Notes on Super Thinking by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann

Wow, how much I enjoyed reading Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann​! I listened to the audio book and was annoyed by how much I had to pause it since I was taking so many notes. This book was recommended to me by a colleague, and I am really grateful for the recommendation. It's like a combination of psychology, business, startups, and even relationship/family advice, all in one book of principles and models that can apply to many aspects of life. While there were not that many "brand new" models that I encountered, I really liked how the book pulled so many of them together and illustrated them with concise clear examples.

I greatly enjoyed Munger's books on similar topics, and this one incorporates many of his teachings and adds similar ones from lots of different fields as well. And it's cool that it was written by another software entrepreneur and dad!

Below are my main notes and takeaways. I highly recommend getting the book and reading it.

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​Intro
Mental model
Shortcuts to higher level thinking
Munger
Multidisciplinary

1 being wrong less
Invert, always invert
Think backwards
Make less unforced errors
Antifragile 
Keep it simple 
Starting from first principles
Derisking 
Premature optimization 
Minimum viable product
Occam’s razor. Choose simplest
Over fitting
Conjunction fallacy
In eye of beholder. Account for frame of reference
Framing. Headlines. 
Nudging with word choice or colors
Anchoring to first offer
Availability bias
Filter bubble
Walk a mile in their shoes
Think as a third party observer
Most respectful interpretation
Give people benefit of doubt
Hanlon’s razor: never attribute to malice what could be incompetence or carelessness
Fundamental attribution error
Self serving bias
Actor observer bias
Attribute bad to others but good to self
Veil of ignorance: should make decisions ignorant of who we are
Acknowledge that big portion of your success comes from luck. Birth Lottery
Versus Just world hypothesis where some believe everyone just gets what they deserve without accounting for luck or randomness (you reap what you sow)
Blaming victims
Learned helplessness
Can be improved with right guide
Progress one funeral at a time
New ideas accepted when old ones held by old people die out when the people die
Semelvice reflex of holding onto old wrong idea
Confirmation bias
Defeated by outsiders
Backfire effect: people get even more entrenched when get new info sometimes
Disconfirmation bias: I’m ok, you’re biased
Cognitive dissonance
Thinking gray: truth often not black and white
Don’t form opinion on a matter until heard all the facts or forced to make decision
Devils advocate
Don’t trust your gut
Proximate cause versus root cause
Post Mortem
Five Whys
Optimistic probability bias when you really want something to be true
Take in a variety of perspectives

2 anythIng that can go wrong will
Unintended consequences 
Tragedy of the commons and overgrazing
Individual vs collective effects
Tyranny of small decisions
Death by 1000 cuts
Self impose a budget
Free rider problem
Public goods
Herd immunity
Externalities
Internalizing
Coase theorem
Spillover effects 
Risky business
Moral hazard
Principal agent problem
Asymmetric info
Be careful what you wish for
When a measure becomes a target it gets messed up
Cheating incentives
Campbell law
Streisand effect: Unintentionally drawing more attention to something when you try to hide it
It’s not the crime, it’s the cover up 
Hydra effect: when take out one bad things it’s replaced by 2 more
Don’t kick a hornets’ nest
Observer effect: something changes when observed and depending upon who
Chilling effect: when people fear to exercise rights due to retaliation
Collateral damage
Blowback
It’s getting hot in here
Boiling frog
Gradual change hard to react to and perceive
Short termism
Technical debt
Management debt
Design debt
Path dependence
Preserve optionality
Precautionary principle: be careful with actions that could cause extreme harm
First do no harm
Too much of a good thing
Information overload
Analysis paralysis
Perfect is Enemy of good
Reversible versus irreversible decisions
Limit choice
Hicks law: time to decide increases logarithmically with number of choices
Give multi step decision with fewer choices at each step
Paradox of choice
Decision fatigue
Take breaks
Reduce number of daily decisions by having presets for clothes and meals
Front load clothing and meal decisions on sundays which is Lower stress day
Murphy’s law

3 spend your time wisely
North Star: business’s guiding vision
Personal mission statement or North Star
Compound interest
You can do anything but not everything
You can chase two rabbits but both will escape
Brain can only do one high concentration activity at a time
Context switching hurts performance 
Top idea in your mind
Deep work
Focus on only one thing and often the hardest one
People tend to solve the problems they know how to which are not the most important and procrastinate on the more challenging but important ones
Important versus urgent. Eisenhower matrix
Turn off notifications
Sayers law: strength of emotionality inversely proportional to importance of issue
Parkinson’s law: organizations put too much weight on trivial things
Bike shedding: spending too long on trivial things and avoiding the harder thornier issues
Time boxing: set strict agenda order and time constraints for issues to spend more time on more important issues
Opportunity cost
Cost of capital
Batna
Getting more bang for your buck
Fulcrum and lever
Leverage
Pareto principle: 80% of results come from 20% of activities
Power law 
Focus on “vital few” activities
Law of diminishing marginal returns
Negative returns
Burnout
Get out of your own way
Procrastination
Present bias over long term
Discount rate to future
Discounted cash flow
Net present value
Hyperbolic discounting
Commitment with penalty attached and social pressure
Default option effect
Book time on calendar for deep work so it’s already set up
Parkinson’s law: work expands to fill the time available for it
Hofstadter’s law: it always takes longer than you expect even when you take into account H’s law
90/90 rule: first 90% of code takes 90% of the time. Last 10% takes 90% of the time.
Best time to call something done is usually much earlier than it happens
Decide ahead of time what quality level is acceptable
Loss aversion
Framing principle 
Sunk cost fallacy. Concord fallacy of throwing good money after bad
Premortem and midmortem
Shortcut your way to success 
Design pattern
Antipattern
Brute force
Heuristic rules
Algorithms
Black box
Tools
Automation
Economies of scale
Parallel processing
Divide and conquer
Reframe the problem

4 becoming one with nature
Natural selection
Adaptation to changing environment
Scientific method. Experimental mindset. 
Diet and exercise
Don’t fight nature
Inertia of old ideas hard to overcome 
Strategy tax: sometimes u can’t adopt some strategy due to conflict with another one you have. Try not to lock in to long term strategy because can’t adapt well. 
Shirkey principle: institutions will try to preserve the problem for which they are the solution
Lindy effect: things that have survived a while will be expected to continue to do so
Peak model like when something peaks then falls
Momentum and inertia
Culture eats strategy for breakfast
Flywheel
Potential energy and center of gravity (influencers)
Activation energy and catalyst
Forcing function. Commitment. Standing meeting. Weekly project updates. 
Harnessing a chain reaction
Critical mass
Tipping point
Inflection point
Technology adoption life cycle. S curve
Network effects. Metcalf’s law
Cascading failure
Order out of chaos
Butterfly effect
Luck surface area
Entropy
“Only entropy comes easy”
2x2 matrices and scatter plots 
Black and white fallacy
Try to think of other options

5 lies, damned lies, statistics
To believe or not to believe
Spurious correlations
Correlation doesn’t imply causation
Moving target versus randomized controlled trial. A/B testing. Double blinded. 
Placebo effect
Nocebo effect: anticipation of side effects even if no treatment received
Proxy metrics and endpoints
Hidden bias
Selection bias
Nonresponse to survey bias
Survivorship bias
Response bias
Small sample size. Be wary of Law of small numbers
Gamblers fallacy. Monte Carlo fallacy 
Clustering illusion
Sophomore slump. Just regression to mean
The bell curve
Central tendency. Mean, median, mode
Dispersion. Range, variance, standard deviation, histogram
Normal distribution. ⅔ within one standard deviation 
Central limit theorem. Average from any distribution approaches normal
Margin of error. Confidence level
It depends 
Conditional probability using additional information. Inverse fallacy
Base rate fallacy
Bayes theorem. Updating prior
Right or wrong 
Type 1 and 2 errors
Alpha 5% acceptable error rate
Power of experiment Beta
Null hypothesis
P value
Increase sample size to get better confidence 
Will it replicate
Publication bias
Cutting down data to find something significant but really spurious
Systematic reviews and meta-analyses

6 decisions, decisions 
Pro con list not best tool
Maslow hammer. Everything looks like a nail
Weighing costs and benefits
Add numbers to pro con list from -10 to 10
Cost benefit analysis: change scores to dollar values
Put values on spreadsheet timeline to see dollar gains and losses over time
Discount future benefits and costs to today using rate
Sensitivity analysis
Garbage in garbage out
Taming complexity 
Decision tree when lots out possible outcomes
Expected value
Utility values
Black swan events. Chance of ruin
Fat tailed distributions
Cascading failures
Systems thinking
Causal loop diagrams. Stock and flow diagrams
Simulation. Software: insight maker, true world
Lechatelier principle for equilibrium. Homeostasis
Hysteresis. Current state depends on past. Path dependence. 
Range of temperatures to activate thermostat
Lag for mouse activation
Monte Carlo simulation
Dynamic sensitivity analysis
Local versus global optimum
Beware of unknown unknowns
2x2 matrix of known and unknown
Derisking exercises
Scenario analysis
Thought experiment
Counterfactual thinking
Lateral thinking
Adding randomness to generate ideas
Groupthink
Bandwagon effect
Divergent thinking
Crowdsourcing
Prediction markets

7 dealing with conflict
Arms race
Keeping up with the Joneses
Playing with game
Game theory
Prisoners dilemma
Payoff matrix
Nash equilibrium
Repeated game tit for tat
Nudge
Cialdini influence model
Reciprocity
Commitment
Liking. Mirroring
Social proof
Scarcity. Fomo
Authority
Perspective is everything 
Framing
Market vs social solution
Feeling of fairness
Distributive vs procedural justice
Fair share vs fair play
Appeal to emotion
FUD: fear, uncertainty, doubt
Straw man
Ad hominem
Where’s the line
Trojan horse
Bait and switch
Potemkin village
Only winning move is not to play
Mutually assured destruction
Carrot and stick model
Containment
Quarantine
Flypaper 
Honeypot
Domino effect
Slippery slope
Broken windows theory
Contagion metaphor
Gateway drug theory
Loss leader strategy
Appeasement
Don’t feed the trolls
Pick your battles
Change the game
Line in the sand and explain threat
Zero tolerance policy
War of attrition
Pyrrhic victory
Sacrifice play
Guerrilla warfare, marketing
Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight
Punching above your weight
End game
Exit strategy
Scorched earth
Hail Mary pass
Burn the boats
Cross the rubicon

8 unlocking people’s potential
Joy’s law, rumsfeld’s rule: you go to war with the army you have
10X team or individual
It takes a village
Nature vs nurture
People not interchangeable
Introversion and extroversion
Openness to experience
Curious vs cautious
Conscientiousness
Organized vs easy going
Agreeableness
Compassionate vs challenging
Neuroticism
Nervous vs confident
IQ and EQ
Generalists vs specialists
Company building 3 types of people over time: Commandos, infantry, police
Foxes vs hedgehogs
Managing to the person
Who goes where
Peter principle: managers rise to the level of their incompetence
Develop multiple leadership tracks like technical versus people management
Strategy vs tactics
Unicorn candidate, grass is greener
DRI: directly responsible individual
Bystander effect
Controlled power vacuum
Practice makes perfect
Deliberate practice
10,000 hour rule
Spacing effect. Better than cramming
Weekly 1:1 to force feedback
Radical candor
Challenge directly
Care personally
Consequence conviction matrix
Unlocking potential
Fixed vs growth mindset
Pygmalion effect: higher expectations lead to better performance
Self fulfilling prophecies
Imposter syndrome
Dunning Kruger effect as go from novice to expert but then confirmed plummets when you try to advance further
Maslow hierarchy of needs
Hindsight bias, hindsight 20/20, Monday morning quarterbacking
Counterfactual thinking
Take notes as time goes on to not depend on fallible memory
Together we thrive (company culture)
Low context vs high context (when a lot is unsaid)
Tight or loose cultural
Hierarchical or egalitarian
Collective vs individual
Stack ranking
Objective vs subjective
Be explicit about cultural norms
Culture is what happens when managers aren’t in the room
Set clear vision and reinforce it
Leading by example
Hiring standards
Establishing traditions
Accountability and post mortems 
Rewarding people for demonstrating culture
Winning hearts and Minds
Loyalists vs mercenaries
Manager schedule versus maker schedule
Hourly units versus half day units
Dunbar’s number
Mythical man month
Boots on the ground, rolling up your sleeves, in the trenches

9 flex your market power
Arbitrage
Sustainable competitive advantage
Market power
Monopoly
Perfect competition
Secret sauce
2x2 matrix of right/wrong and consensus/contrarian
Open but less known secrets
How to turn someone’s good idea into a great one
Secrets hidden in plain sight
Why now?
Inverse thinking: now what?
Never let a serious crisis go to waste
Simultaneous invention, multiple discovery
Vision without execution is hallucination
First mover
Product market fit
Person org fit
Resonant frequency 
Customer development
No facts inside the building
Rapid experimentation
OODA loop
Pivot
Jobs to be done model
What type of customer are you hunting (different animal names for average annual revenue per customer)
How many will it take at various price points to reach $100M annual revenue
Back of the envelope calculation 
Personas. Think in terms of actual customers
Pivots: are there enough bright spots
Beachhead
Navigating idea maze
Heat seeking missiles: adjust path and find targets
Activate your force field
Moat
IP, patents
Specialized skills
Brand
Relationships
Vertical integration
Network effects
Distribution channel
High pace of innovation 
Lock in/switching costs
Barriers to entry and exit
Regulatory capture
Licensing
Winner take most markets
Only the paranoid survive. Need to reinvent yourself when facing threats
Watch for technologies crossing the chasm

Conclusion 
Knowing name of something versus knowing the thing
Cargo cult science (fake)
Circle of competence

References 
Superforecasting