The Great Mental Models

I was a Science stream student in Secondary school and Junior College. I chose Maths, Chemistry and Physics even though I had no affinity for these subjects.

With them, I often experienced “brain fog”, so I hung onto the steps my teachers taught as a life buoy. I eventually passed, mentally categorised the subjects as “not useful”, and moved them to “forgotten”.

The Kismet began with my student’s assignment.

In 2019, one group of students working on a low-GI rice project reflected on why another team had succeeded with a market segment they had dismissed. That reflection cited a Charlie Munger speech. I followed the citation to Farnam Street, read the full speech, clicked around some more, and found the first volume of The Great Mental Models.

Then Volume 2 arrived: Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Ironically, exactly the subjects I had once found useless and forgettable.

For the first time, I saw beauty in Physics.

The chapter on inertia and momentum helped me see resistance to change differently. If a habit is deeply entrenched, shifting it takes more effort. That sounds obvious now, but seeing the idea through Physics changed the questions I asked when coaching people on their business ideas.

Some time after I graded that student’s assignment, I gifted him Volume 1.

I sometimes wonder if it became his Kismet Read too.