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.

Why it works

Expertise in one domain produces local optimization: patterns are recognized fast and accurately within the domain but blind spots compound at the boundaries. Deliberately acquiring models from adjacent or distant fields creates transfer potential — the ability to recognize structural similarities between a new problem and a domain you already understand. Munger’s reading habit was designed precisely to force this cross-pollination.

How to do it

1. List the five or six disciplines most different from your primary field.
2. Pick one model from each (e.g., natural selection from biology, supply/demand from economics, inversion from mathematics).
3. Learn it to the point where you can explain it without jargon to a non-specialist.
4. Keep a running personal reference — not definitions, but examples of the model in the real world.

Evidence

Analogical reasoning research (Gentner & others) shows that exposure to structurally similar problems from different domains improves transfer and insight. Munger’s latticework is a practitioner operationalization of this principle. (mechanistic)

Munger’s latticework is practitioner advice, not an experimentally validated curriculum. The underlying cross-domain transfer research supports the general mechanism, not the specific model-collection approach.

Common mistake

Collecting model names (availability heuristic, second-order effects) without ever working through a real example — building a vocabulary rather than a toolbox.