33 Concepts That Will Improve Your Thinking
Three Point Essay | A mind-sharpening list of ideas & mental models
As an obsessive reader, I often come across cool ideas. Here’s a list of 33 of them that are worth sharing.
1. The Mating Mind
Men are attracted to the “hourglass” body figure in women—(relatively) large breasts, thin waist, and wide hips. Women are attracted to men with an athletic build, V-shaped torso, and deep voice. Women tend to care more about a potential partner’s wealth and status, while men tend to care more about looks and youthfulness.
2. Weaponized Pleasure
Unlimited easy access to screens, porn, weed, and junk food has people hopelessly addicted to cheap pleasure. These incessant dopamine spikes short-circuit people’s brains, turning them into unmotivated and unproductive vegetables.
3. The 1st Rule of Intelligence
Your intelligence is mostly defined by your ability to change. Only an idiot sees changing their mind or changing their behavior as shameful.
4. The Power of ‘I don’t know’
Often the smartest thing you can say is ‘I don’t know.’ People think they need to have an answer or opinion for everything. But our brain power is finite and the world is infinitely complex. Better to admit your ignorance and ask more questions.
5. The Clear Thinker Habit
Writing is like capturing a flow of thoughts and solidifying it on paper. You can review parts of your mind, and question your beliefs and motivations. Repeating this improves your memory and helps you understand yourself more, leading to mental clarity.
6. Ikigai
A Japanese concept referring to a pursuit that exists in the intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.
7. The Fool To Savior Principle
Most people never reach their full potential because they have a crippling fear of being viewed as dumb or incompetent. But every master was once a foolish beginner. If you want to improve in anything, you have to accept being the fool.
8. Mimetic Desire
Mimetic desire says that our desires are not original, but are rather imitated from others. We want things not because we actually want them, but because we see others wanting them. Awareness of this is crucial when hanging out with people or scrolling social media.
9. Death Paradox
Your life doesn’t truly begin until you contemplate your death.
10. The Lifting Heavy Weights Effect
The more you lift weights, the less likely you are to be discouraged by the opinions of miserable or lazy people.
11. The Great Online Game
Humans play games on screens in different ways. Playing the game of creating content online to might lead to new relationships, influence, and money. Playing video games might lead to leveling up fictional characters. Play the right games.
12. The Dark Ages
The majority of collective beliefs for every generation of humans throughout history have turned out to be wrong; so it's possible, even perhaps likely, that it'll end up being the same regarding our generation. Put differently, there’s two types of ideas—those that have been proven wrong, and those that haven’t been proven wrong yet.
13. The Poverty of Advice
When people give advice, they’re just talking to themselves in the past. But you’re not someone’s past self, you’re you. Take all advice with a grain of salt and follow your intuition.
14. The Never-Ending Now
Humans are addicted to novelty. We tend to focus and talk about the newest TV episode or social media post, while the collective wisdom of our species hiding away in older books gets neglected.
15. Paradox of The News
The more you consume news, the less an understanding of the world and reality you have. Paying too much attention to the news will likely lead to you becoming outraged, confused, or flat-out deceived.
16. Spotlight Effect
You're self-conscious and anxious because you overestimate how much others pay attention to you. The antidote is to realize that everyone is self-absorbed. People likely aren’t thinking about you, but rather about themselves or what you’re thinking about them.
17. Pretty Privilege
When we evaluate people we believe that we’re rational and objective, which is inaccurate. Particularly attractive people tend to have huge social and economic advantages simply because people like how they look.
18. The Tool Creating Animal
Humans are animals programmed to make tools. From knives to fishing rods, iPhones to nuclear weapons, it’s what we do. We’re hard-wired to create increasingly advanced technologies and improve upon them.
19. Flow States
A flow state is an experience of complete energized focus on a task that’s meaningful to you, resulting in forgetfulness of the surrounding world. Habitually getting into this zone leads to fulfillment over time.
20. Alder's Razor
Alder’s razor says that if something can’t be settled by experiment or observation, then it’s not worthy of debate. In other words, stop having 2 hour-long LeBron vs. Jordan 1v1 arguments.
21. The Law of Boldness
Humans naturally admire bold humans.
22. The Mystery of Music
Rhythmically patterned noises produce strong emotional responses in people, including skin goosebumps, arm hair standing up, and tears. Under this weird hypnosis, people also tend to spasm into hip-swinging, foot tapping, and head nodding.
23. The Basics Rule
The basics rule says it’s usually better to master the fundamentals, instead of memorizing advanced concepts and practices you don’t really understand.
24. Confirmation Bias
Something everyone is a guilty of to some extent, confirmation bias is the tendency to only seek out or interpret information in a way that confirms beliefs you already have. To combat, pay attention to things you disagree with or find upsetting, and be able to make a positive case for them, even though you think they’re negative.
25. Dunning-Kruger Effect
Unskilled or inexperienced people tend to overestimate their knowledge and abilities, while skilled or experienced people tend to underestimate their knowledge and abilities (you’re much more likely to overestimate your knowledge and abilities than underestimate).
26. The Harsh Reality of Words and Relationships
The purpose of language largely to manipulate behavior—you say things because you want someone to do or think something. Friendships are largely transactional—we associate with people because we think they’ll add value to our lives in some way.
27. The Two Central Drivers of Human Behavior
Most things people do can be understood as a strategy increase their wealth or their status (or both).
28. The Four Idols
The four idols are money, power, fame, and pleasure. An old saint believed they were the four main pursuits that took people away from God. They are, however, natural to want—some more than others depending on your personality. For your mental health, it’s critical to be aware of which idol you desire most, so as not be driven insane by it.
29. Pascal’s Wager
The idea that it’s better to believe in God and be wrong, than to not believe and be wrong.
30. Ball is Life
The coolest people tend to become hoopers because they know ball is life.
31. The Mind Killer
Fear is the mind killer. Everyone feels it. It stops most people from achieving what they’re capable of. But not everyone; some know that courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it, so it’s said.
32. The Source of Good Ideas
Walking. It’s walking. Your best ideas and realizations likely won’t come to you when you’re sitting inside overstimulating yourself on a screen. Free your mind.
33. El Jefe’s Sober Realization
You're a grain of sand, a speck on a floating dust ball in an infinite universe; here for less than the blink of an eye, soon be swallowed up and forgotten by the ceaseless passing of time. Do what you want.
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Jeff Sullivan’s Three Pointers
