Chain Reaction
“A sequence of reactions where a reactive product or by-product causes additional reactions to take place. In a chain reaction, positive feedback leads to a self-amplifying chain of events.” (related: cascading failure, domino effect) Source: Gabriel Weinberg's Mental Models I
Nature vs Nurture
“the relative importance of an individual’s innate qualities as compared to an individual’s personal experiences in causing individual differences, especially in behavioral traits.” Source: Gabriel Weinberg's Mental Models I Find Repeatedly Useful
Gate’s Law
“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” Source: Gabriel Weinberg's Mental Models I Find Repeatedly Useful
Parkinson’s Law
“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” Source: Gabriel Weinberg's Mental Models I Find Repeatedly Useful
Murphy’s Law
“Anything that can go wrong, will.” (related: Hofstadter’s Law, “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.”) Source: Gabriel Weinberg's Mental Models I Find Repeatedly Useful
Makers vs Manager’s Schedule
“When you’re operating on the maker’s schedule, meetings are a disaster.” (related: Deep Work) Source: Gabriel Weinberg's Mental Models I Find Repeatedly Useful
Focus on High-leverage Activities
“Leverage should be the central, guiding metric that helps you determine where to focus your time.” (related: Eisenhower decision matrix — “what is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.”, “The best time to plant a
Spacing Effect
“The phenomenon whereby learning is greater when studying is spread out over time, as opposed to studying the same amount of time in a single session.” Source: Gabriel Weinberg's Mental Models I Find Repeatedly Useful
Dunning-Kruger Effect
“Relatively unskilled persons suffer illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than it really is…[and] highly skilled individuals may underestimate their relative competence and may erroneously assume that tasks which are easy for them are also easy
Deliberate Practice
“How expert one becomes at a skill has more to do with how one practices than with merely performing a skill a large number of times.” Source: Gabriel Weinberg's Mental Models I Find Repeatedly Useful