The world around us is changing pretty fast. Modern computers are becoming cheaper, faster and more intelligent than ever, which means they are ready to replace a large part of human workforce.

The day is not far when your work and skills will be threatened by artificial intelligence. To stay relevant, you need to ensure that you remain valuable to the society in a way which can’t be substituted by a robot.

And your only chance to remain valuable is by being a constant learner…a learning machine, as Charlie Munger says. In fact, he has been saying this for years –

I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up and boy does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you.

The question is where do you begin? There is so much to learn all around, and so little time.

This is seemingly the reason most of us would go through each day without questioning our perception of the world. We seldom stop to wonder whether the world we perceive matches the real world outside. Most of the time, that’s fine…because our perceptions serve us quite well.

In fact, our perception is good enough to guide us through a very complex world with few problems. But because it serves us so well, it’s easy to forget how limited perception really is. And one reason for inadequacy of human perception is that it has to deal with an enormously complex real world.

We live in a world that is not only complex but vastly older and bigger than we are. To think we can fit it all into our heads is a logical absurdity.

At same time, our world and life is full of opportunities, disguised as problems and challenges, which need to be either pursued or avoided. You don’t want to spend a disproportionate amount of time analysing a single problem. Instead the strategy should be to race through numerous problems and quickly identify the solvable ones.

How do you do that? By learning the mental models.

What’s A Mental Model?
If you are new to Safal Niveshak, let me explain. A mental model is a representation, inside your head, of an external reality. Mental models are the basic units which construct a person’s world view. It is the representation that a person has in his mind about the object he is interacting with.

It is the way people think about what it is they are doing or dealing with. Mental models shape our actions as to how we act or behave in a particular situation. They define what people will pay attention to and how they approach and solve problems.

Mental models are tools for the mind. The more models you have from outside your discipline and the more you iterate through them when faced with a challenge in a checklist sort of fashion, the better you’ll be able to solve problems.

While thinking about a problem, mental models provide you a map with which you can quickly course correct your line of inquiry.

These models are additive. Like LEGO. The more you have the more things you can build, the more connections you can make between them and the more likely you are to be able to determine the relevant variables that govern the situation.

And when you learn these models you need to ask yourself under what conditions will this tool fail? That way you’re not only looking for situations where the tool is useful but also situations where something interesting is happening that might warrant further attention.

It won’t be an overstatement if we call these list of mental models as a cheat sheet which allows us to better understand when to follow and when to reject the conventional wisdom. So it’s very important to have the right models in your head.

And how do you build these models? You don’t have to build them all on your own.

According to Munger, the most efficient way to learn is vicarious learning. He says –

I believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have ever figured out. I don’t believe in just sitting down and trying to dream it all up yourself. Nobody’s that smart.

Presenting: Mental Models, Investing, and You (Special E-Book)
According to Mr. Munger, there are about 100 or so models across the disciplines of microeconomics, physiology, psychology, elementary mathematics, hard science and engineering that carry about 90% of the freight in making you a worldly-wise person.

And, of course, it’s not possible to learn all of them in day or a week or even in a single year. It’s a long term proposition and will require serious efforts. But when you’ve committed yourself to a lifelong journey for seeking worldly wisdom, it’s a small price to pay.

Mental Models, Investing, and You is a 430+ page e-book (and this is just the first volume) where we have compiled 50 mental models arranged by fields of study. It covers ideas from the various disciplines including psychology, economics, business, mathematics, engineering, physics, social science, literature, statistics and decision making.

We have spent last 18 months researching and writing this e-book, and the efforts were worth it given that we ourselves learned so much in the process.

After reading this e-book, you would have learned –

• Why people trade in and out of stocks, despite proof that buy and hold is a much profitable and low stress strategy (Page 29)
• How small accounting frauds get bigger over time, and why investors often fail to notice them (Page 47)
• Why we fall prey to marketing gimmicks of sales people selling toxic financial products and how can we save ourselves from their persuasion tactics (Page 115)
• How to develop a strong bullshit filter that can help you quickly sift through mountain of information to discover useful ideas and discard the bad ones (Page 165)
• Why investors often sell their winning stocks and hold on to their losers (Page 240)
• How certain business insights can give you tremendous edge in evaluating strong businesses and staying away from the duds (Page 294)
• How to become a smarter investor by using the principle of inversion which focuses on “what to avoid” (Page 364)
• How ideas from the supposedly unrelated fields like Literature can make us effective thinkers and better decision makers (Page 399)

Apart from this, you would also end up learning the thinking strategies used by world’s best investors like Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch and wildly successful entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates.

And this is not all! There are more than forty other thinking tactics and mental models you will learn from this e-book.

Now what’s unique about this e-book is it doesn’t just talk about the mental models in an abstract way. For every model, you will find discussion on how it can be used to gain unique insights in investing, business, and life in general.

This is, what we believe, one of the biggest reasons a lot of our tribe members have sent us their appreciation for our mental models series, like some of these…

What Readers Say

For a person, having less time, he can get a lot of insights, by spending a few moments in reading this. ~ Gulshan B.

…your whole mental model series is simply mind blowing, as you are giving a one stop solution to our quest for learning different models. Earlier we used to read about mental models in Charlie Munger’s speeches or elsewhere on internet, but now you both have made our learning very easy as we find all of these at your site itself. And more interesting thing is the examples you share in the Indian context.

~ Kishor

Your writing is class. People who don’t like reading lengthy books can grasp the complete idea by simply reading you articles. ~ Niyas

Anyways, Mental Models, Investing, and You can serve as a good starting point for you to create your own “latticework of mental models.” The insights you’ll discover here will become the springboard for further useful discovery.

How to Get This E-Book?
Well, you can pay a small amount to get it, or you can get it for free!

Sounds interesting, right?

Just as a small measure of the tremendous effort that has gone into writing and compiling this e-book, we have put a small price to it – a price that you decide – anything between Rs 99 and Rs 499 (we will give away 50% of this money for the betterment of underprivileged). You can treat this price as your show of love for our work at Safal Niveshak.  

But then, you also have the option of paying nothing…zero…and still getting this e-book.

So here are the two available options for you to choose from –

Option 1: If you wish to pay an amount between Rs 99 (US$2) and Rs 499 (US$ 8)…

• Click here if you have an Indian credit card or bank account
• Click here if you do not have an Indian credit card or bank account

Option 2: If you do not wish to pay any amount (and we will still send you the e-book), please click here to send us your details.

Sounds good?

Before we end, one final warning. Anything you read “rewires” a part of your brain. The brain you have now; you don’t get that brain back after learning the mental models. We are sincerely hoping that the trade-off is worth it.

With respect,
Vishal & Anshul

P.S. After you pay, or register to get the e-book for free, please give us 24 hours to email it to you. For any queries, please email to vishal[at]safalniveshak[dot]com or anshul[at]safalniveshak[dot]com.

http://www.safalniveshak.com/mental-models-investing-special-ebook/