Maintain a personal model catalog with examples
Keep a written inventory of your models, each illustrated with a real example from your own experience.
Why it works
A model stored only in abstract form is rarely retrieved in the field — the conditions for retrieval need to be concrete and situational. Anchoring each model to a personal example creates an episodic retrieval cue: when a future situation resembles the example, the model is activated automatically rather than requiring deliberate search.
How to do it
- Create a document, notebook, or card set with one model per entry.
- For each model, write: the name, the mechanism in two sentences, and one real example from your own life.
- Review the catalog monthly — reading your own examples is more activating than reading definitions.
- Add a new model every time you encounter one you’ve never used before.
Evidence
Encoding specificity research (Tulving) shows that memory retrieval improves when retrieval conditions match encoding conditions. A personal example is a richer, more specific encoding cue than an abstract definition. (mechanistic)
The catalog approach is a practitioner tool; direct comparisons of catalog-based model recall to definition-only study are not formally studied.
Sources
- Tulving & Thomson (1973), encoding specificity and retrieval processes, Psychological Review
Common mistake
Filling the catalog with definitions copied from Farnam Street or Wikipedia rather than with your own examples — these don’t create the retrieval cues the practice depends on.
Practice this with IX Coach
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More practices for Mental Models: Charlie Munger’s Latticework Approach
- Collect models deliberately from fields outside your specialty
Choose one model per quarter from a discipline you do not work in and learn it well enough to explain it.
- Use inversion as the first model in every problem
Before solving a problem, ask what would guarantee failure — then avoid those things.
- Always ask what happens next after the obvious effect
For any decision, trace at least two steps of consequences before committing.
- Constantly distinguish the map from the territory
A model is a simplification — know precisely where yours breaks down.
- Apply several models to the same problem at once
When models from different fields point to the same answer, confidence rises; when they conflict, you learn something important.
- Watch for lollapalooza effects — multiple models pointing the same direction
When several biases or forces combine on a single outcome, expect an extreme result.
Related concepts
- First-Principles Thinking, Made Usable
Reasoning up from fundamentals, with the mechanism behind why it beats analogy
- Second-Order Thinking: And Then What?
Tracing consequences of consequences, the way Howard Marks does
- Inversion: Solve Problems Backward
Munger’s “avoid stupidity” discipline, applied to real decisions
- Thinking, Fast and Slow, Made Usable
Two systems, the biases they create, and when to slow down