve them. Why? Well, because people focus on the outcomes rather than the actions to get there. It’s one of the main reasons most goals fail. So it’s good to separate the input from the outcome and have two types of goals: input…