33 Mental Models for Life

Nugget by Mohnish Pabrai

👋 Hey friend,

Last week I shared Mohnish Pabrai’s mental models for Investing and Starting a Business.

But he also has a list of mental models for life in general (he quickly shared it on a slide in this video).

So in this letter I’m sharing with you this list of 33 mental models to gain an edge in life.

PS: I added some quotes to expand the meaning of these mental models.

👤 Doers

💡Nugget

• Fast is Slow

  I believe in root causes: Finding root causes, fixing root causes… Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Everything I have ever succeeded at in life is because of that philosophy…

  — Jeff Bezos (source)

• Take the Road Less Traveled

  Following the herd guarantees average results. Whether in your career, relationships, or personal growth, doing what everyone else does yields mediocrity. You must cultivate the courage to be an independent thinker and follow your own path.

  The single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas.

  — Peter Thiel (Book: Zero to One)

• No Calibration in Reciprocation Tendency

  Humans are hardwired to return favors, but the response is rarely proportional. A tiny act of unprompted generosity can trigger a massive, outsized reward in return. This persuasion principle comes out of the book Influence (by Robert Cialdini), which Mohnish Pabrai and Charlie Munger widely recommends.

• Assume everyone is wearing an “I’m important” sign

  Mary Kay Ash once said: “It's so simple, yet makes such a difference. Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says: Make me feel important.”

  — Charlie Munger (Book: Poor Charlie’s Almanack)

• Influence from Association Tendency

  Tell me with whom you consort and I will tell you who you are; if I know how you spend your time, then I know what might become of you.

  — Goethe

• Social Proof Tendency

  We view a behavior as more correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it.

  — Robert Cialdini

• Contrast Misreaction Tendency

  Few psychological tendencies do more damage to correct thinking. Small-scale damages involve instances such as man’s buying an overpriced $1,000 leather dashboard merely because the price is so low compared to his concurrent purchase of a $65,000 car. Large-scale damages often ruin lives, as when a wonderful woman with terrible parents marries a man who would be judged satisfactory only in comparison to her parents. Or as when a man takes wife number two, who would be appraised as all right only in comparison to wife number one.

  — Charlie Munger (Book: Poor Charlie’s Almanack)

• Availability Misweighting Tendency

  This mental tendency echoes the words of the song “When I’m not near the girl I love, I love the girl I’m near.” Man’s imperfect, limited-capacity brain easily drifts into working with what’s easily available to it. And the brain can’t use what it can’t remember or what it is blocked from recognizing because it is heavily influenced by one or more psychological tendencies bearing strongly on it, as the fellow is influenced by the nearby girl in the song. So the mind overweighs what is easily available and thus displays availability-misweighing tendency. … An idea or a fact is not worth more merely because it is easily available to you.

  — Charlie Munger (Book: Poor Charlie’s Almanack)

• Focus on being kind vs. being right

  Jeff, one day you’ll understand that is harder to be kind than clever.

  — Jeff Bezos’s Grandfather (source)

• To be interesting, be interested

  When I left the dining room after sitting next to Mr. Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest man in England. But after sitting next to Mr. Disraeli, I thought I was the cleverest woman in England.

  — Lady Randolph Churchill

• Clone the little things

  Be a shameless cloner!

• 99% of success is just showing up

  I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.

  — Steve Jobs

• Attend as many funerals as you can

• Ask God Google the day you will die and plan accordingly

  Think of your life as a rainbow arcing across the horizon of this world. You appear, have a chance to blaze in the sky, then you disappear.

  The two endpoints of everyone’s rainbow are birth and death. We all experience both completely alone. And yet, most people of your age have not thought about these events very much, much less even seen them in others. How many of you have seen the birth of another human? It is a miracle. And how many of you have witnessed the death of a human? It is a mystery beyond our comprehension. No human alive knows what happens to “us” upon or after our death. Some believe this, others that, but no one really knows at all. Again, most people of your age have not thought about these events very much, and it’s as if we shelter you from them, afraid that the thought of mortality will somehow wound you. For me it’s the opposite: to know my arc will fall makes me want to blaze while I am in the sky. Not for others, but for myself, for the trail I know I am leaving.

  — Steve Jobs (Book: Make Something Wonderful)

• To encounter misfortune and overcome it is good fortune

  Here is a rule to remember in future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not “This is misfortune,” but “To bear this worthily is good fortune.”

  — Marcus Aurelius (Book: Meditations)

• What you will do tomorrow, do today; what you will do today, do now

• Your kids will learn from your actions, not what you tell them

  Your actions speak so loudly, I can not hear what you are saying.

  — Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Be an Optimist

• Take a nap every afternoon

• Make no small plans

  The main message of The Magic of Thinking Big: don't overestimate others and underestimate yourself. I still read the first two chapters whenever doubt creeps in. It's not enough to remove life's niggly minutiae that are bothering you—you need a compelling big goal. You need an inspiring, abnormally large objective to chase.

  — Tim Ferriss (source)

• The sky is the limit if you do not care who gets the credit

• Underpromise and Overdeliver

• When you are young, have friends who are older. When you are old, have friends who are younger

• Understand Compounding

• Spend less than you earn

• Play Infinite Games

• Read a lot

  I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up and boy does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you.

  — Charlie Munger

• Only work for and with people you like, admire and trust

  (This comes from Warren Buffet)

• Be a Generous Tipper

• Fish and Guests Stink After Three Days

• Do Not Die at 25 and Get Buried at 75

  (This comes from Benjamin Franklin)

• Get Your Music Out

  The fool, with all his other faults, has this also, he is always getting ready to live.

  — Seneca

• Learn from the Eminent Dead

  Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others’ experience.

  — Bismarck

Courtesy of Chat-GPT

💥 Stuff I Loved

I hope you enjoyed today’s letter!

Talk you soon,

Your nuggets friend Julio :)