People, books, and breakthrough ideas—connected to the mental models and moves you can use.
3,456 entries
James Reason's Swiss Cheese Model, as applied specifically in healthcare, views medical errors not as failures of individual competence but as system failures where multiple defensive layers (like slices of Swiss cheese)…
Johansson's Medici Effect emphasizes creative possibilities at intersections of fields, experiences, and cultures
Medicine 3.0 is Attia's proposed emphasis on proactive, individualized, long-term prevention and healthspan
Taleb's distinction between two fundamentally different types of domains
A beginner-friendly protocol for establishing a meditation practice that actually sticks, designed to overcome the common failure mode of starting too ambitiously
The Mediterranean diet—abundant vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, olive oil, moderate fish, limited red meat and processed foods—is the most robustly evidence-supported dietary pattern
The Mediterranean approach to time treats temporal experience as something to be savored rather than optimized, rejecting the Northern European/American equation of busyness with virtue
Asks what channel or format carries the method: text, audio, video, live in person, recorded. You can keep the same method and swap only the pipe it travels through, which changes when and where the work can happen.
McLuhan's phrase directs attention to how a medium changes the scale, pace, and patterns of human activity, beyond the particular content it carries
If a sensation is hijacking your attention, describe it plainly (where it is, what it feels like) without explaining it, and see if that frees up your thinking.
A self-reinforcing cycle where meetings proliferate to the point of organizational dysfunction: (1) alignment is needed, so meetings are created, (2) meetings consume maker time, reducing productivity, (3) reduced produc…
In music and creative work, melody is the single most memorable and emotionally compelling element—the sequential pattern of notes that creates a recognizable, emotionally resonant structure
A reusable frame with empty slots, so the format carries the argument and your content only fills in what it already implies.
Memento mori is a reminder of mortality that can support reflection on how to live, including in Stoic traditions
Dawkins introduced memes as culturally transmitted patterns that can be copied, varied, and differentially retained
Ask which entity holds the history and context everyone else draws on: past decisions, why a rule exists, what was already tried. Unlike the roles about moving things through, this one is about what would simply be lost if the entity vanished tomorrow.
The cognitive science finding that human memory is severely limited in capacity, duration, and accuracy—and that these limitations systematically distort decision-making, learning, and self-understanding
A protocol for responding when you or someone you know is in mental health crisis — severe depression, suicidal ideation, psychotic symptoms, severe anxiety/panic, or psychological breakdown
Peter Senge's discipline of bringing unconscious mental models—the assumptions, generalizations, and beliefs that shape how we understand and act in the world—into conscious awareness where they can be examined and teste…
Expert teaching requires understanding not just what students don't know, but what they do think—including systematic misconceptions interfering with learning
Systematic practice of vividly imagining skill execution in complete sensory detail to improve physical performance
The cognitive ability to run 'what if' scenarios in your mind—simulating possible futures, rehearsing actions, and predicting outcomes without actually acting
Mentoring relationships contain inherent power asymmetries creating ethical obligations
The Mentorship Legacy Model proposes that the most durable form of professional legacy is not what you built but whom you developed