• Intellectual humility What you "know" may be wrong. With intellectual humility, we question our assumptions and can change our minds: • Recognize blind spots • Learn to say "I was wrong" • Be careful with your convictions • Be willing to challenge your beliefs

• Inversion Inversion is the practice of thinking through problems in reverse. Charlie Munger: Don't focus on success, focus on not making mistakes. Ask yourself what the opposite of what you want would look like and how it would come about. Don't do those things.

Most people reason from analogies. They look to incrementally improve on what's already being done. With first principles thinking, ignore what's being done. Ask yourself, if you started from scratch, how would you design this.

• First principles Aristotle defined first principles as "the first basis from which a thing is known." Break things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there: • Identify your current assumptions • Break them down to the roots • Create new solutions

These 10 Mental Models will make you smarter:

• Pareto principle 80% of results come from 20% of inputs. This applies to all areas of life, including: • sales • sports • money • computing If you focus on the 20%, you increase production and decrease effort. Take it a step further. Focus on the 20% of the 20%

• Mediocrity principle You are not special. Not unique. what happens in the world, your country, and your life, is the result of natural, universal laws. Nothing special. When you drop that pretense, you drop the stress and anxiety that come with it. It helps you be humble.

• Probabilistic thinking Probabilistic thinking uses math, and logic, to estimate the outcome of an event. As you gather new information, update your expectations. To gather info, ask, what: • else might happen • if we're wrong • could be next Update your estimates.

• Projective thinking When you think projectively, you suspend disbelief of currently accepted views. Your thought process becomes open-ended, speculative, and requires you to create: • context • concepts • objectives Projective thinking requires intellectual humility.

• Law of large numbers As the sample size increases, the sample average approaches the theoretical average. The law of large numbers is central to probabilistic thinking and is the basis for many businesses.

A player in a casino may win spins of the roulette wheel, but in the fullness of time over a large enough sampling, the house always wins. Casinos are built on the law of large numbers. The law of small numbers is the reverse. Don't trust a study with a small sample size.

• Think bottom-up A top-down thinker accepts ideas as a given and looks for evidence to prove them. A bottom-up thinker looks for first principles and uses them to build a mental model. Picture a house build. You start from the ground up. This approach leads to new ideas.

• Shifting baseline syndrome Our baseline changes over time and we don't notice. When we lose two pounds per week for 4 months, our spouse may not notice. When a friend sees us at the end of 4 months, they exclaim "you've lost so much weight." Their baseline didn't shift.

As time goes on, you need to update your baseline assumptions. As with probabilistic thinking, you need to reassess new information you have. Ask yourself questions. Challenge your assumptions. Reset your baselines regularly.

To 10x your thinking, learn these mental models: • Inversion • First principles • Pareto principle • Think bottom up • Projective thinking • Intellectual humility • Mediocrity principle • Probabilistic thinking • Law of large numbers • Shifting baseline syndrome

A little dogma with a little skepticism never a good idea. And I love how they pointed out to please speak up. Which is great.