10 published lessons with this tag.
Assumptions you never write down are assumptions you never question. Every plan, decision, and belief rests on invisible premises — and the invisible ones are the ones that destroy you.
A mental model you cannot draw is a mental model you cannot examine. The models that govern your decisions most powerfully are the ones you have never made visible — and therefore never inspected, never tested, and never improved.
A schema is a mental model that has been externalized, named, and structured so it can be examined, tested, and improved — turning invisible cognitive habit into visible cognitive infrastructure.
You already have schemas for everything — making them explicit is the work.
Your schemas determine what you notice and what you miss.
Your schema about a thing is never the thing itself — useful but always incomplete.
Multiple schemas can apply to the same situation and the one that wins shapes your response.
A schema that works in one context may fail entirely in another.
Operating on a flawed schema produces systematically flawed decisions.
Every category you create determines what you group together and what you separate.