What do you rely on to make important decisions that are not many in life?
There are only a dozen or twenty decisions that are really important in a person's life. For middle-aged people with screens, there are fewer and fewer important decisions left for us. So, have you ever thought about the question, what should we rely on and what to base our decisions on, so that we can bear the major decisions in life and make choices that we have no regrets in this life?
In this issue, Youdaojun will introduce you to the multiple thinking model to help you make major decisions in life.
What do you rely on to make important decisions that are not many in life?
01 Personal experience is efficient, but it cannot be trusted
We've all had the big decisions about which city to go to, which university to go to, which major to study. Some will consult teachers, experts, relatives, or simply make their own decisions. Such decision-making methods are basically based on personal experience, and are usually direct and effective. You Daojun does the same as everyone else. However, we cannot therefore fully trust experience.
Because personal experience is often affected by factors such as one's own characteristics, family, ideas, and environment, all personal experiences have limitations and applicable conditions. Therefore, if you can think with more dimensional methods and laws, your decisions will be more scientific and effective.
The more dimensional methods and laws mentioned here are the multiple thinking model.
The multiple thinking model was first proposed by Charlie Munger, who believed that the thinking model was an important principle of important disciplines.
Well-known product manager Liang Ning believes that a mental model is a way of thinking about a problem.
Cheng Jia, a learning expert, believes that a mental model is a template for thinking.
In general, a thinking model is an effective strategy for solving problems; the essence of a multiple thinking model is a set of effective problem-solving strategy toolboxes, which have a total of four layers.
What do you rely on to make important decisions that are not many in life?
02 The 4 levels of the multiple thinking model
The multiple thinking model has about four levels, which are empirical skills, methodological processes, scientific principles and philosophical perspectives. The first three levels are aimed at the determination of answers, and the fourth level, the philosophical perspective, is aimed at uncertainty.
Level 1 Mental Model - Empirical Skills
When Youdaojun just went to college in a big city, he once went to a clothing wholesale market and saw a piece of clothing. The boss asked for 380. I knew that this place was a hard bargain, so I stomped my feet hard. It's still 200, but I didn't expect people to agree. When I saw that the boss was so cheerful, I thought to myself that he was slaughtered. So, he fled in despair, and the boss's rude scolding could be heard faintly behind him. Back in the dormitory, an experienced classmate told me that it was right to go to the wholesale market to buy clothes at a 10% discount. Later, I got the clothes for 65 yuan.
You see, for buying clothes at wholesale markets, you can only get good results if you have certain life experience and skills. But this kind of experience is limited to the clothing wholesale market, even if it is in the vegetable market, let alone buying a car and a house.
Therefore, although the mental model of relying on empirical skills is direct and efficient, the scope of application is very small, and even the empirical skills are contradictory. For example, the proverb says that if you keep the green hills, you will not be afraid of running out of firewood, but the proverb also says that it is better to break the jade than the tile. So should we want green hills or jade pieces?
Therefore, relying solely on personal experience to make decisions cannot face and solve many important problems in the real world.
What do you rely on to make important decisions that are not many in life?
The second level of mental model - method process
So, we can look at the second level of the mental model, the method and the process.
Such as McKinsey method, SWOT analysis, Boston moment, pyramid principle, PDCA cycle and so on.
The thinking model at the level of method and process generally comes from the induction and refinement of a large sample of a certain industry and field, which standardizes and summarizes the same type of problems.
The important content of new employee training in many large factories is the methodology and process. A workplace person with a systematic method and process thinking model usually makes people feel very professional, and can achieve good results in their careers, and can often become a business expert.
For example, in the workplace, the common problem that everyone encounters is that they do not know how to communicate with new customers and superiors, and they always think that it is difficult to understand their true thoughts. This problem repeats itself over and over again, seemingly never going to be resolved. But if you can pick it out and think, which industries are more frequently and more urgently trying to solve this problem? So if you broaden your horizons, you will find that HR is meeting new interviewers every day to explore their ideas. Insurance brokers are also dealing with a variety of different people, trying to gain their trust. The purpose of FBI agents' work is to Wanting to understand each other’s thoughts faster, we found HR’s interview secrets, FBI’s people skills, and a comprehensive training system in the insurance industry. When you have mastered the best thinking methods in different industries, then you will be able to learn from Stand out in your own industry.
What do you rely on to make important decisions that are not many in life?
The second level of thinking model - the principle of discipline
This level of mental model is exactly the important principle of the important discipline mentioned by Charlie Munger. People who are good at the discipline-based thinking model are often at the advanced stage of their careers.
Ren Zhengfei introduced the "entropy increase principle" into Huawei's management very early, and created Huawei's vitality engine model. Elon Musk's entire entrepreneurial process has used the "first principles" mental model to the extreme. The various marketing strategies we are seeing now essentially use the anchoring effect of psychology.
The mental model at this level, based on scientific principles discovered and verified by scientists, has a wider scope of application and higher reliability. for example:
Mechanistic thinking in physics, evolutionary thinking in biology, systems thinking in complex science, and cognitive psychology thinking, etc.
As Charlie Munger said, if we can combine the mental model that we have summarized, traceable and scientific principles, then our thinking will be more profound and our problem-solving strategies will be more thorough.
The first three types of mental models, whether they are empirical skills, methodological processes, or disciplinary principles, all point to a goal, that is, to find the answer to the question, and to provide us with certainty. However, human society is uncertain after all. How can we remain full of courage and indomitable spirit despite the uncertainty, and constantly achieve self-transcendence?
This is about the fourth-level thinking model - philosophical perspective and humanistic spirit.
What do you rely on to make important decisions that are not many in life?
The thinking model of the fourth level-philosophical perspective and humanistic spirit
The thinking model of the so-called philosophical perspective is essentially a lower-level thinking beyond the answer.
We all hope that everything in our lives can be found with certainty and answers.
Empirical skills allow us to solve specific recurring events, methods and processes help us settle down, and disciplinary principles guide us to understand patterns. However, human beings must face uncertainty after all, which is the fate of life and the meaning of life.
When you enter an unfamiliar field, face an unfamiliar environment, and everything is unknown, where do we find the basis and motivation for decision-making?
In fact, the predecessors have already given us the template. That is, the humanistic spirit of human beings, the courage to face the cruel world, and the "blind" optimism about the unknown, all of which are preserved in various fields such as philosophy, art, and culture.
Such a philosophical perspective and humanistic spirit have become a high-level thinking model, and we call them truth, goodness, and beauty. A person born in a small mountain village, who has not read a lot of books, has little knowledge and vision, can still make contributions to the world with an air of truth, goodness and beauty, and can still make no less than any achievements.
What do you rely on to make important decisions that are not many in life?
03 Walking and walking, we forget ourselves
Youdaojun often wonders why he likes to learn from other people's experience so much, and he strives to put methods and processes into his mind.
Perhaps the essential reason is that most of us forget the original intention of truth, goodness and beauty as we walk, and we get weaker and weaker when we have too much, worry about gain and loss, and lack the courage to face the unknown.
This is not different because you are 80 years old or 18 years old, but because your wisdom increases and you become more determined and more powerful. The pursuit of truth, goodness and beauty may require a lifetime of cultivation, and even face to face every day. right mission.
The four levels of the mental model are not superior or inferior, they all have their own applicable scenarios and conditions, but from a practical point of view, the higher the level in the workplace, the better at using disciplinary principles and philosophical perspectives Thinking model, the more grass-roots employees, the more applicable experience skills and methods process thinking model.
Einstein said that you can never solve a problem at the level where it was created.
It can be seen that if you want to break through the problems of life and achieve self-transition, you need to have multiple thinking models and be able to think at different levels.
The real cognitive masters do not lie in how much knowledge they have and how rich their work experience is, but in their ability to see the world with different levels of thinking models.