Mental Model
Iron Law of the Market
A strong practitioner warning that a venture needs sufficient demand for what it can actually deliver
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Mental Model
Irreducibility
The property of a system where the behavior or function CANNOT be simplified without loss—it requires all of its components and their specific interactions
Mental Model
Islamic Finance Principles (Prohibition of Riba)
Islamic finance is built on the Quranic prohibition of riba (interest/usury) and the principle that money should not generate money without bearing real economic risk
Mental Model
Island Biogeography (Size and Isolation Determine Diversity)
MacArthur and Wilson's equilibrium theory models species richness through the balance of immigration and local extinction
Cognitive Move
Isolate
Pull the risky slices of a job into their own separately-fenced piece instead of letting them ride along with the routine work.
Cognitive Move
Isolate exceptions
Pull the few odd cases out of a group and give them their own bucket, so what stays behind behaves the same way. Unlike a full reslice, you move only the misfits, then write a separate rule for them.
Cognitive Move
Isolates
Look for the nodes hanging off the edge of your drawing with one weak tie or none. Nobody routes through them, so they vanish from every pairwise account, yet their disconnection is often what you actually need to explain or fix.
Cognitive Move
isotype
One repeated icon stands for a fixed number of units, so quantity is shown by counting identical marks instead of measuring a length. Because the marks are countable, a reader gets the exact number and the rough size in the same glance, and small counts stay concrete. It stops working above a few dozen marks, where counting becomes measuring again.
Cognitive Move
issue map
The same boxes, but the top of the page is a question rather than a claim. Each candidate answer hangs beneath the question, and each answer carries its own supporters and its own challengers. Because nothing is asserted at the top, it holds a live disagreement without either side having to concede the frame before it starts, and it keeps a record of why each answer was dropped so the next round does not redo the work.
Mental Model
Iterated Game
A game that is played repeatedly between the same participants, creating fundamentally different strategic dynamics than one-shot interactions
Mental Model
Iteration Cycle
An iteration cycle links an attempted change, observation, and a decision about what to do next
Mental Model
Jain Anekantavada (Many-Sidedness of Reality)
Anekantavada is the Jain doctrine that reality is irreducibly complex and cannot be captured by any single perspective
Mental Model
Janusian Thinking (Paradoxical Thinking)
Janusian thinking is Rothenberg's term for actively conceiving opposing ideas together during creative thought
Mental Model
Jevons Paradox
Jevons paradox describes cases where efficiency stimulates enough additional activity to increase total resource use
Mental Model
Jhana States Framework
The jhanas are a series of progressively refined meditative absorption states described in the Buddhist Pali Canon, recently validated by neuroscience research
Mental Model
Jig and Fixture Thinking
A jig holds a workpiece and guides a tool to produce repeatable, accurate results
Cognitive Move
Job
Pick which kind of question you are actually asking, from a fixed menu: an amount or trend, a cause, a mechanism, a base rate, whether a source can be trusted, whether a real outcome improved. The type you name dictates which method can settle it.
Mental Model
Job Crafting (Wrzesniewski)
Amy Wrzesniewski's research shows employees actively reshape their jobs through three dimensions: (1) task crafting—changing what you do, taking on new tasks or dropping others; (2) relational crafting—changing who you i…
Mental Model
Job Search Campaign Protocol
A structured protocol for running a job search as a strategic campaign rather than a reactive, ad hoc process
Mental Model
Jobs To Be Done
Jobs to Be Done examines the progress someone seeks in particular circumstances and how they choose products, services, or other ways to make that progress
Mental Model
Johari Window
A framework mapping self-knowledge across two dimensions—what you know about yourself and what others know about you—creating four quadrants: Open (known to self and others), Blind Spot (known to others but not to self),…
Mental Model
Jootsing
Jootsing, a term Dennett credits to Douglas Hofstadter, means jumping out of a system by changing an assumption or rule that structures its usual moves.
Mental Model
Jugaad (Frugal Innovation)
Jugaad describes creating innovative solutions with minimal resources by improvising, repurposing, and working around constraints
Mental Model
Jurisdictional Arbitrage
Different jurisdictions—countries, states, regulatory bodies—have different rules, and sophisticated actors can choose where to base operations, incorporate entities, or file legal actions to exploit the most favorable r…