{"id":174358,"date":"2022-02-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ceotudent.com\/?p=174358"},"modified":"2022-01-16T21:13:40","modified_gmt":"2022-01-16T18:13:40","slug":"mental-models-how-to-train-your-brain-to-think-in-other-ways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ceotudent.com\/en\/mental-models-how-to-train-your-brain-to-think-in-other-ways","title":{"rendered":"Mental Models: How to Train Your Brain to Think in Other Ways"},"content":{"rendered":"
You can train your brain to think better. One of the best ways to do this is to expand the set of mental models you use to think. Let me explain what I mean by sharing a story about a world-class thinker.<\/div>\n
While reading a story about the famous physicist Richard Feynman<\/a> , I first discovered what a mental model is and how useful the right one can be. Feynman earned his BA from MIT and his PhD from Princeton. During this time, he gained notoriety by entering the math department and solving problems that brilliant PhD students couldn’t.<\/div>\n
When people asked how he did it, Feynman claimed that his secret weapon wasn’t his intelligence, but a strategy he learned in high school. According to Feynman, his high school physics teacher asked him to stay after class one day and offered something.<\/div>\n
\u201cFeynman,\u201d said the teacher, \u201cyou talk too much and make too much noise. I know why. You are bored. So I will give you a book. Go to the back, in the corner and read this book, and when you know everything in this book, you can start talking again. \u201d<\/div>\n
Thus, Feynman would go to the back of the class every day and study the “Advanced Calculus by Woods” book, and the rest of the class would continue with regular lectures. And while reading this old math textbook, Feynman began to develop his own mental models.<\/div>\n
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Feynman describes this process as follows:<\/div>\n
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\u201cThis book showed how to distinguish parameters under the sign of Integral. Universities don’t really teach that. But I understood how to use this method and used it over and over again. So, using this book, I developed special self-taught methods for solving integrals. \u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWhen kids at MIT or Princeton had trouble solving Integrals, they wouldn’t be able to do it with the standard methods they learned in school. So I got a great reputation for solving Integrals just because my toolbox was different from everyone else’s and they tried all the tools they had before they gave me the problem. \u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Every PhD student at Princeton<\/a> and at MIT is excellent. It was not always his obedience to raw knowledge that set Feynman apart from his peers. This is how he saw the problem. He had a wider array of mental models.<\/div>\n

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