Mental Model
Linear Models
A linear scoring or prediction model combines inputs with fixed weights, often with an intercept
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Mental Model
Lines of Effort Framework (Coordinating Parallel Campaigns)
Lines of effort (LOE) is a planning framework for operations that cannot be defined by geographic objectives alone—particularly stability operations where success requires simultaneous progress across multiple domains
Cognitive Move
Link
Study a relationship instead of the things it joins. Ask what passes between two parts, how one feeds the other, and where the handoff breaks. The pair becomes what you measure and change, not either part alone.
Cognitive Move
Link / Augment
You and a support component work interactively, and neither alone carries the whole task.
Mental Model
LinkedIn Profile Optimization Protocol
A systematic protocol for optimizing your LinkedIn profile to serve as a career asset rather than a digital resume
Cognitive Move
Links specified
For each arrow that carries the story, write down five things: the concrete mechanism doing the pushing, which way it pushes and whether it raises or lowers the next thing, how long it takes to show up, what units you are counting, and how confident you are.
Mental Model
Liquidity Illusion
The false belief that you can sell an asset at its current market price whenever you want, which evaporates precisely when you need it most
Cognitive Move
list
One item per line, a bullet, nothing else. Membership only. The order of the rows is not a claim, so anything you read into it is your own addition. This is the cheapest form in the family and the one to reach for first, because you can always add boxes or numbers later.
Cognitive Move
List
Break the material into discrete, scannable items when the job is to see everything at once, tick things off, or confirm nothing is missing. Good for inventory and action. Bad for showing how items relate or trade off against each other.
Cognitive Move
List mismatches
Before you borrow anything, write down where the two domains break apart: which roles have no counterpart, which relations run backward, which facts about the source are simply false in the target. Naming these out loud marks the boundary past which the analogy stops carrying weight.
Mental Model
Load Path Analysis
Load path analysis traces how forces travel through a structure from the point of application to the foundation or ground
Cognitive Move
Local optimization
One part of your setup gets faster while the whole thing gets slower, costlier, or riskier.
Mental Model
Local vs Global Optimum
The distinction between the best solution in your immediate neighborhood of the search space (local optimum) and the best solution overall (global optimum)
Mental Model
Lock-In
The condition where switching to a competitor is so costly—in money, time, effort, or lost data—that customers stay even when alternatives are objectively better
Mental Model
Locus of Control
Julian Rotter's concept measuring whether individuals believe outcomes are determined by their own actions (internal locus) or by external forces like luck, fate, or powerful others (external locus)
Cognitive Move
Log scale
Plot the axis by ratio instead of by amount, so a doubling covers the same distance anywhere on the chart. Use it when values span orders of magnitude, or when you care about growth rate rather than absolute size.
Mental Model
Log-Rolling: Trading Across Issues
Log-rolling is the practice of trading concessions across different issues based on each party's different priorities
Mental Model
Logotherapy (Frankl)
Viktor Frankl's logotherapy, developed partly from his experiences in Nazi concentration camps, posits that the primary human drive is not pleasure (Freud) or power (Adler) but meaning
Mental Model
Lollapalooza Effect
Charlie Munger's term for the extreme outcome that occurs when multiple psychological tendencies or mental models operate in the same direction simultaneously
Mental Model
Long Tail
In digital markets with near-zero distribution costs, the aggregate demand for niche products can equal or exceed demand for hits
Cognitive Move
Long-term
Name the settled state far enough out that the full causal chain has played through and compounding or erosion has shown up. Not the first result and not the mid-course check, but what durably remains once everything has worked itself out.
Mental Model
Look at the machine from the higher level.
A metaphor for examining the larger process that produces repeated outcomes, including goals, handoffs, resources, decisions, and feedback
Mental Model
Look to nature to learn how reality works.
A practitioner invitation to study natural mechanisms for questions and possible analogies
Mental Model
Looking Glass Self (Cooley)
Charles Cooley's theory that our self-concept is shaped by how we imagine others perceive us—we see ourselves reflected in others' reactions (or our interpretation of their reactions)