Lessons from: The Great Mental Models Vol. 2: Physics, Chemistry and Biology

Name: The Great Mental Models Vol. 2: Physics, Chemistry and Biology
Author(s): Parrish, Shane; Beaubien, Rhiannon

Synopsis

This book is part 2 of the 3-part series from Shane Parrish as he attempts to lay out foundational models that exist in life and the world around us. The book is divided into 3 parts - Physics, Chemistry and Biology.

Core ideas

1. Everything is relative in life: Understand that your perspective will always be limited, there is more than one way to see a situation so make sure you are incorporating these perspectives. Shift your vantage to see things differently.
2. Every action has a reaction: You cannot escape the law of karma. In order to have the thing, you must be the thing - People tend to receive what they offer to the world.
3. Things (incl. life) are always moving towards equilibrium (disorder), and left to themselves, systems resist change: And it requires energy to have it otherwise. Now, both of these (entropy and inertia) are opposing forces, the former ensures nothing but change (till it all stops finally) and the latter resists change. Eventually, entropy wins - prepare for that.
4. Before increasing force, try to reduce resistance first: Friction is a fact of life, not just physics and often our best effort is countered by unseen, seemingly random resistance. But remember, even to resist, one needs to apply force - Life likes to conserve energy, so when you face resistance realize that someone is going out of their way to erect those barriers for you. What motivates them to go against their natural tendency to conserve energy? And is it something that you can reduce? Think about that.
5. Hard work is not enough, you need leverage: In a situation of leverage, the lever does most of the work, not the application of force. Therefore, choosing (and retaining) the right lever is important. If you find ourselves still exerting effort after applying leverage, then you did not choose the right lever. Applied to life, levers can be thought of as objects, positions or people that help reduce our effort - and not that we should reduce these (esp. people) to simply what they can do for us, it is important to understand that indeed getting a strong lever can be the difference between us getting ahead or staying behind.
6. Change that does not last is easy: People think that in order to bring about change they need to surmount the initial inertia, but tend to forget that unless change is ensured all the way to the end it is easy for things to revert to the original state. The energy to bring about sustained change is called activation energy, and the idea is that one must plan for activation energy and not just initial energy while considering a new venture. Accurately doing this exercise will prevent you from quitting too early.
7. We often have one significant skill but don’t have the other skills necessary to get the most out of it: We need to partner with those who do, forming an alloy that is greater than the sum of its parts. If you can find people to partner with who can complement and augment your skills to create even more capabilities, then so much the better.
8. In most areas of life we are generalists, in a few we may call ourselves specialists: Generalists are far more resilient than specialists. Specialists face far lesser competition than generalists. Being a generalist is OK if the stakes are low, but specialization is preferred when the stakes are high. "On the human timescale, adaptability is about recognizing when the way you have done things in the past is becoming less and less successful in a changing environment.". Real strength comes from being able to adapt, let go of what worked in the past and focus on what is needed to thrive in the future.
9. We live in ecosystems: It makes for our and the ecosystem's long-term survival if we understand the various components of the ecosystem and how they are connected with each other.
10. Cooperation can be better than competition: Cooperation significantly expands what’s possible, by creating emergent properties that have more power than the individual components. When you don’t have time to evolve in response to changes in the environment, cooperation can significantly improve your chances of survival by pursuing relationships that bring mutual benefit.
11. Hierarchies is a natural product of human society: You can't do away with them and they are by design unequal and unfair. Yes, different people in the hierarchy perform respective tasks and do not need to bother with the responsibilities of another, but even so it is easier/safer/better to be at a higher rank than at a lower one.
12. Incentives are powerful, and hidden: Responding favourably to incentives is hard wired in all animals, and we as humans are bad and often biased at discovering the incentives we might be responding to. We should make a conscious effort to identify incentives guiding our behaviour and decide if it aligns with how we want to live our lives.
13. Laziness is in our genes: All animals have a tendency to minimize energy expenditure in order to have a reserve in times of future need. It is evolutionarily favorable to develop ways to minimize energy expenditure while still being able to survive and propagate in your current environment. A way humans minimize energy expenditure is by resorting to heuristics or thumb rules that are based on our past experience, they are more likely to work in stable environments versus dynamic ones. For people working in clear "cause and effect" type sectors such as engineering and chemistry, relying on heuristics might be better than for people working in sectors like marketing or social sciences where cause and effect relationships cannot be clearly established.

Notable quotes

• When you see someone doing something that doesn’t make sense to you, ask yourself what the world would have to look like to you for those actions to make sense.
• People tend to receive what they offer to the world. Thus, to change our world, we must change what we offer to others.
• We are drawn to stories that make things feel a little less random, just as we are drawn to storytellers who seemingly simplify complexity.
• Left to themselves, systems resist change.
• To achieve our aims, reducing resistance is often easier than using more force.
• We see strength as an immediate advantage that we don’t want to compromise. However, it’s not strength that survives, but adaptability.
• Real success comes from being flexible enough to change, to let go of what worked in the past, and to focus on what you need to thrive in the future.

In closing

Overall, I found this volume a little less helpful than the previous one, maybe because it tells of things that I think I already know. Nevertheless, core ideas 4, 5 and 6 are useful additions to my latticework of mental models. I consider this volume a "one and done" kind of affair, where you read the book, make your notes and file them away in your mind.