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Farnam Street (FS) helps you master the best of what other people have already figured out.
Packed with timeless insights, our weekly newsletter offers the mental tools to deal with whatever life throws at you.
Our readers include students, teachers, CEOs, coaches, athletes, artists, leaders, followers, politicians and more. They’re not defined by gender, age, income, or politics but rather by a shared passion for living a meaningful life, doing good, and avoiding problems before they happen.
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Recent Articles
The Ingredients For Innovation
August 03, 2020
Inventing new things is hard. Getting people to accept and use new inventions is often even harder. For most people, at most times, technological stagnation has been the norm. What does it take to escape from that and encourage creativity? *** Writing in The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress, economic historian Joel […]
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Thinking For Oneself
July 29, 2020
When I was young, I thought other people could give me wisdom. Now that I’m older, I know this isn’t true. Wisdom is earned, not given. When other people give us the answer, it belongs to them and not us. While we might achieve the outcome we desire, it comes from dependence, not insight. Instead […]
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Appearances vs Experiences: What Really Makes Us Happy
July 20, 2020
In the search for happiness, we often confuse how something looks with how it’s likely to make us feel. This is especially true when it comes to our homes. If we want to maximize happiness, we need to prioritize experiences over appearances. *** Most of us try to make decisions intended to bring us greater […]
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The Great Mental Models V2
This is the second book in The Great Mental Models series and the highly anticipated follow up to the Wall Street Journal bestseller, Volume 1: General Thinking Concepts.
We tend to isolate the things we know in the domain we learned it. For example:
- What does the inertia of a rolling stone have to do with perseverance and being open-minded?
- How can the ancient process of steel production make you a more creative and innovative thinker?
- What does the replication of our skin cells have to do with being a stronger and more effective leader?
On the surface, these concepts may appear to be dissimilar and unrelated. But the surprising truth is the hard sciences (physics, chemistry, and biology) offer a wealth of useful tools you can use to develop critically important skills like:
- Relationship building
- Leadership
- Communication
- Creativity
- Curiosity
- Problem-solving
- Decision-making
The second volume of the Great Mental Models series shows you how to make those connections. It explores the core ideas from the hard sciences and offers nearly two dozen models to add to your mental toolbox.
You’ll not only get a better understanding of the forces that influence the world around you, but you’ll learn how to direct those forces to create outsized advantages in the areas of your life that matter most to you.
