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

1. Create a document, notebook, or card set with one model per entry.
2. For each model, write: the name, the mechanism in two sentences, and one real example from your own life.
3. Review the catalog monthly — reading your own examples is more activating than reading definitions.
4. 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.