“You don’t have to be brilliant… only a little bit wiser than the other guys, on average, for a long time.”
– Charlie Munger
LATTICEWORK OF MENTAL MODELS | BOOK REVIEWS + ANALYSIS | LEARNING JOURNEYS
Welcome to Poor Ash’s Almanack, a free mental models resource. It’s finally back online, after years, thanks to AI. Now also available as a weekly podcast, for those who prefer to listen than read!
What’s a mental model and how will it make you better at life, business, and pretty much everything? If you don’t know the answer, that’s okay – start here. In the age of AI, unique human judgment and decision-making is more valuable than ever, especially since AI can help scale that judgment farther than ever before.
If you already know what mental models are, read on: with three types of content spanning over half a million words, the goal is to distill the lessons from hundreds of books across many disciplines to make you happier, more successful, and more interesting at a cocktail party. (Well, maybe. No guarantees on that last one.)
Discerning readers from L.A. to New York to Brisbane to Hong Kong have provided rave reviews. Here are nine of my favorites, verbatim:
– “Poor Ash’s Almanac[k] – wow – thanks. superbly done – love the way you express counterintuitive ideas so simply.” (Talmudic scholar)
– “love your work and your writings – keep it up[,] it[‘]s very unique!” (wealth management executive from Australia)
– “Poor Ash’s Almanack is probably the most insightful and well written set of mental models I have ever come across. We would like to congratulate you on pulling this off and are grateful to you for sharing it openly. This must have taken an incredible amount of time and dedication to put together.” (investors from New York)
– “I had been looking for a resource like this for a while and I get the feel[ing] that there are a lot of people who were. Everyone talks about the latticework but [I’ve] never seen much of anything that actually goes into decent detail about each one.” (family office analyst from the East Coast)
– “the quantity of output is making me feel bad about my productivity. Impressive.” (hedge fund analyst from Tennessee)
– “Fabulous… I love the notes and the way you’ve tied everything together. I think I speak for the entire value investing community when I say: thank you.” (Managing Director of Investments at a large publicly-traded insurance company renowned as a “compounder.”)
– “I’m blown away.” (hedge fund manager from New York)
– “Samir, this is one of the most insane things I’ve ever seen in my life. (In a good way.)” (hedge fund manager from Texas)
– “THANK YOU. That’s as big as gmail will let me type, but it’s still an understatement of my appreciation. I (shamelessly) spent my entire workday exploring PAA yesterday (and will likely do the same today.)” (college student from Utah)
Follow in these readers’ footsteps and turbocharge your happiness and productivity by exploring our three types of content and joining our mailing list (below) for infrequent, thoughtful nudges to make wiser decisions.
LATTICEWORK OF MENTAL MODELS
100+ important concepts that’ll make you dramatically more effective at life, condensed into 39 pages that are easy to read and understand. Our two brand-new ones: focus/attention and nature vs. nurture (including luxury beliefs). Some of my old favorites: structural problem solving, culture / status quo bias, cognition / intuition / habit / stress, luck vs. skill, and salience.
BOOK REVIEWS + ANALYSIS.
Effective Thinking (Incl Psychology / Neuroscience)
Science, Engineering, Math, Medicine
Business / Finance / Entrepreneurship
Not sure what to read next? Our book reviews provide detailed insights on what you can expect to learn from any given book – and our notes and analysis highlight the mental models, tying in related concepts from other books to enrich your learning and provide you with logical next steps.
LEARNING JOURNEYS.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, I’ve put together a few suggestions on how to group content in a thematic manner. The most useful is probably the 80 / 20 Mental Models Learning Journey – 17 books in 17 weeks to get you through 80% of the value on this site.