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The encyclopedia

People, books, and breakthrough ideas—connected to the mental models and moves you can use.

The first connected collection

A product, a person, a way of thinking.

Start with Steve Jobs and Susan Kare. Follow a breakthrough into a model or move, then take an idea into your own work.

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3,456 entries

Person

Steve Jobs

An entrepreneur and product leader whose work offers examples of focus, cross-disciplinary influence, and design. Follow those choices alongside the collaborators and earlier work behind them.

Part of the first connected collection
Person

Susan Kare

A graphic designer who helped give Macintosh its visual language through screen fonts and interface imagery. Her accounts reveal the craft of finding a useful symbol, working within a display, and revising with other people.

Part of the first connected collection
Book

Make Something Wonderful

An edited collection of speeches, interviews, and emails, available to read freely online. Use a passage to trace a decision, question its reasoning, and make a small change in your own work.

Part of the first connected collection
Breakthrough Idea

Typography on the Macintosh

Macintosh brought multiple typefaces, adjustable text sizes, and graphics into everyday document work. The story spans visual craft, software, and the later system for getting a finished page into print.

Part of the first connected collection
Breakthrough Idea

Multi-touch on the iPhone

Apple’s 2007 iPhone combined a multi-touch display with phone, music, and internet functions. This example follows the product’s interactions and supporting systems within the longer history of touch research.

Part of the first connected collection
Cognitive Move

Reschema

Borrow the relational skeleton of a domain you understand and transfer only the structure that survives an explicit mismatch check.

Part of the first connected collection
Mental Model

Opportunity Cost

The value of the best alternative you give up when making a choice

Part of the first connected collection
Mental Model

Systems Thinking

Seeing the world as interconnected wholes rather than isolated parts

Part of the first connected collection
Mental Model

Affordances (Gibson/Norman)

Affordances are action possibilities relative to an actor's capabilities

Part of the first connected collection
Cognitive Move

Reconstraint

State what you're improving, what must not get worse, and what limits you're under, so the real feasible options become explicit.

Part of the first connected collection
Cognitive Move

Reboundary

Redraw what counts as inside versus outside the problem so that hidden dependencies and costs come into the frame.

Part of the first connected collection
Cognitive Move

Reperspective

Deliberately re-render the situation from other viewpoints (the other actor, an outsider, your future self) to surface information and incentives your default view hides.

Part of the first connected collection
Mental Model

Constraints Breed Creativity

Some constraints can support creativity by narrowing a search, discouraging habitual answers, or prompting unusual combinations

Part of the first connected collection
Mental Model

“Daddy Is a Doctor”

Dennett's example asks how much related knowledge a child needs to count as understanding a statement

Mental Model

10x (Force Multiplier)

The observation that in knowledge work, the best performers are not 10% better but 10x more productive than average

Cognitive Move

10x In / 10x Out

When the useful scale is unclear, inspect a unit ten times smaller and a system ten times larger and compare which gives you more control.

Mental Model

15-Minute City Concept

The 15-Minute City, developed by Carlos Moreno and adopted in Paris and Melbourne, proposes that all essential needs—work, shopping, healthcare, education, entertainment, green space—should be accessible within a 15-minu…

Mental Model

30-60-90 Day Plan Protocol

A structured onboarding protocol for the first three months in any new role, organized into three phases with specific goals for each

Mental Model

5 Whys

A structured inquiry that repeatedly asks why a specific problem occurred, following evidence toward conditions that a useful countermeasure could change

Cognitive Move

5B

Before intervening, choose your intent for the loop: BUILD a missing one, BREAK a harmful one, BOOST a weak one, BALANCE a volatile one, or BEND a misaimed one.

Mental Model

A Cascade of Homunculi

Dennett's cascade replaces an unexplained inner observer with increasingly limited functional components whose operations can ultimately be explained mechanically

Mental Model

A Computer Chess Marathon

Dennett imagines a deterministic chess tournament in which varied games reveal the programs' competences