12 Models That Made Me 12x Better
“Productivity this, Productivity that” Are you also falling in a whirlpool of ideas on how you can become a better version of yourself? To be honest, I am the same. I can ramble all about how toxic growth can kill creativity and how routines can become mundane, but at its core — there are just some things that I have begun to practise, and I hope I can share them with you too.
As someone deeply fascinated by personal growth and maximizing their potential, I’m always looking for some ideas that can help me become 1% better. Over the years, I’ve tried countless productivity hacks, habit-building techniques, and self-improvement strategies. But they weren’t fitting for me. Be it Pomodoro or forcing myself to read — I just couldn’t find the things that fit my routine.
The right mental models can unlock exponential improvements across every aspect of our lives — from your careers and finances to your relationships and well-being. So when I got to know about Naval Ravikant, I read their book and heard their podcast — it was an eye-opener.
That’s why I’m so excited to share the 12 transformative mental models recommended by Naval Ravikant that have absolutely changed my life. Implementing these frameworks has helped me become more productive, insightful, and effective. And I’m confident they can do the same for you.
First Principles Thinking
This has to be one of my favourites. You know how sometimes you have a lot of tasks in front of you — so much so that you get overwhelmed. This is where this model has helped me.
This approach involves breaking down complex tasks into smaller tasks. Now you might think “Am I just not increasing the number of tasks for myself?”
Not really. You see if you have a task like “Plan Social Media Posts” — it looks like a big intimidating task making you wonder where to start. But using this principle, you break it down into smaller sub-tasks like
- Create 10 posts for Instagram
- Create 10 posts for Twitter
- Schedule posts for Instagram
- Schedule posts for Twitter
When I started doing this, I no longer sat clueless at my work desk as I knew completing each of these smaller tasks would help me tick off that 1 huge task.
I was no more overwhelmed with the uncertainty of my to-do list.
Compound Interest
While most people understand compound interest in finance, they often fail to apply this principle to other areas of life, such as personal development and learning.
One small change each day can compound a whole new skill. I started embracing the compound interest mindset and focused on taking small, consistent actions every day. These can be starting a new habit or just having weekly goals that you want to look at.
Get your skills to compound to a whole better person.
Emotional Intelligence
Contrary to popular belief, being a great creator or achiever isn’t solely about intellectual ability.
A good creator is not just sound by their mind but also in touch with their emotions.
You’d be surprised to know how so many people your age or even older never sat down to understand their emotions. Developing emotional self-awareness and the ability to navigate complex dynamics is just as vital.
For this, I started journaling and empathy-building. At the beginning, I was not that consistent but over time I just got pure joy to read how my day went 6 months ago or 2 weeks ago. I read about the problems I faced which were monumental at that time but now feel so small.
I realised, my emotional health needs care too.
Parkinson’s Law
This mental model states that “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”
Meaning if you give a task 5 hours, you’ll do it in 5 hours. If you give that task 2 hours, you’ll do it in 2 hours.
See we train our brain to complete some tasks and the more time we give it the more it will take. I believe it also reflects on how much time we allow ourselves to grow. Some days we might be able to accomplish that task in 3 hours, the next day — probably 2.5 — the next time we’ll take much less time.
By consciously setting time limits on some of my tasks and activities, I’ve been able to not only utilise my time in a more efficient way but also make an effort to get better at them.
Reflect and Iterate
Now this is simple. You don’t have to do this daily — you don’t have to act like a machine. But remember when I said I started journaling, I set some questions that I would and at the end of the week. These would be like
- Journal your growth. How far you’ve come in this journey?
- State your reasons here — why do you hustle?
- What challenges or setbacks did I face this week?
I tried to remember by whys and acknowledge that there can be hardships in life. I tried to regularly pause, assess my progress, gather feedback, and make adjustments to my approaches.
Inner Scorecard
Instead of seeking external validation or comparing myself to others, learn to measure success based on your internal standards and values. Don’t plan your tasks based on “what would they think” or “How would they feel”
Rather, maintain a set of values for yourself like
- What are my core values?
- What are the recent goals that you have achieved?
- What is something that I want to achieve in 2 months
Specific Knowledge
In a world of abundant information, I’ve found that developing expertise in niche, valuable, and difficult-to-replicate domains is far more impactful than pursuing generalized knowledge.
Determine your individual strengths and talents. Discover what you enjoy doing and what you naturally excel at. By understanding your unique abilities, you can direct your efforts toward developing expertise in those areas.
Batching and Context Switching
Batching involves grouping similar tasks together and performing them in dedicated blocks of time.
If you are someone like me who does not like time blocking, batching is for you. This is when you set a list of tasks you want to accomplish today and batch similar tasks together. For example, I would set a time for my office work and during that time I would do nothing else like check my phone or open my personal mail.
Similarly, for blogging, I would batch similar tasks and do the same for household work.
Over time I realised I was not frying my brain by thinking of multiple tasks at the same time instead clubbing similar tasks together that utilised the same amount of mental power.
Kaizen
This is something I’ve been doing for years now, and it is too important to sum up in a paragraph.
So basically, Kaizen is the Japanese concept of continuous improvement.
Kai — means “Change”
Zen — means “Good”
The basic idea behind kaizen is that small, incremental improvements can lead to significant long-term gains. By making small changes regularly, we can gradually improve our skills, our processes, and our outcomes. You can say this is similar to the Compound effect but this has a lot more to say. If you want to read about it in more detail, check here.
The Pareto Principle
Also known as the 80/20 rule, states that approximately 80% of effects come from 20% of causes.
In simpler terms, if you want to cut down a tree in 6 hours, spend 4 hours sharpening your tool.
Be it personal growth or a business idea — invest time in growth because you never know when that knowledge can be useful.
The Barbell Effect
This mental model, popularised by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, suggests that in certain situations, it is advantageous to pursue an extreme risk-taking strategy combined with a risk-averse approach.
Most of us play too safe — maybe it is because we don’t have space for making mistakes. They could cost us our livelihood, our jobs or our comfort. But sometimes, just sometimes, listen to your heart.
There can be 2 types of extremes:
- High-Risk, High-Potential-Reward: Describe the activities or investments that carry higher risk but have the potential for significant rewards. This can be starting a business or beginning a new career. If with enough effort, you think the reward is as high as the risk — allocate time and resources to pursue it.
- Low-Risk, Stable: There are efforts that don’t require much risk and come with a much more stable outcome. Outline the activities that provide stability and minimise risk. Specify the benefits and stability this approach offers.
Take a leap of faith.
The Lindy Effect
One thing I love about this effect is that it can be explained in a strong one-liner
The longer something has existed, the longer it is likely to continue existing.
Once I read this, I was able to look at it in both senses — good and bad.
I thought about all the bad habits of constantly saying no to hanging out with my friends, extending time to meet my family, or all the bad habits of social media scrolling binge watching etc.
The longer they existed, the longer I continued them to exist because they became a habit.
Similarly, I start to inculcate good habits. Taking time to go for a walk, blocking an hour to read and self-learn. I’ve been able to better identify solutions that are more likely to withstand the test of time.
And, that’s it. If you reached here I would like to offer you something. Something that I made to help me and more people. My 15 Mental Model Template
In this template, you’ll find ways to effectively implement all the mental models stated above along with 3 new mental models. I thought that reading about these mental models is nice but we forget about them soon. So with these templates, you can find a viable way to keep practising them and include them in your routine.
