I first discovered what a mental model was and how useful the right one could be while I was reading a story about Richard Feynman, the famous physicist. Feynman received his undergraduate degree from MIT and his Ph.D. from Princeton. During that time, he developed a reputation for waltzing into the math department and solving problems that the brilliant Ph.D. students couldn’t solve.

When people asked how he did it, Feynman claimed that his secret weapon was not his intelligence, but rather a strategy he learned in high school. According to Feynman, his high school physics teacher asked him to stay after class one day and gave him a challenge.

“Feynman,” the teacher said, “you talk too much and you make too much noise. I know why. You’re bored. So I’m going to give you a book. You go up there in the back, in the corner, and study this book, and when you know everything that’s in this book, you can talk again.” 1

So each day, Feynman would hide in the back of the classroom and study the book—Advanced Calculus by Woods—while the rest of the class continued with their regular lessons. And it was while studying this old calculus textbook that Feynman began to develop his own set of mental models.

“That book showed how to differentiate parameters under the integral sign,” Feynman wrote. “It turns out that’s not taught very much in the universities; they don’t emphasize it. But I caught on how to use that method, and I used that one damn tool again and again. So because I was self-taught using that book, I had peculiar methods of doing integrals.”

“The result was, when the guys at MIT or Princeton had trouble doing a certain integral, it was because they couldn’t do it with the standard methods they had learned in school. If it was a contour integration, they would have found it; if it was a simple series expansion, they would have found it. Then I come along and try differentiating under the integral sign, and often it worked. So I got a great reputation for doing integrals, only because my box of tools was different from everybody else’s, and they had tried all their tools on it before giving the problem to me.” 2

Every Ph.D. student at Princeton and MIT is brilliant. What separated Feynman from his peers wasn't necessarily raw intelligence. It was the way he saw the problem. He had a broader set of mental models.

What is a Mental Model?

A mental model is an explanation of how something works. It is a concept, framework, or worldview that you carry around in your mind.

For example, supply and demand is a mental model that helps you understand how the economy works. Game theory is a mental model that helps you understand how relationships and trust work. Entropy is a mental model that helps you understand how disorder and decay work.

Mental models guide your perception and behavior. They are the thinking tools that you use to understand life, make decisions, and solve problems. Learning a new mental model gives you a new way to see the world—like Richard Feynman learning a new math technique.

Mental models are imperfect, but useful. There is no single mental model from physics or engineering, for example, that provides a flawless explanation of the entire universe, but the best mental models from those disciplines have allowed us to build bridges and roads, develop new technologies, and even travel to outer space. As historian Yuval Noah Harari puts it, “Scientists generally agree that no theory is 100 percent correct. Thus, the real test of knowledge is not truth, but utility.”

The best mental models are the ideas with the most utility. They are broadly useful in daily life. Understanding these concepts will help you make wiser choices and take better actions. This is why developing a broad base of mental models is critical for anyone interested in thinking clearly, rationally, and effectively.

The Secret to Great Thinking

Expanding your set of mental models is something experts need to work on just as much as novices. We all have our favorite mental models, the ones we naturally default to as an explanation for how or why something happened. As you grow older and develop expertise in a certain area, you tend to favor the mental models that are most familiar to you.

Here's the problem: when a certain worldview dominates your thinking, you’ll try to explain every problem you face through that worldview. This pitfall is particularly easy to slip into when you're smart or talented in a given area.

The more you master a single mental model, the more likely it becomes that this mental model will be your downfall because you’ll start applying it indiscriminately to every problem. What looks like expertise is often a limitation. As the common proverb says, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” 3

When a certain worldview dominates your thinking, you’ll try to explain every problem you face through that worldview.

Consider this example from biologist Robert Sapolsky. He asks, “Why did the chicken cross the road?” Then, he provides answers from different experts.

• If you ask an evolutionary biologist, they might say, “The chicken crossed the road because they saw a potential mate on the other side.”
• If you ask a kinesiologist, they might say, “The chicken crossed the road because the muscles in the leg contracted and pulled the leg bone forward during each step.”
• If you ask a neuroscientist, they might say, “The chicken crossed the road because the neurons in the chicken’s brain fired and triggered the movement.”

Technically speaking, none of these experts are wrong. But nobody is seeing the entire picture either. Each individual mental model is just one view of reality. The challenges and situations we face in life cannot be entirely explained by one field or industry.

All perspectives hold some truth. None of them contain the complete truth.

Relying on a narrow set of thinking tools is like wearing a mental straight jacket. Your cognitive range of motion is limited. When your set of mental models is limited, so is your potential for finding a solution. In order to unleash your full potential, you have to collect a range of mental models. You have to build out your toolbox. Thus, the secret to great thinking is to learn and employ a variety of mental models.

Expanding Your Set of Mental Models

The process of accumulating mental models is somewhat like improving your vision. Each eye can see something on its own. But if you cover one of them, you lose part of the scene. It’s impossible to see the full picture when you’re only looking through one eye.

Similarly, mental models provide an internal picture of how the world works. We should continuously upgrade and improve the quality of this picture. This means reading widely from good books, studying the fundamentals of seemingly unrelated fields, and learning from people with wildly different life experiences. 4

The mind's eye needs a variety of mental models to piece together a complete picture of how the world works. The more sources you have to draw upon, the clearer your thinking becomes. As the philosopher Alain de Botton notes, “The chief enemy of good decisions is a lack of sufficient perspectives on a problem.”

The Pursuit of Liquid Knowledge

In school, we tend to separate knowledge into different silos—biology, economics, history, physics, philosophy. In the real world, information is rarely divided into neatly defined categories. In the words of Charlie Munger, “All the wisdom of the world is not to be found in one little academic department.” 5

World-class thinkers are often silo-free thinkers. They avoid looking at life through the lens of one subject. Instead, they develop “liquid knowledge” that flows easily from one topic to the next.

This is why it is important to not only learn new mental models, but to consider how they connect with one another. Creativity and innovation often arise at the intersection of ideas. By spotting the links between various mental models, you can identify solutions that most people overlook.

Tools for Thinking Better

Here's the good news:

You don't need to master every detail of every subject to become a world-class thinker. Of all the mental models humankind has generated throughout history, there are just a few dozen that you need to learn to have a firm grasp of how the world works.

Many of the most important mental models are the big ideas from disciplines like biology, chemistry, physics, economics, mathematics, psychology, philosophy. Each field has a few mental models that form the backbone of the topic. For example, some of the pillar mental models from economics include ideas like Incentives, Scarcity, and Economies of Scale.

If you can master the fundamentals of each discipline, then you can develop a remarkably accurate and useful picture of life. To quote Charlie Munger again, “80 or 90 important models will carry about 90 percent of the freight in making you a worldly-wise person. And, of those, only a mere handful really carry very heavy freight.” 6

I've made it a personal mission to uncover the big models that carry the heavy freight in life. After researching more than 1,000 different mental models, I gradually narrowed it down to a few dozen that matter most. I've written about some of them previously, like entropy and inversion, and I'll be covering more of them in the future. If you're interested, you can browse my slowly expanding list of mental models.

My hope is to create a list of the most important mental models from a wide range of disciplines and explain them in a way that is not only easy to understand, but also meaningful and practical to the daily life of the average person. With any luck, we can all learn how to think just a little bit better.

Read Next

• Mental Models: The Importance of Multidisciplinary Thinking
• The Best Business Books
• First Principles: Elon Musk and Bill Thurston on the Power of Thinking for Yourself

This pithy statement references the annoying tendency of life to cause trouble and make things difficult. Problems seem to arise naturally on their own, while solutions always require our attention, energy, and effort. Life never seems to just work itself out for us. If anything, our lives become more complicated and gradually decline into disorder rather than remaining simple and structured.

Why is that?

Murphy's Law is just a common adage that people toss around in conversation, but it is related to one of the great forces of our universe. This force is so fundamental to the way our world works that it permeates nearly every endeavor we pursue. It drives many of the problems we face and leads to disarray. It is the one force that governs everybody's life: Entropy.

What is Entropy and Why Does It Matter?

What is entropy? Here's a simple way to think about it:

Imagine that you take a box of puzzle pieces and dump them out on a table. In theory, it is possible for the pieces to fall perfectly into place and create a completed puzzle when you dump them out of the box. But in reality, that never happens.

Why?

Quite simply, because the odds are overwhelmingly against it. Every piece would have to fall in just the right spot to create a completed puzzle. There is only one possible state where every piece is in order, but there are a nearly infinite number of states where the pieces are in disorder. Mathematically speaking, an orderly outcome is incredibly unlikely to happen at random.

Similarly, if you build a sand castle on the beach and return a few days later, it will no longer be there. There is only one combination of sand particles that looks like your sand castle. Meanwhile, there are a nearly infinite number of combinations that don't look like it.

Again, in theory, it is possible for the wind and waves to move the sand around and create the shape of your sand castle. But in practice, it never happens. The odds are astronomically higher that sand will be scattered into a random clump. 1

These simple examples capture the essence of entropy. Entropy is a measure of disorder. And there are always far more disorderly variations than orderly ones.

Why Does Entropy Matter for Your Life?

Here's the crucial thing about entropy: it always increases over time.

It is the natural tendency of things to lose order. Left to its own devices, life will always become less structured. Sand castles get washed away. Weeds overtake gardens. Ancient ruins crumble. Cars begin to rust. People gradually age. With enough time, even mountains erode and their precise edges become rounded. The inevitable trend is that things become less organized.

This is known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It is one of the foundational concepts of chemistry and it is one of the fundamental laws of our universe. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy of a closed system will never decrease. 2

“The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature.” —Arthur Eddington

The great British scientist Arthur Eddington claimed, “The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations—then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation—well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the Second Law of Thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.” 3

In the long run, nothing escapes the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The pull of entropy is relentless. Everything decays. Disorder always increases.

Without Effort, Life Tends to Lose Order

Before you get depressed, there is good news.

You can fight back against the pull of entropy. You can solve a scattered puzzle. You can pull the weeds out of your garden. You can clean a messy room. You can organize individuals into a cohesive team. 4

But because the universe naturally slides toward disorder, you have to expend energy to create stability, structure, and simplicity. Successful relationships require care and attention. Successful houses require cleaning and maintenance. Successful teams require communication and collaboration. Without effort, things will decay.

This insight—that disorder has a natural tendency to increase over time and that we can counteract that tendency by expending energy—reveals the core purpose of life. We must exert effort to create useful types of order that are resilient enough to withstand the unrelenting pull of entropy. 5

“The ultimate purpose of life, mind, and human striving: to deploy energy and information to fight back the tide of entropy and carve out refuges of beneficial order.” —Steven Pinker

Maintaining organization in the face of chaos is not easy. In the words of Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, “The hardest thing in the world is to simplify your life because everything is pulling you to be more and more complex.”

Entropy will always increase on its own. The only way to make things orderly again is to add energy. Order requires effort. 6

Entropy in Daily Life

Entropy helps explain many of the mysteries and experiences of daily life.

For example:

Why Life is Remarkable

Consider the human body.

The collection of atoms that make up your body could be arranged in a virtually infinite number of ways and nearly all of them lead to no form of life whatsoever. Mathematically speaking, the odds are overwhelmingly against your very presence. You are a very unlikely combination of atoms. And yet, here you are. It is truly remarkable.

In a universe where entropy rules the day, the presence of life with such organization, structure, and stability is stunning.

Why Art is Beautiful

Entropy offers a good explanation for why art and beauty are so aesthetically pleasing. Artists create a form of order and symmetry that, odds are, the universe would never generate on its own. It is so rare in the grand scheme of possibilities. The number of beautiful combinations is far less than the number of total combinations. Similarly, seeing a symmetrical face is rare and beautiful when there are so many ways for a face to be asymmetrical.

Beauty is rare and unlikely in a universe of disorder. And this gives us good reason to protect art. We should guard it and treat it as something sacred.

Why Marriage is Difficult

One of the most famous opening lines in literature comes from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. He writes, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

There are many ways a marriage can fail—financial stress, parenting issues, crazy in-laws, conflicts in core values, lack of trust, infidelity, and so on. A deficiency in any one of these areas can wreck a family.

To be happy, however, you need some degree of success in each major area. Thus, all happy families are alike because they all have a similar structure. Disorder can occur in many ways, but order, in only a few.

Why Optimal Lives Are Designed Not Discovered

You have a combination of talents, skills, and interests that are specific to you. But you also live in a larger society and culture that were not designed with your specific abilities in mind. Given what we know about entropy, what do you think the odds are that the environment you happen to grow up in is also the optimal environment for your talents?

It is very unlikely that life is going to present you with a situation that perfectly matches your strengths. Out of all the possible scenarios you could encounter, it’s far more likely that you’ll encounter one that does not cater to your talents.

Evolutionary biologists use a term called “mismatch conditions” to describe when an organism is not well-suited for a condition it is facing. We have common phrases for mismatch conditions: “like a fish out of water” or “bring a knife to a gunfight.” Obviously, when you are in a mismatch condition, it is more difficult to succeed, to be useful, and to win.

It is likely you'll face mismatch conditions in your life. At the very least, life will not be optimal—maybe you didn't grow up in the optimal culture for your interests, maybe you were exposed to the wrong subject or sport, maybe you were born at the wrong time in history. It is far more likely that you are living in a mismatch condition than in a well-matched one.

Knowing this, you must take it upon yourself to design your ideal lifestyle. You have to turn a mismatch condition into a well-matched one. Optimal lives are designed, not discovered. 7

Murphy's Law Applied to the Universe

Finally, let's return to Murphy's Law: “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”

Entropy provides a good explanation for why Murphy’s Law seems to pop up so frequently in life. There are more ways things can go wrong than right. The difficulties of life do not occur because the planets are misaligned or because some cosmic force is conspiring against you. It is simply entropy at work. As one scientist put it, “Entropy is sort of like Murphy's Law applied to the entire universe.” 8

It is nobody's fault that life has problems. It is simply a law of probability. There are many disordered states and few ordered ones. Given the odds against us, what is remarkable is not that life has problems, but that we can solve them at all.

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The goal of this exercise was to envision the negative things that could happen in life. For example, the Stoics would imagine what it would be like to lose their job and become homeless or to suffer an injury and become paralyzed or to have their reputation ruined and lose their status in society.

The Stoics believed that by imagining the worst case scenario ahead of time, they could overcome their fears of negative experiences and make better plans to prevent them. While most people were focused on how they could achieve success, the Stoics also considered how they would manage failure. What would things look like if everything went wrong tomorrow? And what does this tell us about how we should prepare today?

This way of thinking, in which you consider the opposite of what you want, is known as inversion. When I first learned of it, I didn't realize how powerful it could be. As I have studied it more, I have begun to realize that inversion is a rare and crucial skill that nearly all great thinkers use to their advantage. 2

How Great Thinkers Shatter the Status Quo

The German mathematician Carl Jacobi made a number of important contributions to different scientific fields during his career. In particular, he was known for his ability to solve hard problems by following a strategy of man muss immer umkehren or, loosely translated, “invert, always invert.” 3

Jacobi believed that one of the best ways to clarify your thinking was to restate math problems in inverse form. He would write down the opposite of the problem he was trying to solve and found that the solution often came to him more easily.

Inversion is a powerful thinking tool because it puts a spotlight on errors and roadblocks that are not obvious at first glance. What if the opposite was true? What if I focused on a different side of this situation? Instead of asking how to do something, ask how to not do it.

Great thinkers, icons, and innovators think forward and backward. Occasionally, they drive their brain in reverse.

Great thinkers, icons, and innovators think forward and backward. They consider the opposite side of things. Occasionally, they drive their brain in reverse. This way of thinking can reveal compelling opportunities for innovation.

Art provides a good example.

One of the biggest musical shifts in the last several decades came from Nirvana, a band that legitimized a whole new genre of music—alternative rock—and whose Nevermind album is memorialized in the Library of Congress as one of the most “culturally, historically or aesthetically important” sound recordings of the 20th century. 4

Nirvana turned the conventions of mainstream rock and pop music completely upside down. Where hair metal bands like Poison and Def Leppard spent millions to produce and promote each record, Nirvana recorded Nevermind for $65,000. Where hair metal was flashy, Nirvana was stripped-down and raw. 5

Inversion is often at the core of great art. At any given time there is a status quo in society and the artists and innovators who stand out are often the ones who overturn the standard in a compelling way.

Great art breaks the previous rules. It is an inversion of what came before. In a way, the secret to unconventional thinking is just inverting the status quo.

This strategy works equally well for other creative pursuits like writing. Many great headlines and titles use the power of inversion to up-end common assumptions. As a personal example, two of my more popular articles, “Forget About Setting Goals” and “Motivation is Overvalued”, take common notions and turn them on their head.

Success is Overvalued. Avoiding Failure Matters More.

This type of inverse logic can be extended to many areas of life. For example, ambitious young people are often focused on how to achieve success. But billionaire investor Charlie Munger encourages them to consider the inverse of success instead.

“What do you want to avoid?” he asks. “Such an easy answer: sloth and unreliability. If you’re unreliable it doesn’t matter what your virtues are. You’re going to crater immediately. Doing what you have faithfully engaged to do should be an automatic part of your conduct. You want to avoid sloth and unreliability.” 6

Avoiding mistakes is an under-appreciated way to improve. In most jobs, you can enjoy some degree of success simply by being proactive and reliable—even if you are not particularly smart, fast, or talented in a given area. Sometimes it is more important to consider why people fail in life than why they succeed.

The Benefits of Thinking Forward and Backward

Inversion can be particularly useful in the workplace.

Leaders can ask themselves, “What would someone do each day if they were a terrible manager?” Good leaders would likely avoid those things.

Similarly, if innovation is a core piece of your business model you can ask, “How could we make this company less innovative?” Eliminating those barriers and obstacles might help creative ideas arise more quickly.

And every marketing department wants to attract new business, but it might be useful to ask, “What would alienate our core customer?” A different point of view can reveal surprising insights.

You can learn just as much from identifying what doesn't work as you can from spotting what does. What are the mistakes, errors, and flubs that you want to avoid? Inversion is not about finding good advice, but rather about finding anti-advice. It teaches you what to avoid.

Here are some more ways to utilize inversion in work and life:

Project Management

One of my favorite applications of inversion is known as a Failure Premortem. It is like a Premeditation of Evils for the modern day company.7

It works like this:

Imagine the most important goal or project you are working on right now. Now fast forward six months and assume the project or goal has failed.

Tell the story of how it happened. What went wrong? What mistakes did you make? How did it fail?

This strategy is sometimes called the “kill the company” exercise in organizations because the goal is to spell out the exact ways the company could fail. Just like a Premeditation of Evils, the idea is to identify challenges and points of failure so you can develop a plan to prevent them ahead of time.

Productivity

Most people want to get more done in less time. Applying inversion to productivity you could ask, “What if I wanted to decrease my focus? How do I end up distracted?” The answer to that question may help you discover interruptions you can eliminate to free up more time and energy each day.

This strategy is not only effective, but often safer than chasing success. For example, some people take drugs or mental stimulants in an effort to increase their productivity. These methods might work, but you also run the risk of possible side effects.

Meanwhile, there is very little danger is leaving your phone in another room, blocking social media websites, or unplugging your television. Both strategies deal with the same problem, but inversion allows you to attack it from a different angle and with less risk.

This insight reveals a more general principle: Blindly chasing success can have severe consequences, but preventing failure usually carries very little risk.

Decluttering

Marie Kondo, author of the blockbuster best-seller The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, uses inversion to help people declutter their homes. Her famous line is, “We should be choosing what we want to keep, not what we want to get rid of.”

In other words, the default should be to give anything away that does not “spark joy” in your life. This shift in mindset inverts decluttering by focusing on what you want to keep rather than what you want to discard.

Relationships

What behaviors might ruin a marriage? Lack of trust. Not respecting the other person. Not letting each person have time to be an individual. Spending all of your time on your kids and not investing in your relationship together. Not having open communication about money and spending habits. Inverting a good marriage can show you how to avoid a bad one.

Personal Finance

Everyone wants to make more money. But what if you inverted the problem? How could you destroy your financial health?

Spending more than you earn is a proven path to financial failure. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, the math will never work out for you over time. Similarly, accumulating debt is a hair-on-fire emergency to be resolved as quickly as possible. And gradually creeping into unchecked shopping and spending habits can lead to self-inflicted financial stress.

Before you worry too much about how to make more money make sure you have figured out how to not lose money. If you can manage to avoid these problems, you'll be far ahead of many folks and save yourself a lot of pain and anguish along the way.

Consider the Opposite

Inversion is counterintuitive. It is not obvious to spend time thinking about the opposite of what you want.

And yet inversion is a key tool of many great thinkers. Stoic practitioners visualize negative outcomes. Groundbreaking artists invert the status quo. Effective leaders avoid the mistakes that prevent success just as much as they chase the skills that accelerate it.

Inversion can be particularly useful for challenging your own beliefs. It forces you to treat your decisions like a court of law. In court, the jury has to listen to both sides of the argument before making up their mind. Inversion helps you do something similar. What if the evidence disconfirmed what you believe? What if you tried to destroy the views that you cherish? Inversion prevents you from making up your mind after your first conclusion. It is a way to counteract the gravitational pull of confirmation bias.

Inversion is an essential skill for leading a logical and rational life. It allows you to step outside your normal patterns of thought and see situations from a different angle. Whatever problem you are facing, always consider the opposite side of things.

As the tropical storm cut across the tip of Florida and entered the Gulf, it immediately began to swell. In less than 24 hours, the storm doubled in size. And as it grew into a full-blown hurricane, the weather experts gave it a name: Hurricane Katrina.

Katrina churned through the tropical waters of the Gulf and quickly escalated to peak intensity. It ripped through the atmosphere with remarkable force, registering gusts of wind that exceeded 175 mph (280 km/h) and lasted for more than a minute. By the time the storm hit the southeastern coast of Louisiana on August 29th, Hurricane Katrina was nearly 120 miles wide. 1

A storm of Katrina’s size is expected to cause flooding and damage, but coastal cities and neighborhoods use a variety of flood walls and levees to prevent total catastrophe. These walls are built along rivers and waterways and act as a barrier to hold back usually high waters and prevent flooding.

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, it became clear that the levees of New Orleans might not be able to hold back the rising waters. A few hours in, the director of the National Hurricane Center said, “I do not think anyone can tell you with confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not, but that's obviously a very, very great concern.”

Minutes later, the levees began to fail. The waters breached the levees and flood walls of New Orleans in more than 50 different places. Entire districts became submerged in more than 10 feet of water. Evacuation routes were destroyed as bridges and roads collapsed. At Memorial Medical Center in the heart of New Orleans, the surging water killed the backup generators. Without power, temperatures inside the hospital rose to over 100 degrees as doctors and nurses took turns manually pumping each breath into dying patients in a desperate attempt to keep people alive. 2

Water flooded more than 80 percent of the city. And in the days that followed, the death toll began to rise. Bodies were found floating down the streets. Rescue and recovery efforts failed to track down missing people. At least 1,200 people died, and hundreds more were unaccounted for—the total number of dead is still unknown to this day.

So many residents were displaced by Hurricane Katrina that the population of New Orleans dropped by 50 percent from 484,000 before the storm to 230,000 one year later. In total, the damages from Hurricane Katrina surpassed $100 billion. It was the costliest natural disaster in the history of the United States. 3

The Margin of Safety

The great mistake of Hurricane Katrina was that the levees and flood walls were not built with a proper “margin of safety.” The engineers miscalculated the strength of the soil the walls were built upon. As a result, the walls buckled and the surging waters poured over the top, eroding the soft soil and magnifying the problem. Within a few minutes, the entire system collapsed.

This term, margin of safety, is an engineering concept used to describe the ability of a system to withstand loads that are greater than expected. 4

Imagine you are building a bridge. The maximum weight for a fully loaded commercial truck is around 80,000 pounds (36,000 kg), but any decent engineer will build a bridge that can safely carry vehicles weighing far more. You don't want to drive an 80,000-pound truck across a bridge that can only hold 80,001 pounds. Just to be safe, the engineer might build the bridge to handle 5x the expected weight, say 400,000 pounds. This additional capacity is known as the margin of safety.

Of course, maintaining a proper margin of safety is crucial not only in construction and engineering, but also in many areas of daily life.

How to Use a Margin of Safety in Real Life

There are many ways to implement a margin of safety in everyday life. The core idea is to protect yourself from unforeseen problems and challenges by building a buffer between what you expect to happen and what could happen. This idea is widely useful on a day-to-day basis because uncertainty creeps into every area of life. Let's explore a few ways we can use this concept to live better.

Time Management

One of the keys to being prompt and reliable is to use a margin of safety when scheduling your day. If it takes 10 minutes to get somewhere, don't wait to leave until 11 minutes beforehand. Instead, leave 30 minutes beforehand. Similarly, if it always seems to take an extra five minutes to wind down a meeting, then don't schedule meetings back-to-back.

If you're always running late it is because you are living your life without a margin of safety. There will always delays in the real world. When everything has to go perfectly for you to be on time, you're not going to be on time very often. Give yourself a healthy margin of safety. 5

Strength Training

When strength training, you can utilize a margin of safety by finishing each set with at least one repetition left in the tank. This strategy ensures you can complete each repetition with proper technique and reduces the odds of injury. Training to failure eliminates your margin of safety.

Similarly, strength coaches often prevent their athletes from attempting to lift as much weight as possible for a single repetition. Instead, they only allow their athletes to select a weight they can do for at least three repetitions. (Elite sports teams often test a three-rep max, not a one-rep max.) This strategy creates a margin of safety and helps prevent injury during training by never placing athletes under a maximal load.

Investing

Warren Buffett, the famous investor, is a proponent of using a margin of safety when considering which stock to buy. He says, “Do not cut it close. That is what Ben Graham meant by having a margin of safety. You don’t try to buy businesses worth $83 million for $80 million. You leave yourself an enormous margin.”

Our predictions and calculations turn out to be wrong all the time. When it comes to assessing investment opportunities, you want a margin of safety that is so wide, it doesn't matter if your prediction is inaccurate. Buffett's business partner, Charlie Munger has said something similar, “The margin of safety ought to be so attractive. The decision should be obvious.”

“You don’t try to buy businesses worth $83 million for $80 million. You leave yourself an enormous margin.”

As Munger says, “If you could take the stock price and multiply it by the number of shares and get something that was one third or less of sellout value… you've got a lot of edge going for you. Even with an elderly alcoholic running a stodgy business, this significant excess of real value per share working for you means that all kinds of good things can happen to you. You had a huge margin of safety by having this big excess value going for you.”

Project Management

Many complex projects require coordination between multiple people. Let's say five people need to touch a project before it is completed. On average, it might take each person four days to complete their task. Under these circumstances, it would seem reasonable to set the deadline for 20 days from now, which gives each person four days.

But let's say that the total range of time each stage could take is between two days and six days. It is often better to plan for the worst case scenario and set the deadline 30 days from now, which gives each person six days. Hopefully, the average of four days per person will continue and you'll finish the project early. But in any major project, it helps to have a cushion to safeguard against any unexpected problems.

Personal Finance

If you have to spend every dollar you earn each month, then you don't have any margin of safety to protect against unexpected expenses. Conversely, if you can manage to live on 90 percent of your income, then the 10 percent you save provides a nice buffer in case of emergency.

And if you can manage to live on 50 percent of your income, then you can handle a great amount of financial stress. Imagine a medical emergency that requires $25,000 in cash. With a large buffer of cash, you can withstand such an unpleasant surprise. A big bank account can handle a lot of turbulence with inflows and outflows. Meanwhile, one small bank account can be sent into bankruptcy from one big shock. The bigger the buffer, the more chaos you can handle.

Expenses bite into your financial margin of safety. Savings expand it.

Jay Leno, the famous comedian, is a perfect example of this strategy. Leno worked two jobs at the beginning of his career, but lived off the income from one of them. “When I was younger, I would always save the money I made working at the car dealership and I would spend the money I made as a comedian,” he says. “When I started to get a bit famous, the money I was making as a comedian was way more than the money I was making at the car dealership, so I would bank that and spend the car dealership money.”

Leno continued this habit even after he was making millions of dollars per year hosting The Tonight Show. “When I got ‘The Tonight Show,' I always made sure I did 150 [comedy show] gigs a year so I never had to touch the principal,” Leno says. “I've never touched a dime of my ‘Tonight Show' money. Ever.” 6

Wildlife Protection

There are millions of squirrels in the world today. If a viral outbreak killed 100,000 squirrels, the species would continue just fine. But if a similar virus killed 100,000 lions, the species would be extinct. There is not enough slack in the ecosystem to handle such a catastrophe. Endangered species are in a precarious position because they have no margin of safety.

Mobility and Stretching

Each muscle in the body has a “stress-strain curve” which describes how far a muscle can stretch before reaching the point of failure. Injury often occurs near the extreme end of this curve. The closer you get to the limits of your range of motion, the more strain your muscles endure.

Practicing stretching and mobility exercises can help expand your range of motion and widen your stress-strain curve. This helps to keep your normal movements in the middle of the curve and away from the extremes where injury is more likely to occur. In other words, it is not necessary to be as flexible as a yoga teacher, but it's nice to have a good margin of safety in your mobility to prevent injury.

Leave Room for the Unexpected

Utilizing a margin of safety can serve you well in nearly any area of life.

All information—no matter how bulletproof it may seem—comes with some degree of error. The future is uncertain. A margin of safety acts as a buffer against the unknown, the random, and the unseen.

The world is more uncertain now than ever before. There is too much information for one person to handle, too many moving pieces for one person to manage. This is why the greatest benefit that a margin of safety provides might be reduced stress and overwhelm. Nobody can predict the future, but there is a sense of quiet confidence that comes over you when you know you are capable of handling the uncertainties of life.

If your life is designed only to handle the expected challenges, then it will fall apart as soon as something unexpected happens to you. Always be stronger than you need to be. Always leave room for the unexpected.

Pareto noticed that a tiny number of pea pods in his garden produced the majority of the peas.

Now, Pareto was a very mathematical fellow. He worked as an economist and one of his lasting legacies was turning economics into a science rooted in hard numbers and facts. Unlike many economists of the time, Pareto's papers and books were filled with equations. And the peas in his garden had set his mathematical brain in motion.

What if this unequal distribution was present in other areas of life as well?

The Pareto Principle

At the time, Pareto was studying wealth in various nations. As he was Italian, he began by analyzing the distribution of wealth in Italy. To his surprise, he discovered that approximately 80 percent of the land in Italy was owned by just 20 percent of the people. Similar to the pea pods in his garden, most of the resources were controlled by a minority of the players.

Pareto continued his analysis in other nations and a pattern began to emerge. For instance, after poring through the British income tax records, he noticed that approximately 30 percent of the population in Great Britain earned about 70 percent of the total income. 1

As he continued researching, Pareto found that the numbers were never quite the same, but the trend was remarkably consistent. The majority of rewards always seemed to accrue to a small percentage of people. This idea that a small number of things account for the majority of the results became known as the Pareto Principle or, more commonly, the 80/20 Rule. 2

Inequality, Everywhere

In the decades that followed, Pareto's work practically became gospel for economists. Once he opened the world's eyes to this idea, people started seeing it everywhere. And the 80/20 Rule is more prevalent now than ever before.

For example, through the 2015-2016 season in the National Basketball Association, 20 percent of franchises have won 75.3 percent of the championships. Furthermore, just two franchises—the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers—have won nearly half of all the championships in NBA history. Like Pareto's pea pods, a few teams account for the majority of the rewards. 3

The numbers are even more extreme in soccer. While 77 different nations have competed in the World Cup, just three countries—Brazil, Germany, and Italy—have won 13 of the first 20 World Cup tournaments.

Examples of the Pareto Principle exist in everything from real estate to income inequality to tech startups. In the 1950s, three percent of Guatemalans owned 70 percent of the land in Guatemala. In 2013, 8.4 percent of the world population controlled 83.3 percent of the world's wealth. In 2015, one search engine, Google, received 64 percent of search queries. 456

Why does this happen? Why do a few people, teams, and organizations enjoy the bulk of the rewards in life? To answer this question, let's consider an example from nature.

The Power of Accumulative Advantage

The Amazon rainforest is one of the most diverse ecosystems on Earth. Scientists have cataloged approximately 16,000 different tree species in the Amazon. But despite this remarkable level of diversity, researchers have discovered that there are approximately 227 “hyperdominant” tree species that make up nearly half of the rainforest. Just 1.4 percent of tree species account for 50 percent of the trees in the Amazon. 7

But why?

Imagine two plants growing side by side. Each day they will compete for sunlight and soil. If one plant can grow just a little bit faster than the other, then it can stretch taller, catch more sunlight, and soak up more rain. The next day, this additional energy allows the plant to grow even more. This pattern continues until the stronger plant crowds the other out and takes the lion’s share of sunlight, soil, and nutrients.

From this advantageous position, the winning plant has a better ability to spread seeds and reproduce, which gives the species an even bigger footprint in the next generation. This process gets repeated again and again until the plants that are slightly better than the competition dominate the entire forest.

Scientists refer to this effect as “accumulative advantage.” What begins as a small advantage gets bigger over time. One plant only needs a slight edge in the beginning to crowd out the competition and take over the entire forest.

Winner-Take-All Effects

Something similar happens in our lives.

Like plants in the rainforest, humans are often competing for the same resources. Politicians compete for the same votes. Authors compete for the same spot at the top of the best-seller list. Athletes compete for the same gold medal. Companies compete for the same potential client. Television shows compete for the same hour of your attention.

The difference between these options can be razor thin, but the winners enjoy massively outsized rewards.

Imagine two women swimming in the Olympics. One of them might be 1/100th of a second faster than the other, but she gets all of the gold medal. Ten companies might pitch a potential client, but only one of them will win the project. You only need to be a little bit better than the competition to secure all of the reward. Or, perhaps you are applying for a new job. Two hundred candidates might compete for the same role, but being just slightly better than other candidates earns you the entire position.

Situations in which small differences in performance lead to outsized rewards are known as Winner-Take-All Effects.

These situations in which small differences in performance lead to outsized rewards are known as Winner-Take-All Effects. They typically occur in situations that involve relative comparison, where your performance relative to those around you is the determining factor in your success.

Not everything in life is a Winner-Take-All competition, but nearly every area of life is at least partially affected by limited resources. Any decision that involves using a limited resource like time or money will naturally result in a winner-take-all situation.

In situations like these, being just a little bit better than the competition can lead to outsized rewards because the winner takes all. You only win by one percent or one second or one dollar, but you capture one hundred percent of the victory. The advantage of being a little bit better is not a little bit more reward, but the entire reward. The winner gets one and the rest get zero.

Winner-Take-All Leads to Winner-Take-Most

Winner-Take-All Effects in individual competitions can lead to Winner-Take-Most Effects in the larger game of life.

From this advantageous position—with the gold medal in hand or with cash in the bank or from the chair of the Oval Office—the winner begins the process of accumulating advantages that make it easier for them to win the next time around. What began as a small margin is starting to trend toward the 80/20 Rule.

If one road is slightly more convenient than the other, then more people travel down it and more businesses are likely to build alongside it. As more businesses are built, people have additional reasons for using the road and so it gets even more traffic. Soon you end up with a saying like, “20 percent of the roads receive 80 percent of the traffic.”

If one business has a technology that is more innovative than another, then more people will buy their products. As the business makes more money, they can invest in additional technology, pay higher salaries, and hire better people. By the time the competition catches up, there are other reasons for customers to stick with the first business. Soon, one company dominates the industry.

If one author hits the best-seller list, then publishers will be more interested in their next book. When the second book comes out, the publisher will put more resources and marketing power behind it, which makes it easier to hit the best-seller list for a second time. Soon, you begin to understand why a few books sell millions of copies while the majority struggle to sell a few thousand copies.

The margin between good and great is narrower than it seems. What begins as a slight edge over the competition compounds with each additional contest.

The margin between good and great is narrower than it seems. What begins as a slight edge over the competition compounds with each additional contest. Winning one competition improves your odds of winning the next. Each additional cycle further cements the status of those at the top.

Over time, those that are slightly better end up with the majority of the rewards. Those that are slightly worse end up with next to nothing. This idea is sometimes referred to as The Matthew Effect, which references a passage in The Bible that says, “For all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.”

Now, let's come back to the question I posed near the beginning of this article. Why do a few people, teams, and organizations enjoy the bulk of the rewards in life?

The 1 Percent Rule

Small differences in performance can lead to very unequal distributions when repeated over time. This is yet another reason why habits are so important. The people and organizations that can do the right things, more consistently are more likely to maintain a slight edge and accumulate disproportionate rewards over time.

You only need to be slightly better than your competition, but if you are able to maintain a slight edge today and tomorrow and the day after that, then you can repeat the process of winning by just a little bit over and over again. And thanks to Winner-Take-All Effects, each win delivers outsized rewards.

We can call this The 1 Percent Rule. The 1 Percent Rule states that over time the majority of the rewards in a given field will accumulate to the people, teams, and organizations that maintain a 1 percent advantage over the alternatives. You don't need to be twice as good to get twice the results. You just need to be slightly better. 8

The 1 Percent Rule is not merely a reference to the fact that small differences accumulate into significant advantages, but also to the idea that those who are one percent better rule their respective fields and industries. Thus, the process of accumulative advantage is the hidden engine that drives the 80/20 Rule.

In recent years, I have focused on building good reading habits and learned how to read more. But the key is not simply to read more, but to read better. For most people, the ultimate goal of reading a nonfiction book is to actually improve your life by learning a new skill, understanding an important problem, or looking at the world in a new way. It's important to read books, but it is just as important to remember what you read and put it to good use.

With that in mind, I'd like to share three reading comprehension strategies that I use to make my reading more productive.

1. Make all of your notes searchable.

Having searchable book notes is essential for returning to ideas easily. It increases the odds that you will apply what you read in real life. An idea is only useful if you can find it when you need it. There is no need to leave the task of reading comprehension solely up to your memory.

I store all of my book notes in Evernote. I strongly prefer Evernote over other options because 1) it is searchable, 2) it is easy to use across multiple devices, and 3) you can create and save notes even when you're not connected to the internet. I get my book notes into Evernote in three ways.

First, if I am listening to an audiobook then I create a new note for that book and type my notes in as I listen. My preference is to listen to audiobooks on 1.25x speed and then press pause whenever I want to write something down. The faster playback speed and slower note taking process tend to balance out and I usually finish each book in the same time as normal. 1

Second, if I am reading a print book then I follow the same process with one change. Typing notes while reading a print book can be annoying because you are always putting the book down and picking it back up. I like to place the book on a book stand, which makes it much easier to type out a long quote or keep my hands free while reading.

Print books and audiobooks are great, but where this system really shines is with ebooks. My third (and preferred) approach is to read ebooks on my Kindle Paperwhite. I can easily highlight a passage while reading on my Kindle—no typing required. Once I'm finished, I use a software program called Clippings to import all of my Kindle highlights to Evernote.

These three approaches make it fairly easy for me to get my book notes into Evernote where they will be instantly searchable. Even if I can't remember where I read about a particular idea, I can usually search my Evernote folder and find the answer quickly.

2. Integrate thoughts as you read.

When you go to the library, all of the books will be divided into different categories: biographies, history, science, psychology. In the real world, of course, knowledge is not separated into neatly defined boxes. Topics overlap and bleed into one another. All knowledge is interconnected.

The most useful insights are often found at the intersection of ideas.

The most useful insights are often found at the intersection of ideas. For that reason, I try to consider how the book I'm reading connects with all of the ideas that are already knocking around inside my head. Whenever possible, I try to integrate the lessons I'm learning with previous ideas.

For example:

• While reading The Tell-Tale Brain by neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran, I discovered that one of his key points connected to a previous idea I learned from social work researcher Brene Brown.
• In my notes for The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, I noted how Mark Manson's idea of “killing yourself” overlaps with Paul Graham's essay on keeping your identity small.
• As I read Mastery by George Leonard, I realized that while this book was about the process of improvement, it also shed some light on the connection between genetics and performance.

I added each insight to my notes for that particular book. This process of integration and connection is crucial not only for making new ideas “stick” in your brain, but also for understanding the world as a whole.

Too often, people use one book or one article as the basis for an entire belief system. Forcing yourself to connect ideas helps you realize that there is no single way of looking at the world. The complex connections between ideas are often where the most beautiful bits of knowledge reside.

3. Summarize the book in one paragraph.

As soon as I finish a book, I challenge myself to summarize the entire text in just three sentences. This constraint is just a game, of course, but I do find it to be a useful exercise because it forces me to review my notes and consider what was really important about the book.

How would I describe the book to a friend? What are the main ideas? If I was going to implement one idea from the book right now, which one would it be?

In many cases, I find that I can usually get just as much useful information from reading my one-paragraph summary and reviewing my notes as I would if I read the entire book again. (There is a lot of fluff in non-fiction books these days.)

I have published many of my book summaries, which include my one paragraph summary and my full notes. If you're looking for an idea of what these reading comprehension strategies look like in practice, feel free to browse that page.

Happy reading!

For example, consider your blood pressure. When it dips too low, your heart rate speeds up and nudges your blood pressure back into a healthy range. When it rises too high, your kidneys reduce the amount of fluid in the body by flushing out urine. All the while, your blood vessels help maintain the balance by contracting or expanding as needed.

The human body employs hundreds of feedback loops to keep your blood pressure, body temperature, glucose levels, calcium levels, and many other processes at a stable equilibrium.

In his book, Mastery, martial arts master George Leonard points out that our daily lives also develop their own levels of homeostasis. We fall into patterns for how often we do (or don't) exercise, how often we do (or don't) clean the dishes, how often we do (or don't) call our parents, and everything else in between. Over time, each of us settles into our own version of equilibrium.

Like your body, there are many forces and feedback loops that moderate the particular equilibrium of your habits. Your daily routines are governed by the delicate balance between your environment, your genetic potential, your tracking methods, and many other forces. As time goes on, this equilibrium becomes so normal that it becomes invisible. All of these forces are interacting each day, but we rarely notice how they shape our behaviors.

That is, until we try to make a change.

Before we talk about how to get started, I wanted to let you know I researched and compiled science-backed ways to stick to good habits and stop procrastinating. Want to check out my insights? Download my free PDF guide “Transform Your Habits” here.

The Myth of Radical Change

The myth of radical change and overnight success is pervasive in our culture. Experts say things like, “The biggest mistake most people make in life is not setting goals high enough.” Or they tell us, “If you want massive results, then you have to take massive action.”

On the surface, these phrases sound inspiring. What we fail to realize, however, is that any quest for rapid growth contradicts every stabilizing force in our lives. Remember, the natural tendency of life is to find stability. Anytime equilibrium is lost, the system is motivated to restore it.

If you step too far outside the bounds of your normal performance, then nearly all of the forces in your life will be screaming to get you back to equilibrium. If you take massive action, then you quickly run into a massive roadblock.

Nearly anyone who has tried to make a big change in their life has experienced some form of this. You finally work up the motivation to stick with a new diet only to find your co-workers subtly undermining your efforts. You commit to going for a run each night and within a week you're asked to stay late at work. You start a new meditation habit and your kids keep barging into the room. 1

“Resistance is proportionate to the size and speed of the change, not to whether the change is a favorable or unfavorable one.”

The forces in our lives that have established our current equilibrium will work to pull us back whether we are trying to change for better or worse. In the words of George Leonard, “Resistance is proportionate to the size and speed of the change, not to whether the change is a favorable or unfavorable one.” 2

In other words, the faster you try to change, the more likely you are to backslide. The very pursuit of rapid change dials up a wide range of counteracting forces which are fighting to pull you back into your previous lifestyle. You might be able to beat equilibrium for a little while, but pretty soon your energy fades and the backsliding begins.

The Optimal Rate of Growth

Of course, change is certainly possible, but it is only sustainable within a fairly narrow window. When an athlete trains too hard, she ends up sick or injured. When a company changes course too quickly, the culture breaks down and employees get burnt out. When a leader pushes his personal agenda to the extreme, the nation riots and the people re-establish the balance of power. Living systems do not like extreme conditions.

Thankfully, there is a better way.

Consider the following quote from systems expert Peter Senge. “Virtually all natural systems, from ecosystems to animals to organizations, have intrinsically optimal rates of growth. The optimal rate is far less than the fastest possible growth. When growth becomes excessive—as it does in cancer—the system itself will seek to compensate by slowing down; perhaps putting the organization's survival at risk in the process.” 3

By contrast, when you accumulate small wins and focus on one percent improvements, you nudge equilibrium forward. It is like building muscle. If the weight is too light, your muscles will atrophy. If the weight is too heavy, you'll end up injured. But if the weight is just a touch beyond your normal, then your muscles will adapt to the new stimulus and equilibrium will take a small step forward.

The Paradox of Behavior Change

In order for change to last, we must work with the fundamental forces in our lives, not against them. Nearly everything that makes up your daily life has an equilibrium—a natural set point, a normal pace, a typical rhythm. If we reach too far beyond this equilibrium, we will find ourselves being yanked back to the baseline.

Thus, the best way to achieve a new level of equilibrium is not with radical change, but through small wins each day.

This is the great paradox of behavior change. If you try to change your life all at once, you will quickly find yourself pulled back into the same patterns as before. But if you merely focus on changing your normal day, you will find your life changes naturally as a side effect.

Hogan was one of the greatest golfers of the 20th century, an accomplishment he achieved through tireless repetition. He simply loved to practice. Hogan said, “I couldn't wait to get up in the morning so I could hit balls. I'd be at the practice tee at the crack of dawn, hit balls for a few hours, then take a break and get right back to it.” 1

For Hogan, every practice session had a purpose. He reportedly spent years breaking down each phase of the golf swing and testing new methods for each segment. The result was near perfection. He developed one of the most finely-tuned golf swings in the history of the game.

His precision made him more like a surgeon than a golfer. During the 1953 Masters, for example, Hogan hit the flagstick on back-to-back holes. A few days later, he broke the tournament scoring record. 2

Hogan methodically broke the game of golf down into chunks and figured out how he could master each section. For example, he was one of the first golfers to assign specific yardages to each golf club. Then, he studied each course carefully and used trees and sand bunkers as reference points to inform him about the distance of each shot. 3

Hogan finished his career with nine major championships—ranking fourth all-time. During his prime, other golfers simply attributed his remarkable success to “Hogan's secret.” Today, experts have a new term for his rigorous style of improvement: deliberate practice.

Before we talk about how to get started, I wanted to let you know I researched and compiled science-backed ways to stick to good habits and stop procrastinating. Want to check out my insights? Download my free PDF guide “Transform Your Habits” here.

What is Deliberate Practice?

Deliberate practice refers to a special type of practice that is purposeful and systematic. While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance. When Ben Hogan carefully reconstructed each step of his golf swing, he was engaging in deliberate practice. He wasn't just taking cuts. He was finely tuning his technique.

While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance.

The greatest challenge of deliberate practice is to remain focused. In the beginning, showing up and putting in your reps is the most important thing. But after a while we begin to carelessly overlook small errors and miss daily opportunities for improvement.

This is because the natural tendency of the human brain is to transform repeated behaviors into automatic habits. For example, when you first learned to tie your shoes you had to think carefully about each step of the process. Today, after many repetitions, your brain can perform this sequence automatically. The more we repeat a task the more mindless it becomes.

Mindless activity is the enemy of deliberate practice. The danger of practicing the same thing again and again is that progress becomes assumed. Too often, we assume we are getting better simply because we are gaining experience. In reality, we are merely reinforcing our current habits—not improving them.

Claiming that improvement requires attention and effort sounds logical enough. But what does deliberate practice actually look like in the real world? Let's talk about that now.

Examples of Deliberate Practice

One of my favorite examples of deliberate practice is discussed in Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin. In the book, Colvin describes how Benjamin Franklin used deliberate practice to improve his writing skills.

When he was a teenager, Benjamin Franklin was criticized by his father for his poor writing abilities. Unlike most teenagers, young Ben took his father's advice seriously and vowed to improve his writing skills.

He began by finding a publication written by some of the best authors of his day. Then, Franklin went through each article line by line and wrote down the meaning of every sentence. Next, he rewrote each article in his own words and then compared his version to the original. Each time, “I discovered some of my faults, and corrected them.” Eventually, Franklin realized his vocabulary held him back from better writing, and so he focused intensely on that area.

Deliberate practice always follows the same pattern: break the overall process down into parts, identify your weaknesses, test new strategies for each section, and then integrate your learning into the overall process.

Here are some more examples.

Cooking: Jiro Ono, the subject of the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, is a chef and owner of an award-winning sushi restaurant in Tokyo. Jiro has dedicated his life to perfecting the art of making sushi and he expects the same of his apprentices. Each apprentice must master one tiny part of the sushi-making process at a time—how to wring a towel, how to use a knife, how to cut the fish, and so on. One apprentice trained under Jiro for ten years before being allowed to cook the eggs. Each step of the process is taught with the utmost care.

Martial arts: Josh Waitzkin, author of The Art of Learning, is a martial artist who holds several US national medals and a 2004 world championship. In the finals of one competition, he noticed a weakness: When an opponent illegally head-butted him in the nose, Waitzkin flew into a rage. His emotion caused him to lose control and forget his strategy. Afterward, he specifically sought out training partners who would fight dirty so he could practice remaining calm and principled in the face of chaos. “They were giving me a valuable opportunity to expand my threshold for turbulence,” Waitzkin wrote. “Dirty players were my best teachers.”

Chess: Magnus Carlsen is a chess grandmaster and one of the highest-rated players in history. One distinguishing feature of great chess players is their ability to recognize “chunks,” which are specific arrangements of pieces on the board. Some experts estimate that grandmasters can identify around 300,000 different chunks. Interestingly, Carlsen learned the game by playing computer chess, which allowed him to play multiple games at once. Not only did this strategy allow him to learn chunks much faster than someone playing in-person games, but also gave him a chance to make more mistakes and correct his weaknesses at an accelerated pace.

Music: Many great musicians recommend repeating the most challenging sections of a song until you master them. Virtuoso violinist Nathan Milstein says, “Practice as much as you feel you can accomplish with concentration. Once when I became concerned because others around me practiced all day long, I asked [my professor] how many hours I should practice, and he said, ‘It really doesn’t matter how long. If you practice with your fingers, no amount is enough. If you practice with your head, two hours is plenty.’” 4

Basketball: Consider the following example from Aubrey Daniels, “Player A shoots 200 practice shots, Player B shoots 50. The Player B retrieves his own shots, dribbles leisurely and takes several breaks to talk to friends. Player A has a colleague who retrieves the ball after each attempt. The colleague keeps a record of shots made. If the shot is missed the colleague records whether the miss was short, long, left or right and the shooter reviews the results after every 10 minutes of practice. To characterize their hour of practice as equal would hardly be accurate. Assuming this is typical of their practice routine and they are equally skilled at the start, which would you predict would be the better shooter after only 100 hours of practice?”

The Unsung Hero of Deliberate Practice

Perhaps the greatest difference between deliberate practice and simple repetition is this: feedback. Anyone who has mastered the art of deliberate practice—whether they are an athlete like Ben Hogan or a writer like Ben Franklin—has developed methods for receiving continual feedback on their performance.

There are many ways to receive feedback. Let's discuss two.

The first effective feedback system is measurement. The things we measure are the things we improve. This holds true for the number of pages we read, the number of pushups we do, the number of sales calls we make, and any other task that is important to us. It is only through measurement that we have any proof of whether we are getting better or worse.

The second effective feedback system is coaching. One consistent finding across disciplines is that coaches are often essential for sustaining deliberate practice. In many cases, it is nearly impossible to both perform a task and measure your progress at the same time. Good coaches can track your progress, find small ways to improve, and hold you accountable to delivering your best effort each day.

For additional ideas on how to implement deliberate practice, I recommend the following interview with psychology professor Anders Ericsson, who is widely considered to be the world's top expert on deliberate practice.

The Promise of Deliberate Practice

Humans have a remarkable capacity to improve their performance in nearly any area of life if they train in the correct way. This is easier said than done.

Deliberate practice is not a comfortable activity. It requires sustained effort and concentration. The people who master the art of deliberate practice are committed to being lifelong learners—always exploring and experimenting and refining.

Deliberate practice is not a magic pill, but if you can manage to maintain your focus and commitment, then the promise of deliberate practice is quite alluring: to get the most out of what you've got.

Read Next

• The Myth and Magic of Deliberate Practice
• Goal Setting: A Scientific Guide to Setting and Achieving Goals
• The Best Self-Help Books

I recently heard a little-known story about how DiMaggio acquired his exceptional ability.

As the story goes, a journalist was interviewing DiMaggio at his home and asked him what it felt like to be such a “natural hitter.” Without saying a word, he dragged the reporter downstairs. In the shadows of the basement, DiMaggio picked up a bat and began to repeat a series of practice swings. Before each swing, he would call out a particular pitch such as “fastball, low and away” or “slider, inside” and adjust his approach accordingly.

Once he finished the routine, DiMaggio set the bat down, picked up a piece of chalk, and scratched a tally mark on the wall. Then he flicked on the lights to reveal thousands of tally marks covering the basement walls. Supposedly, DiMaggio then looked at the journalist and said, “Don't you ever tell me that I'm a natural hitter again.” 1

DiMaggio then looked at the journalist and said, “Don't you ever tell me that I'm a natural hitter again.”

We love stories like this—stories that highlight how remarkable success is the product of effort and perseverance. In recent years, the study of hard work has developed into a scientific pursuit. Experts have begun to refer to focused and effortful training as “deliberate practice” and it is widely considered to be the recipe for success.

There is no doubt that deliberate practice can be the recipe for success, but only under certain conditions. If we are serious about maximizing our potential, then we need to know when deliberate practice makes the difference between success and failure and when it doesn't. Before we can capture the power of deliberate practice, we need to understand its limitations.

Before we talk about how to get started, I wanted to let you know I researched and compiled science-backed ways to stick to good habits and stop procrastinating. Want to check out my insights? Download my free PDF guide “Transform Your Habits” here.

The Vision of Greatness

In the early 1990s, a man named Louis Rosenbaum began analyzing the eyesight of Major League baseball players. He soon found out that professional baseball players were nothing like the normal person when it came to vision.

According to Rosenbaum's research, the average eyesight of a Major League position player is 20/11. In other words, the typical professional baseball player can read letters from twenty feet away that a normal person can only read from eleven feet away. Ted Williams, who is widely regarded as the greatest hitter in the baseball history, reportedly had 20/10 vision when he was tested by the military during WWII. The anatomical limit for human vision is 20/8.

Most of Rosenbaum's research was conducted on the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team. According to him, “Half of the guys on the Dodgers' Major League roster were 20/10 uncorrected.” 2

In his excellent book, The Sports Gene, author David Epstein explains that this visual trend holds true at each level of the sport. On average, Major League players have better vision than minor league players who have better vision than college players who have better vision than the general population. 3

If you want to play professional baseball, it helps to practice like DiMaggio, but you also need eyesight like an eagle. In highly competitive fields, deliberate practice is often necessary, but not sufficient for success.

The Deliberate Practice Myth

The myth of deliberate practice is that you can fashion yourself into anything with enough work and effort. While human beings do possess a remarkable ability to develop their skills, there are limits to how far any individual can go. Your genes set a boundary around what is possible.

In recent decades, behavioral geneticists have discovered that our genes impact nearly every human trait. We are not merely talking about physical characteristics like height and eyesight, but mental abilities as well. Your genes impact everything from your short-term memory abilities to your mental processing speed to your willingness to practice.

One of my favorite examples is tennis great Steffi Graf. When she was tested against other elite tennis players as a teenager, she not only scored the highest on physical attributes like lung capacity and motor skills, but also on competitive desire. She was that once-in-a-generation talent who was both the most-gifted and the most-driven person on the court. 4

During a conversation I had with Robert Plomin, one of the top behavioral geneticists in the world, he said, “It is now at the point where we have stopped testing to see if traits have a genetic component because we literally can't find a single one that isn't influenced by our genes.”

If you want to learn more about the power of behavioral genetics, this audio interview with behavioral geneticist Robert Plomin explains how genes impact our daily habits and behaviors.

How big is the influence of genes on performance? It's hard to say. Some researchers have estimated that our genes account for between 25 percent to 35 percent of our differences in performance. Obviously, that number can vary wildly depending on the field you're studying.

So where does this leave us?

Well, while genetics influence performance, they do not determine performance. Do not confuse destiny with opportunity. Genes provide opportunity. They do not determine our destiny. It's similar to a game of cards. You have a better opportunity if you are dealt a better hand, but you also need to play the hand well to win.

Layer Your Skills

How do we play our hand well? How do we maximize our genetic potential in life—whatever that might be? One strategy is to “layer your skills” on top of one another.

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, explains the strategy perfectly. He writes, “Everyone has at least a few areas in which they could be in the top 25% with some effort. In my case, I can draw better than most people, but I’m hardly an artist. And I’m not any funnier than the average standup comedian who never makes it big, but I’m funnier than most people. The magic is that few people can draw well and write jokes. It’s the combination of the two that makes what I do so rare. And when you add in my business background, suddenly I had a topic that few cartoonists could hope to understand without living it.” 5

If you can't win by being better, then win by being different. By combining your skills, you reduce the level of competition, which makes it much easier to stand out regardless of your natural abilities.

The Magic of Deliberate Practice

Sun Tzu, the legendary military strategist who wrote The Art of War, believed in only fighting battles where the odds were in his favor. He wrote, “In war, the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won.”

Similarly, we should seek to fight battles where the genetic odds are in our favor. It is impossible to try everything in life. Each of us could become any one of a billion different things. Thus, if you aspire to maximize your success, then you should train hard and practice deliberately in areas where the genetic odds are in your favor (or where you can overlap your skills in a compelling way).

Deliberate practice is necessary for success, but it is not sufficient. The people at the top of any competitive field are both well-suited and well-trained. To maximize your potential, you need to not only engage in consistent and purposeful practice, but also to align your ambitions with your natural abilities.

Regardless of where we choose to apply ourselves, deliberate practice can help us maximize our potential—no matter what cards we were dealt. That is the magic of deliberate practice. It turns potential into reality.

I conduct my Annual Review at the end of each year. The process reminds me to look back on the previous twelve months, celebrate my victories, evaluate my failures, and hold myself accountable in public. I hope that you'll find my stories, stumbles, and insights useful.

My 2016 Annual Review will answer three questions.

1. What went well this year?
2. What didn’t go so well this year?
3. What am I working toward?

You're welcome to use a similar format for your own Annual Review.

1. What went well this year?

Alright, let's cover the fun stuff first. Here's what went well this year.

Hiring. My biggest win this year was making my first full-time hire. Lyndsey joined the team in June as my Executive Assistant / Master of Many Things. I spent years suffering from “Superhero Syndrome” and I tried to handle every major aspect of the business by myself. Eventually, I realized that while this strategy allowed me to run the business “my way” it also prevented the business from growing beyond my limiting beliefs.

When you're the only person in the company, your mindset is also the company's mindset. If you have a bad day, the company has a bad day. If you have a mental block with sales or marketing, the company has a mental block with sales or marketing. Thus, hiring has taught me an important lesson: The fastest way to get over your limiting beliefs is to hire someone who doesn’t have them.

This is a decision I put off for years and I'm glad that I finally cleared this hurdle. One great employee is worth ten mediocre freelancers. Lyndsey, you're the best.

Business growth. I made a lot of mistakes this year (more on that below), but thanks to the addition of Lyndsey and the groundwork I laid in previous years, JamesClear.com continued to grow despite my blunders.

Here are some quick stats…

• 28 new articles published this year (browse my best articles)
• 210,623 new email subscribers this year
• 373,938 total email subscribers as of December 31, 2016
• 7,956,860 unique visitors this year
• 16,794,628 unique visitors since launching on November 12, 2012

Almost eight million people visited JamesClear.com this year. When I think about that number for more than four seconds, two things happen. First, I experience a paralyzing fear that my ideas aren't good enough to share with that many people. Second, I remind myself that nobody cares that much and I start to feel the same awesome sense of excitement and possibility as when I first began writing.

The truth is, it doesn't matter if you're writing to one person or one million. The responsibility of a writer is always the same: if you're going to interrupt someone with your words, you better be damn sure you have something good to say to them. For my part, I promise I'll do my best to write things worth reading.

Travel. Exploring the world continues to be one of my top priorities in life and I was fortunate enough to make it to some great places this year. One of those places was Vietnam where I was stopped at least 17 times per day to get a photo with a random stranger. (It turns out that tall bald men are considered a rare and important species there. America should take note.) I also updated my Ultralight Travel Guide, which includes some of my favorite new travel gear.

Travel highlights for 2016:

• 7 countries (2 new): Bahamas, England, Iceland, Peru, Scotland, United States, Vietnam.
• 12 states (1 new): Arizona (2x), California (3x), Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas (2x), Utah.

Weightlifting. I try to strike a balance between training hard and having a normal life. I love weightlifting, but not in the I-use-protein-powder-as-deodorant sort of way. Anyway, I have been slowly increasing my training volume over the last three years. In 2014, I exercised 113 times. In 2015, I bumped that up to 122 workouts. In 2016, I switched my training style and completed 178 workouts for an average of 14.8 workouts per month—my most consistent year yet. Currently, I lift for about 45 minutes to 1 hour on Monday thru Friday.

Workouts per month in 2016:

• January – 15
• February – 17
• March – 16
• April – 9
• May – 12
• June – 22
• July – 18
• August – 19
• September – 17
• October – 9
• November – 9
• December – 15

My best lifts of the year were:

• Back Squat – 415 lbs (188 kg) for 1 rep
• Bench Press – 295 lbs (134 kg) for 1 rep
• Deadlift – 501 lbs (227 kg) for 1 rep at my first official powerlifting meet
• 500m row – 1 minute 27 seconds

These were all personal bests for me, so I guess we could say that I was in the best shape of my life in 2016. (Although I doubt I could run a mile very well right now.)

Retreats. After thinking about it for years, I finally pulled the trigger and hosted a retreat for fellow authors in 2016. I also attended two other retreats with fellow entrepreneurs where I wasn't the host. Each one lasted 4 days. All of the deepest, most useful, and most inspiring conversations I had with fellow entrepreneurs and authors in 2016 happened at these retreats. Even in our digital world, the best connections still happen in person. I'm planning to host two of them in 2017 and I can't wait.

Travel with family. In the fall, I joined my family on a trip to London to see my sister, her husband, and my lovely newborn niece. My parents had to get passports for the trip as it was their first time traveling abroad. We explored England and Scotland together and it was one of the highlights of my year.

2. What didn’t go so well this year?

Now for the ugly stuff. Meh.

Loss of family. My grandmother passed away this year. She had been battling cancer for years and we had a chance to spend a lot of time with her in her final months. I'm grateful that we were able to prepare for her passing, but knowing that death is coming never seems to make losing someone you love any easier.

Book writing. Plain and simple, 2016 was the worst year of writing of my young career. I haven’t been at this very long, but I’ve been at it long enough to know that this year was a total disaster from a writing standpoint.

It all started at the end of 2015 when I signed a major book deal with Penguin Random House. As soon as the book became a reality, my perfectionism kicked into high gear. In the quest to produce something great, I fell into a deep spiral of research and reading. I convinced myself I had to know everything that had been written about habits and human performance if I wanted to write a great book on the topic. Of course, that's an impossible task and at some point you have to start writing. The end result was I did very little writing during the year and November rolled around without me having a finished draft. My publisher wasn't happy. I wasn't happy. It was a failure all the way around.

Unfortunately, my decision to bury myself in book research not only prevented me from writing the book, but also from writing more articles. The year wasn't a total loss—I still found a way to write almost 30 articles and guides—but my output paled in comparison to previous years. (If you're interested, you can browse my 10 Best Articles of 2016.)

Looking back now, I realize that I spent a large part of 2016 learning how to create a new style of work. For the three years prior, I was writing a new article every Monday and Thursday. The focus was on creating great work that was usually 1,500 words or less. Now, my writing ambitions have grown and I'm working to create a remarkable book of 50,000 words or more. This transition from rapid work to deep work has been hard for me—much harder than I expected. I'm just now learning what it takes to create something of that scope and do it well.

With all that said, I do believe this story will have a happy ending. Despite my lackluster effort during the first eleven months of the year, I bounced back in December and wrote more in one month than I did during the entire year. I'm confident that 2017 is the year I finish my first book.

The hiring process. As I mentioned above, hiring my first full-time employee was one of the highlights of my year. Unfortunately, the way I handled the hiring process left a lot of room for improvement. When I put out the call for applications, I was stunned by the response. In total, 911 people applied. I read each application myself and hiring was basically my full-time job for a few months, which is yet another reason why I did very little book writing during that time. 1

While I did respond to every candidate, it took me far too long to do so. Applicants were left wondering about their status for weeks. I conducted three different rounds of interviews and the hiring process took nearly four months in total. The end result was wonderful, but the process was messy. I'm already thinking about how we can improve the hiring process next time.

Leading with a clear vision. One of my biggest fears related to hiring was whether or not I would be a good manager. I don't think I totally dropped the ball, but there is still a lot of room for improvement. When I hear friends talk about how frustrating their bosses can be or how poor communication runs rampant at the workplace or how they will be given one task on Monday and told something else on Tuesday, I immediately think one thing: Don't be that boss.

And yet, despite my desire to be a great leader, there were still plenty of times when I said one thing on Monday and switched priorities on Tuesday. In 2017, I want to 1) decide what is truly most important and clarify the mission of JamesClear.com and 2) lead in a way that makes sure we work on the right things in the right order.

Too little celebration. I move on too quickly after each success. There were all sorts of little victories that happened during the year—someone I consider a mentor asked for my advice, the website set a new record for traffic, I set a personal record in the gym—but I never fully celebrated or appreciated any of these moments. When something great happens my tendency seems to be to downplay it in an attempt to be humble and then immediately move on to the next goal. This tendency is related to some feedback I received from friends this year: I need to do a better job of opening up and sharing my life with the people I love—and that includes celebrating my successes with them.

3. What am I working toward?

Looking back, 2016 felt like an all-or-nothing year for me. I had some big successes (my first hire, my best year in business, new weightlifting PRs), but I also had some hardships and failures (loss of a family member, major writing blocks). Boom or bust. I didn't seem to have as many of the slow, methodical, gradual improvements that I often strive to achieve.

As I turn my attention to 2017, I see my priorities falling into two categories.

First, become a finisher. It's time for my behavior to match my ambitions. Thanks to my last four years of work, I have an incredible opportunity in front of me. But that opportunity only becomes a reality if I step up and finish the work. A book can only be great once it is published. A photograph can only be praised once it is printed. A business can only succeed once it is launched. I've spent a lot of time laying the groundwork for success. Now it's time to finish the process. Beginners are many. Finishers are few.

Second, transition to deep work. I spent 2016 battling to make the transition to deep, focused work. In 2017, I'm ready to finish that transition and start delivering at a higher standard. How can I raise the bar? How can I challenge myself to produce things that are more useful, more interesting, and more insightful than before? These are questions I'll be thinking deeply about.

Well, that wraps up my 2016 Annual Review. I'd like to close by thanking you for reading. I don't have all the answers, but I'm delighted to share what I learn with you along the way. Here's to a fantastic 2017. 2

The Annual Review Archives

This is a complete list of Annual Reviews I have written.

• My 2016 Annual Review
• My 2015 Annual Review
• My 2014 Annual Review
• My 2013 Annual Review