Mental Model
Occam's Razor (The Principle of Parsimony)
A principle favoring avoidance of unnecessary complexity among explanations that adequately account for relevant evidence
The encyclopedia
People, books, and breakthrough ideas—connected to the mental models and moves you can use.
Explore the encyclopedia
3,456 entries
Cognitive Move
Offline Fallback
For every dependency that can fail at the moment of need, create the smallest backup path and rehearse it once.
Mental Model
OKRs (Objectives and Key Results)
Objectives and Key Results connect an intended change with observable results over a defined period
Mental Model
Oligopoly
A market structure dominated by a small number of large firms whose strategic decisions are interdependent—each firm must consider rivals' likely responses when making pricing, investment, or marketing decisions
Mental Model
Omission and Abstract Blindness
Two related cognitive biases: OMISSION BLINDNESS—the systematic failure to notice what's ABSENT (missing data, non-events, dogs that didn't bark)
Mental Model
Omission Bias
The tendency to judge harmful actions as worse than equally harmful inactions—preferring to let bad things happen through inaction rather than cause them through action, even when the consequences are identical or worse
Mental Model
Omotenashi (Selfless Hospitality)
Omotenashi is the Japanese philosophy of wholehearted, anticipatory hospitality where the host attends to the guest's needs before they are expressed, without expectation of reciprocation or even acknowledgment
Cognitive Move
One Home for State
Give every important piece of information one canonical home with a named owner, and point everything else to it.
Cognitive Move
One More Turn
Ask what this action makes more or less likely the next time the situation recurs.
Cognitive Move
One Owner per Outcome
Name exactly one person who owns the outcome and give them matching authority and resources.
Cognitive Move
one worked instance
Drop the rate and draw a single case end to end, with its real times and its real beats. A rate describes a set nobody has met. One instance has a Tuesday, a timestamp, and a moment where it turned. Keep the rate beside it so the instance is not mistaken for the whole pattern.
Mental Model
One-on-One Meeting Structure (Manager-Report)
A protocol for conducting effective recurring one-on-one meetings between a manager and direct report
Mental Model
One-on-One vs. Group Instruction Choice (Pedagogical Format Selection)
The fundamental format decision shaping every teaching interaction
Cognitive Move
One-sided or origin-dependent record
Your record is suspect because it was selected, copied, or defined by the very story it seems to support.
Mental Model
Open Monitoring Meditation
Open Monitoring (OM) meditation is a practice where the meditator maintains broad, non-reactive awareness of whatever arises in experience — thoughts, sensations, emotions, sounds — without selecting any particular objec…
Mental Model
Open Platform vs Closed Platform
Platform openness concerns which participants can use, extend, provide, or govern a platform and under what conditions
Mental Model
Operant Conditioning
Skinner's framework that behavior is shaped by its consequences: reinforcement (positive or negative) increases behavior frequency, while punishment decreases it
Mental Model
Operational Tempo (OPTEMPO) Management
Operational tempo (OPTEMPO) is the rate at which a force conducts operations relative to sustainable capacity
Mental Model
Opportunity Cost of Capital
Every dollar has exactly one best use—the opportunity cost is the return foregone by choosing the second-best option
Mental Model
Optimal Stopping (37% Rule / Secretary Problem)
The mathematical solution to the problem of when to stop searching and commit: examine 37% of your options without committing (the 'exploration' phase), then commit to the next option that's better than anything you saw…
Mental Model
Optimistic Probability Bias
The systematic tendency to overestimate the probability of positive events and underestimate the probability of negative events—seeing the future through rose-colored glasses
Cognitive Move
Optimize after thresholds
This is the one outcome you push as far as it will go, using only the room left after the non-negotiables and the minimums are satisfied. It never justifies dropping below a threshold, and everything else waits behind it.
Mental Model
Option Value (Real Options Thinking)
The insight that having the right but not the obligation to take future action has quantifiable value—borrowed from financial options theory and applied to strategy