Mental Model
Path Dependence and Chaos
Path dependence concerns persistent effects of history, while chaos concerns sensitive dependence within specified deterministic dynamics
The encyclopedia
People, books, and breakthrough ideas—connected to the mental models and moves you can use.
Explore the encyclopedia
3,456 entries
Mental Model
Path Dependence and Increasing Returns
Increasing returns to adoption can amplify contingent early advantages when use improves an option's attractiveness to later adopters
Mental Model
Path Dependent or Tipping Point
Path dependence concerns effects accumulated through history, while tipping-point analysis concerns a small change near a boundary with a substantial effect on future behavior or possibilities
Cognitive Move
path metaphor
Two places and something between them. Bridge, road, crossing, tunnel, fork. You pour a sequence or a transition into it, with the start on one side, the end on the other, and the hard middle drawn as a gap or a span. This is the class for anything shaped like getting from here to there. What it adds for free is engineering. A bridge implies someone designed it, tested it, and that it holds, which is exactly the assurance most transitions do not have.
Mental Model
Patient-Centered Care Model
Patient-centered care shifts the organizing principle of healthcare from 'What is the matter with you?' (disease-focused) to 'What matters to you?' (person-focused)
Mental Model
Pattern Matching
The cognitive process of recognizing similarities between a current situation and previously encountered situations—the foundation of expert intuition
Cognitive Move
Pause with Reopening Condition
Instead of trying a support or getting help, you set the task down for now, and you write the trigger that brings it back: a clock time, a signal, or a person. No named trigger means it is avoidance wearing a pause costume.
Mental Model
Peak Performance Curve (Yerkes-Dodson Law)
The empirical finding that performance follows an inverted-U relationship with arousal: too little arousal produces lethargy and poor performance, optimal arousal produces peak performance, and too much arousal produces…
Mental Model
Peak Performance Timing (Biological and Psychological Readiness Convergence)
Strategic alignment of physical preparation, psychological readiness, and environmental conditions to produce maximal performance at a specific moment
Mental Model
Peak-End Energy Planning
Peak-End Energy Planning combines Daniel Kahneman's Peak-End Rule (experiences are remembered based on their peak intensity and how they end, not their average) with energy management principles
Mental Model
Peak-End Rule
Kahneman's finding that people judge experiences primarily by their most intense moment (the peak) and their final moment (the end)—not by the average or total of the experience
Mental Model
Peer Effects
Peer effects concern causal influences transmitted through interaction with others, potentially through information, norms, incentives, or other channels
Mental Model
Peer Mentoring Networks
Peer mentoring networks replace one-to-one senior-junior mentoring with a web of mutual mentoring among peers at similar stages
Mental Model
Peltzman Effect (Risk Compensation)
Sam Peltzman's finding that safety improvements often fail to reduce overall harm because people compensate by taking more risks—adjusting their behavior to maintain a constant level of perceived risk
Cognitive Move
Pendulums or overshoots
The system swings past its target and overcorrects because feedback arrives too late or too strong.
Cognitive Move
Per-capita
Divide a total by the number of people it covers, so groups of different sizes compare fairly. It answers whether a big number is big because the activity is intense, or only because more bodies are counted.
Cognitive Move
per-day or per-person rescaling
Divide the total by the days, the weeks, or the people, and draw both sizes at once. The point is not that the smaller number is friendlier. It is that one of the two scales is the one you can act on, and the other is the one that shows what it adds to. Show the divisor, and show both.
Cognitive Move
Per-unit-time
Divide a total by the span of time it accumulated over, turning a lump sum into a rate. That makes stretches of unequal length comparable, so a longer day stops looking like more effort than a shorter one.
Mental Model
Perceived Value
Perceived value is a person's assessment of what an offering provides relative to what they give up, informed by circumstances, expectations, alternatives, and experience
Cognitive Move
Percentage change
Divide the movement by where you started, so a change reads as a share of the original rather than as raw units. This lets you compare items of wildly different sizes, and keeps small absolute moves from looking trivial when they are large relative to the base.
Mental Model
Percolation Models
Percolation models study connected clusters formed by open sites or edges under specified probability rules
Mental Model
Perfect Competition
A theoretical market structure with many buyers and sellers, identical products, perfect information, and zero entry barriers—where no individual firm can influence the market price