Why Mental Models?
- Stefan Sager
- Sep 26
- 25 min read
Updated: Sep 28
Chapter 1
The Wrong Question
The room was sparse, but not empty––it was curated. A single, large oak desk stood in the centre; a worn leather-bound book lay on the surface, besides a clear, smooth black stone. Sunlight streamed through a large window, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air and falling across the man sitting behind the desk.
Lucian was in his late fifties, with the calm, settled posture of someone who had nowhere else to be. He watched the younger man across from him, Blake, who couldn't seem to sit still. Blake’s leg bounced, his fingers tapped a frantic rhythm on his knee, and his eyes darted around the room as if searching for an exit, or perhaps an answer.
"I just don’t get it,” Blake said, the words tumbling out in a rush. “I’m doing everything they tell you to do! I’m the first one in the office, the last one to leave. I’m on every project; I take every call. I have a system for my emails, a system for my calendar, a system for my to-do list! I listen to productivity podcasts on my commute. I’m trying to get to the gym, be a good husband, read to my kids at night… but I feel like I’m failing at all of it. I’m running on fumes! Although I’m successful––on paper, I suppose––I’m one bad week away from just… snapping.”
Blake finally stopped, taking a deep breath.
He looked at Lucian––his countenance desperate yet hopeful.
“I came to you because they say you understand how to get things done. I need an improved, more optimised system. How do I succeed in all of this?”
Lucian remained silent for a long moment, his gaze steady. When he finally spoke, his voice was calm and measured, a stark contrast to Blake’s frantic energy.
"You’re asking the wrong question, Blake.”
Blake blinked.
“What do you mean? I’m asking the most important question there is. How do I win?”
“Perhaps,” Lucian said with a slight smile. “But a far more powerful question (and the one we must start with) is this: How would you guarantee failure?”
Blake frowned.
“Failure? Why would I think about that? That’s negative. I’m trying to be positive, to visualise success!”
“There’s a brilliant, somewhat eccentric investor named Charlie Munger,” Lucian began, leaning forward slightly.“He has a famous saying that has made him and his partners billions: ‘All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there.’ He’s not being morbid; he’s being strategic. He understands that it is often easier and more effective to avoid stupidity than it is to seek brilliance.”
“This mental tool is called inversion,” Lucian continued.“Instead of asking how to achieve a goal, you flip the question on its head. You ask, ‘What would be the ultimate blunder here? What would absolutely guarantee a disastrous outcome?’”
“I don’t know,” Blake said, shaking his head.“That feels… counterintuitive. Defeatist.” “Does it? The ancient Stoics would disagree. They were masters of this way of thinking. A philosopher named Seneca practiced something called premeditatio malorum—the premeditation of evils. He would actively imagine the worst things that could happen to him: exile, illness, the loss of his home, the death of a friend. He wasn’t trying to make himself miserable. He was building a kind of psychological armour.”
Lucian picked up the smooth black stone from his desk, turning it over in his fingers.
"Seneca wrote that ‘what is quite unlooked for is more crushing in its effect, and unexpectedness adds to the weight of a disaster.’ By contemplating these things in advance, he stripped them of their power to shock him. He was preparing himself, making himself resilient to the inevitable blows of fortune. He was identifying where he might die, so he would never go there.”
Blake was quiet now, his leg still. The idea was beginning to settle in.
“Well, let’s try it,” Lucian said gently.“Let’s invert your problem. For a moment, forget about ‘success.' Tell me, Blake, what would a truly miserable, burned-out life look like for you? How could you guarantee that you would ruin your health, your family, and your career?”.
Blake hesitated, then began to speak––slowly at first, then with more confidence.
“Okay. Well, to guarantee failure… I’d work until I collapsed from exhaustion. I’d live on caffeine and takeout. I’d never see my wife or kids—I’d be a ghost in my own house. I’d be so stressed and sleep-deprived that my work would suffer, and I’d make a catastrophic mistake that would get me fired. I’d have no real friends, no hobbies, no joy. Just… work and worry.”
He stopped, a look of dawning realisation on his face.
“I’m… I’m already doing a lot of those things.”
Lucian nodded slowly.
“Exactly. You see, the path to failure is often more predictable than the path to brilliance. By chasing an abstract idea of ‘success,’ you have been accidentally walking the well-trodden path to ruin. You’ve been so focused on adding things—more tasks, more projects, more systems—that you haven’t stopped to consider what you must remove.”
He placed the stone back on the desk with a soft click.
“That is our starting point. Not to build a new system for doing more, but to design a system for avoiding harm. We will identify the behaviours that are leading you toward the miserable life you just described, and we will begin to systematically eliminate them. That is the art of harm reduction. That is the first step."
Chapter 2
The Art of the Meaningful Sun Tan
A week later, Blake found himself walking with Lucian through a meticulously kept garden behind the old building. The sun was warm, and the air was filled with the scent of lavender and damp earth.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” Blake began, “about avoiding failure. It makes sense, but it still feels like I’m just playing defence. How do I move forward? How do I know how much effort to put into the things that do matter?”
Lucian stopped beside a small, perfectly pruned lemon tree.
“An excellent question. It gets to the heart of a fundamental misunderstanding we have about effort and results. We believe they are linear; we think more effort always equals more results. But the world doesn’t work that way. Tell me, have you ever tried to get a suntan?”
Blake looked puzzled by the non-sequitur.
“Sure. Of course.”
“What happens if you lie in the sun for twenty minutes?”
“I get a little colour,” Blake replied.
“And what happens if you lie out for an hour?”
“I get a decent tan.”
“And what happens,” Lucian said, his eyes twinkling, “if you lie in the sun for eight hours straight?”
“I get a horrible, blistering sunburn,” Blake said, a small smile forming on his face as he saw where this was going.
“Precisely. You have just described the Law of Diminishing Returns. It’s a principle first observed by economists in agriculture. They noticed that if you have a fixed plot of land, the first bag of fertiliser you add gives you a huge boost in crop yield. The second bag helps, but a little less. The third, even less. Eventually, you add so much fertiliser that you poison the soil and your total yield actually goes down. Your skin is the plot of land, and the sun is the fertiliser. A little bit gives you the result you want—a tan. Too much gives you a negative result—a burn. The goal is not to maximise your time in the sun; it’s to get a meaningful tan without getting burned.”
“So there’s a point where more effort becomes counterproductive,” Blake mused.“I feel that at work all the time. The first few hours of the day are great, but by 7 PM, I’m just staring at the screen, not really getting anything done, but feeling like I have to stay.”
“That’s study fatigue, the cognitive version of the law,” Lucian said, nodding.“Your brain, like a muscle, gets tired. The marginal benefit of each additional hour declines until it’s effectively zero. But there’s another, related principle at play here, one that helps you decide where to put your effort in the first place. It’s called the Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule.”
He gestured for Blake to walk with him again.
“An Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto discovered it over a century ago. He noticed that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by just 20% of the population. This pattern of imbalance, he found, was everywhere. In business, 80% of sales often come from 20% of customers. Microsoft found that fixing the top 20% of reported bugs eliminated 80% of system crashes. That first twenty minutes in the sun? That’s your 20% of effort that gives you 80% of your tan. The rest of the time gives you that last little bit, and eventually, harm.”
Blake stopped.
“So, if I apply that to my life… 20% of my work activities are probably generating 80% of my actual results.”
“Without a doubt,” Lucian confirmed. “And the inverse is also true. 20% of your stressors are likely causing 80% of your anxiety. 20% of your relationships are giving you 80% of your happiness. Your job is not to do more, Blake. Your job is to find the vital 20% and focus your energy there. And just as importantly, to identify the point of diminishing returns—the point where you start to get burned—and have the wisdom to stop.”
Lucian picked a lemon from the tree and handed it to Blake. It was heavy and fragrant.
“Most people spend their lives frantically trying to water every plant in a vast, arid field. The wise person finds the few, vital trees that will bear the most fruit and gives them just enough water to flourish. They don’t drown them; they don’t waste water on the weeds. They seek the meaningful tan.”
Chapter 3
The Failure-Proof System
“Okay, I understand,” Blake said as they sat back in Lucian’s office.
He held the lemon in his hands.
“I need to identify the 20% of things that matter, and I need to stop before I hit the point of diminishing returns. But that middle part… how do I know how much is ‘just enough’? It feels vague. How do I build a system around that?”
Lucian leaned back in his chair.
“You’re right. It requires a more precise tool. The concept is called the Minimum Effective Dose, or MED. It comes from pharmacology, where it’s defined as the smallest dose of a drug that will produce a desired outcome”.
“Think about it,” he continued. “If one pill cures your headache, taking three doesn’t make the headache ‘more cured.’ It just increases the risk of side effects. Anything above the MED is waste, and potentially harmful. The same is true for our efforts. There is a beautiful analogy: to boil water, the MED is 100 degrees Celsius. Heating it to 110 degrees doesn’t make it ‘more boiled.’ It just wastes energy and makes the water evaporate faster”.
Blake nodded, turning the concept over in his mind.
“The smallest dose for the desired outcome. So it’s not about doing the absolute minimum, but the minimum to actually get the effect.”
“Precisely. And this is where it becomes a failure-proof system. The single biggest reason people fail to stick with new habits—a new workout plan, a diet, a learning regimen—is that the perceived effort is too high. They try to go from zero to eight hours in the sun on day one. They get burned, and they never go back. An MED-based system, by definition, requires the least amount of work for a noticeable result. It lowers the barrier to entry so much that it’s almost impossible not to do it.”
“So it’s a psychological tool as much as a physical one.”
“It’s almost entirely a psychological tool,” Lucian corrected. “The most powerful evidence for MED comes from exercise science, a field where we can measure dose and response very accurately. Researchers have spent years trying to find the MED for strength and muscle growth. One landmark analysis looked at trained men and found that to get significantly stronger, the MED was just a single set of 6-12 repetitions, performed with high effort, two to three times a week. Think about that. Not two hours in the gym. One intense set. Is it the optimal dose for a professional bodybuilder? No. But does it produce a significant, measurable result? Absolutely.”
“One set,” Blake repeated, almost in disbelief.“I’ve been trying to force myself to do hour-long workouts and failing, so I end up doing nothing.”
“And that is the point,” Lucian said, leaning forward.
“A suboptimal plan that you follow consistently for a decade will produce infinitely better results than the ‘perfect’ plan you abandon after three weeks. The MED is the antidote to inconsistency. It’s the foundation of a system that you can actually stick with, not just when you’re motivated and full of energy, but on the days you are tired, stressed, and overwhelmed. It’s a system designed for the reality of human life, not the fantasy of perfect discipline.”
He pointed to the lemon in Blake’s hand.
“The Pareto Principle helped you identify that this lemon tree was one of your vital few. The Law of Diminishing Returns told you not to drown it with water. And the Minimum Effective Dose tells you exactly how much water it needs to produce fruit. Not a drop more, not a drop less. That is the system.”
Chapter 4
The 15-Minute Workout & Nutrition
“Let’s make this practical,” Lucian said at their next meeting.“We’ve established the principles––now we build the protocols. We’ll start with the foundation of all energy and resilience: the physical body. Using our inversion framework, how would you guarantee physical decline?”
Blake didn’t hesitate this time.
“Easy. Never move. Eat garbage. Sleep four hours a night.”
“Perfect,” Lucian said. “So, our goal is not to become a professional athlete. It is simply to prevent that harm. We will apply the Minimum Effective Dose to movement, nutrition, and sleep.”
He slid a single sheet of paper across the desk.
“This is your new workout plan. It will take you, at most, 15-20 minutes, three times a week.”
Blake looked at the paper. It was deceptively simple.
The 15-Minute Workout Frequency: 3 times per week (e.g., Mon/Wed/Fri)
Workout:
Deficit Squats: 1 set of 8-12 repetitions;
Push-ups: 1 set of 8-12 repetitions;
Inverted Rows: 1 set of 8-12 repetitions.
Instruction: “Each set must be performed with high effort, meaning the last one or two repetitions should be very difficult to complete. That is the key.”
“That’s it?” Blake asked, skeptical. “This is less than my warm-up used to be.”
“Remember the research,” Lucian reminded him. “The MED for significant strength gains in trained men is one high-effort set, 2-3 times per week. For muscle growth, some studies suggest the floor is as low as four sets per muscle group per week. This simple protocol hits those minimums. It’s designed to be so short and simple that you have no excuse to skip it. It prevents the harm of a sedentary life.”
“Okay,” Blake said, folding the paper. “I can do that. What about nutrition?”
“Same principle. People fail at diets because they try to change everything at once. They slash calories, cut out entire food groups, and rely on finite willpower. We will make the smallest possible change that produces a result. For fat loss, the MED is a modest 10% reduction from your consistent daily calorie intake. Don’t count calories yet. Just do this: for the next two weeks, remove one thing. The sugar in your coffee, the nightly glass of wine, the afternoon snack from the vending machine. Just one. That’s the dose.”
“And sleep?” Blake asked.
“Sleep is the one area where the MED is a hard floor, not a ceiling. The science is overwhelmingly clear. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends adults get 7 or more hours per night, regularly. Consistently getting less is directly linked to a higher risk of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. An analysis of multiple studies suggested that sleeping five or fewer hours a night could increase mortality risk by as much as 15 percent. So here, the MED is our absolute target. Seven hours is the non-negotiable goal.” Lucian paused, letting the information sink in.
“Notice what we’ve done. We’ve created a system that is almost entirely based on removal. We removed the long, complicated workouts. We removed one unhealthy food item. The only thing we are adding is protecting your sleep. A recent study on overall health, what they called SPAN—Sleep, Physical Activity, and Nutrition—was fascinating. It found that a combined minimum increase of just 15 minutes of sleep, 1.6 minutes of moderate physical activity, and a tiny improvement in diet was associated with a significant reduction in mortality risk. Small, consistent doses. That is the protocol for preventing physical harm.”
Chapter 5
The No-Debt Rule & The Halved Savings
“Finance is an area where people are particularly susceptible to the allure of complexity,” Lucian said, beginning their next session. “They chase brilliant, high-risk strategies and, more often than not, end up losing. So, we invert. How do you guarantee financial ruin?”
“Spend more than you earn. Get into a lot of high-interest debt. Gamble on risky stocks. Have no savings,” Blake recited, now comfortable with the exercise.
“Excellent. So our protocol is designed to avoid just that. Warren Buffett, Munger’s partner, has two rules for investing:
Rule No. 1: Never lose money;
Rule No. 2: Never forget Rule No. 1’.
It’s pure inversion. The entire goal is the avoidance of catastrophic error.
The first part of our protocol is therefore The No-Debt Rule. Specifically, no high-interest, non-mortgage debt. Credit cards, personal loans—they must be eliminated. The interest works against you, compounding your losses. It is the financial equivalent of trying to run up a descending escalator.”
“I’m okay there,” Blake said. “We’re careful with credit cards.”
“Good. The second part is where most people get lost. They try to create complex budgets, tracking every penny. It’s overwhelming and leads to failure. Instead, we apply the MED. We need the smallest possible action that ensures you are building a buffer against ruin. I call it The Halved Savings rule.” Lucian explained. “You determine a realistic percentage of your income you can save. Let’s say it’s 10%. Then, you cut it in half. You will save 5%. But you will do it automatically. You will set up an automatic transfer from your checking account to a separate savings or investment account for the day after you get paid. It must be effortless.” “Only 5%?” Blake asked. “That seems too low. I should be saving more.”
“Why did you stop going to the gym?” Lucian asked pointedly.
“Because the goal was too big, and I felt like a failure when I missed it and i stopped completely.”
“Precisely. We are setting a goal that is so achievable it is impossible to fail. This builds the habit. Once the 5% is automatic and you don’t even notice it’s gone, you can consider increasing it. But you start with a dose that is guaranteed to be sustainable. This is the strategy for what some call the ‘know-nothing investor.’ The amateur who tries to be brilliant by picking stocks will almost certainly underperform. But the amateur who simply avoids mistakes—by consistently buying a low-cost index fund every month for 30 years—is likely to achieve an extraordinary result. They are not trying to win a Winner’s Game; they are avoiding losing a Loser’s Game”.
“So the protocol isn’t about becoming a financial genius. It’s about not being a fool.”
“It is the most reliable path to wealth there is,” Lucian confirmed. “Avoid debt. Automate a small, sustainable amount of savings. Invest it sensibly and consistently. You have now prevented the most common forms of financial harm. You have let the power of compounding work for you, not against you.”
Chapter 6
The One Good Deed
“Now for a more abstract domain,” Lucian said.“Relationships. Invert for me. How would you guarantee a life of loneliness and social isolation?”
Blake thought for a moment.
“Neglect the people who matter. Never reach out. Be selfish. Take, but never give. Burn bridges.”
“Perfect. And if we apply the Pareto Principle here, what might we find?”
“That 20% of the people in my life probably provide 80% of my happiness and support,” Blake answered immediately.
“Exactly. Your wife, your children, a few close friends. These are your ‘vital few.’ The tragedy of a busy life is that these are often the first people we neglect. We give them the scraps of our time and energy, while giving the best of ourselves to colleagues, clients, and strangers. The goal, then, is to prevent the harm of neglect to this vital 20%.”
“But my time is so limited,” Blake protested. “I can’t just add ‘four hours with friends’ to my schedule.”
“You are still thinking in terms of maximum effort,” Lucian chided gently.“We must apply the Minimum Effective Dose. What is the smallest possible input that nurtures a relationship and signals that you care? I call it The One Good Deed protocol.”
He elaborated.
“Each day, you will perform one, and only one, small, proactive, positive action for someone in your vital few. It must take less than five minutes. That’s the rule.”
“What kind of action?”
“Send your wife a text message in the middle of the day, telling her something you appreciate about her. Leave a silly drawing on your child’s pillow. Email that friend you haven’t spoken to in months with a link to an article you know they’d like, with the simple note, ‘Thought of you when I saw this.’ That’s it. One small dose.”
Blake was silent. It seemed too simple to possibly be effective.
“You are skeptical,” Lucian observed. “You believe a grand gesture is what matters. But relationships are not built on grand gestures. They are built on the accumulation of thousands of tiny, consistent moments of connection. A grand gesture is like trying to water a plant once a year with a firehose. It’s messy and ineffective. This protocol is the equivalent of giving it a small cup of water every day. It is the consistency, not the volume, that creates health and growth.”
“One small thing,” Blake said, testing the idea.“Every day.”
“It is a system that prevents the harm of neglect,” Lucian concluded. “It ensures that on your busiest, most stressful days, you are still actively investing in the relationships that matter most. It is a small dose, but the cumulative effect, over years, is profound.”
Chapter 7
The Personal Growth MED
“The final domain of harm we must address is the mind,” Lucian stated. “The harm of stagnation. Invert it.”
“To guarantee mental decay?” Blake asked. “Stop learning. Never read. Never be curious. Mindlessly consume entertainment. Repeat the same thoughts and routines forever.”
“Very good. So the protocol must be an MED for learning and growth. What do you think that would be?”
“I don’t know… read for an hour a day?” Blake guessed.
“Too big,” Lucian said immediately. “That’s a goal, not a system. It will fail the first time you have a busy evening. Remember James Clear’s ‘Two-Minute Rule’: a new habit should take less than two minutes to do. We need something that feels effortless.” He continued, “The goal is not to become a polymath. It is to prevent the harm of stagnation. The protocol is this: Read one page of a non-fiction book each day.” Blake laughed. “One page? That’s nothing.”
“It is everything,” Lucian countered. “Because it is achievable. On a good day, you might read for an hour. But on a terrible day, when you are exhausted and have no motivation, you can still read one page. You maintain the chain of consistency. You still cast a ‘vote’ for your identity as a learner. Over a year, that’s a 365-page book you wouldn’t have otherwise read. It’s a small dose with a powerful cumulative effect.”
“But what should I read? How do I choose?”
“This is where we can be strategic. There’s fascinating research on skill acquisition that points to a kind of MED for learning itself. A recent meta-analysis, for example, found a strong positive relationship between musical ability and success in learning a second language. The theory is that musical training hones the brain’s underlying architecture for processing rhythm, pitch, and patterns—skills crucial for both music and language. So, a small, consistent dose of musical practice could be a high-leverage MED that makes the larger task of language learning easier.”
“So I should learn the piano?”
“Not necessarily,” Lucian smiled. “The principle is to find a ‘keystone’ skill. A small area of knowledge that has broad applications. Instead of reading random books, you could spend a year reading just one page a day about mental models, decision-making or storytelling. A small, focused dose in a high-leverage area. That is the MED for preventing mental harm. It keeps your mind active, curious, and growing, with an investment of only a few minutes a day.”
Chapter 8
The Trap of 'Good Enough'
Blake arrived at their next session looking frustrated.
“The system is working,” he admitted, “almost too well. The workouts are short, the rules are simple. But I find myself fighting it. I missed a workout on Wednesday because of a late meeting, and my first thought was, ‘Well, the week is ruined. I’ll start again on Monday.’ I almost gave up completely.”
Lucian nodded knowingly.
“You have just encountered the three great enemies of consistency: Perfectionism, Decision Fatigue, and the ‘What-the-Hell’ Effect. A system is only as strong as its ability to withstand human nature."
"Let’s start with perfectionism,” Lucian said. “It masquerades as a virtue, but it’s a poison to progress. It creates an ‘all-or-nothing’ mindset. You believe you must follow the plan perfectly. The moment you deviate—miss one workout, eat one cookie—you declare the entire effort a failure and quit. The antidote is to embrace ‘good enough.’ It is better to do less than you hoped than to do nothing at all”.
“That’s hard to accept,” Blake said. “It feels like lowering my standards.”
“Is it? Or is it designing a more resilient system? This brings us to the second enemy: Decision Fatigue. Our capacity for self-control is a limited resource, like a muscle that gets tired. Every decision you make throughout the day, no matter how small, depletes that resource. Researchers have seen this with judges, who are far more likely to grant parole in the morning than in the afternoon, when their decision-making energy is drained. By the end of a long day, your willpower is exhausted. That’s why it’s so hard to stick to a new, non-automatic habit in the evening. Our protocols are designed to minimise decisions. The workout is pre-defined. The nutrition rule is simple. This conserves your willpower for when you truly need it.”
“And the third enemy?”
“The ‘What-the-Hell’ Effect,” Lucian said. “It’s a term coined by dieting researchers. It describes that moment you described. You have one slip-up—the missed workout—and your brain says, ‘What the hell, I’ve already blown it; I might as well abandon the whole week’. The spiral isn’t caused by the first mistake. It’s caused by the feelings of guilt and shame that follow. The most effective way to combat this is a simple rule: Never miss twice.” “One missed workout is an accident,” he explained. “It happens––life is messy. But two missed workouts in a row is the start of a new habit. Your goal is not perfection––it is to get back on track immediately. If you miss Wednesday’s workout, you must do it on Thursday, even if it’s a shorter version. You must not allow one failure to become a chain of failures. That is how you build a system that bends, but never breaks.”
Chapter 9
The Merciless Nature of Time
“I feel like I’m making progress,” Blake said, a new sense of calm in his voice.
“But there’s a part of me that feels anxious, like I’ve wasted so much time and I need to catch up. I want to do two workouts a day, or read a whole chapter instead of one page, to make up for lost ground.”
“That is the siren song of the ‘more is better’ mindset,” Lucian warned. “You cannot cram consistency––time is merciless in that way. You cannot eat seven healthy meals on Sunday and expect it to make up for a week of junk food. You cannot do a seven-hour workout to make up for a week of inactivity. The benefits of these actions are dose-dependent, and they require recovery and adaptation. They are governed by time.”
Lucian walked over to a small bonsai tree on his windowsill.
“This tree did not grow overnight––it is the result of years of small, consistent actions: a little water, a little light, a little pruning. If I had neglected it for a year and then tried to ‘catch up’ by dumping a bucket of water and a bag of fertiliser on it, I would have killed it. Progress, true progress, is a biological process, not a mechanical one. It requires compounding.”
“This is the core of James Clear’s work on habits,” Lucian continued.“He argues that we should forget about goals and focus on systems instead. A goal is a one-time result: run a marathon. A system is the process you follow: run three times a week. You do not rise to the level of your goals; you fall to the level of your systems. Your anxiety about ‘catching up’ comes from a goal-oriented mindset. A systems-oriented mindset understands that the victory is not in the outcome, but in showing up and executing the process each day.”
“So the focus should be on not breaking the chain.”
“Precisely. And on the understanding that there is no catch-up. Yesterday is gone. You cannot reclaim the workout you missed or the page you didn’t read. All you have is the present moment. The only choice is whether you will take the prescribed dose today. That is all that is within your control.”
He gently touched a leaf on the bonsai.
“The power of this philosophy is not in its intensity, but in its relentless accumulation. Small, intelligent actions, repeated without fail over a long period of time. That is the only force capable of producing profound change. You cannot rush it. You can only honour the process, day by day.”
Chapter 10
The Operating System
Months had passed. The frantic energy that had once radiated from Blake was gone, replaced by a quiet confidence. His leg was still. His gaze was steady.
“It’s strange,” Blake began, looking at Lucian across the familiar oak desk.“I came here asking for a system to do more. You gave me a system for doing less. And yet, for the first time in years, I feel like I’m actually achieving something.”
“Tell me about it,” Lucian said, a genuine warmth in his voice.
“It’s like I have a new operating system for my life,” Blake explained. “Before, I was just reacting to everything, trying to run a dozen different programs at once, and the whole system was constantly crashing. Now, I have a simple, clear code that runs in the background.”
He ticked the points off on his fingers:
I identify with the Pareto Principle. Before I commit to anything, I ask: Is this part of the vital 20% or the trivial 80%? Is this task generating real value? Is this relationship nourishing me? It’s a filter that clarifies everything.
I Invert. For any important project or decision, I start by asking, ‘How could this fail completely?’ I write down the worst-case scenarios. It’s not negative; it’s strategic. It shows me the critical risks I need to mitigate from the start.
I apply the Minimum Effective Dose. Once I’ve identified a vital activity, I don’t ask how much I can do. I ask how little I can do to still get a meaningful result. One set at the gym. One page of a book. One small act of kindness. It makes consistency almost effortless.
I respect the Law of Diminishing Returns. I now recognise the feeling of ‘the burn.’ That point in the workday, or the workout, or even a social gathering, where the returns are dropping off. And now, I have the permission to stop. To walk away without guilt, knowing that more effort would be waste.
I have a system for when I fail. I know to never miss twice. I accept that ‘good enough’ and consistent is better than ‘perfect’ and sporadic. I’m no longer afraid of breaking the chain, because I know how to repair it immediately.
He leaned back, a genuine smile spreading across his face.
“I’m working less, but my performance has improved. I’m spending less time at the gym, but I’m stronger. I’m spending more quality time with my family. I’m not burned out––I’m not even close.”
Lucian listened, his expression serene. He picked up the smooth black stone from his desk and placed it in Blake’s hand.
“You came here looking for a map,” Lucian said. “But what you’ve built is a compass. A map is rigid and becomes useless when the terrain changes. A compass is a set of principles that allows you to navigate any terrain, no matter how unexpected. You no longer need me, Blake.”
Blake looked down at the stone, its weight cool and solid in his palm. He had his answer. It wasn’t about doing more––it was about doing less, but of the right things, in the right dose. It wasn’t about chasing brilliance; it was about the simple, profound art of avoiding harm.
The principles Lucian shared––Inversion, the Pareto Principle, the Minimum Effective Dose, and the Law of Diminishing Returns––are not just ideas in a story. They are practical Mental Models you can learn and apply to your own life.
The story is the demonstration. The library is the toolbox. It's your turn to build a system for clarity and effectiveness.
Sources, Further Reading & Disclaimer
Inspiration was drawn from Adam Slywotzky's The Art of Profitability.
🔗Inversion: The Power of Avoiding Stupidity - Farnam Street, accessed September 25, 2025, https://fs.blog/inversion/
🔗Inversion Examples - Problem Solving in Reverse - Wealest.com - The Ideas of wealth creators, accessed September 25, 2025, https://www.wealest.com/articles/inversion-examples
🔗invertquotes — Investment Masters Class, accessed September 25, 2025, http://mastersinvest.com/invertquotes
🔗Inversion: The Billionaire Thinking Skill You Were Never Taught in School. - Mayo Oshin, accessed September 25, 2025, https://www.mayooshin.com/inversion-charlie-munger-billionaire-thinking
🔗Using Inversion - Commoncog, accessed September 25, 2025, https://commoncog.com/using-inversion/
🔗Avoiding Stupidity is Easier than Seeking Brilliance - Moving People to Action - Conor Neill, accessed September 25, 2025, https://conorneill.com/2016/02/10/avoiding-stupidity-is-easier-than-seeking-brilliance/
🔗Avoiding Stupidity is Easier than Seeking Brilliance - Farnam Street, accessed September 25, 2025, https://fs.blog/avoiding-stupidity/
🔗Inversion Thinking: How Charlie Munger Avoids Stupidity with ..., accessed September 25, 2025, https://einvestingforbeginners.com/inversion-thinking-daah/
🔗Invert — Upgrade Your Thinking. A Highly Effective Mental Model | by Rational Badger, accessed September 25, 2025, https://medium.com/@RationalBadger/invert-upgrade-your-thinking-a38ee1b46831
🔗Premeditatio Malorum - Daily Stoic, accessed September 25, 2025, https://dailystoic.com/premeditatio-malorum/
🔗Premeditatio Malorum: The Surprising Stoic Way of Meditation | by Aamna I. Rizvi - Medium, accessed September 25, 2025, https://medium.com/the-ascent/premeditatio-malorum-the-surprising-stoic-way-of-meditation-5353de2bf416
🔗Inversion Thinking: The Mental Model Used by Charlie Munger and Jeff Bezos, accessed September 25, 2025, https://thegeekyleader.com/2025/03/30/inversion-thinking-the-mental-model-used-by-charlie-munger-and-jeff-bezos/
🔗Diminishing returns - Wikipedia, accessed September 25, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminishing_returns
🔗The Law of Diminishing Returns: How To Maximize Productivity and ..., accessed September 25, 2025, https://personalexcellence.co/blog/diminishing-returns/
🔗Pareto principle - Wikipedia, accessed September 25, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
🔗Work Less, Live More, and Be More Effective with the 80/20 Principle, accessed September 25, 2025, https://www.annakschaffner.com/post/80-20-principle-pareto-law-work-life-balance
🔗Pareto Examples: How the 80/20 Rule Solves Real-World Problems - HEFLO, accessed September 25, 2025, https://www.heflo.com/blog/pareto-80-20-rule-examples
🔗The Pareto Principle, accessed September 25, 2025, https://cklixx.people.wm.edu/teaching/math400/Kwaku.pdf
🔗Pareto: The most absurd examples confirming the 80/20 rule - SmartWay, accessed September 25, 2025, https://smartway.es/en/pareto-the-most-absurd-examples-confirming-the-80-20-rule/
🔗The 80/20 Principle and How It Can Change Your Life - Mark Manson, accessed September 25, 2025, https://markmanson.net/80-20-your-life
🔗How Have You Used the 80/20 Rule in Your Life? : r/productivity - Reddit, accessed September 25, 2025, https://www.reddit.com/r/productivity/comments/zqyyz9/how_have_you_used_the_8020_rule_in_your_life/
🔗Minimum Effective Dose (MinED) - ResearchGate, accessed September 25, 2025, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230343945_Minimum_Effective_Dose_MinED
🔗Practical considerations for optimal designs in clinical dose finding studies - PMC, accessed September 25, 2025, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3852432/
🔗What Is the Minimum Effective Dose? - Monitask, accessed September 25, 2025, https://www.monitask.com/en/business-glossary/minimum-effective-dose
🔗Minimum Effective Dose, or: The Art of Doing Just Enough Software Architecture | by Hannes Rollin | Medium, accessed September 25, 2025, https://medium.com/@hannes.rollin/minimum-effective-dose-or-the-art-of-doing-just-enough-software-architecture-b0d7723ac6a7
🔗Case study: "Minimum Effective Dose" applied to world of physician-led entrepreneurship, accessed September 25, 2025, http://www.disrupthealthcare.org/2014/09/case-study-minimum-effective-dose.html
🔗Why can't I stick to my habits? - Dr. Richard MacKinnon, accessed September 25, 2025, https://www.worklifepsych.com/why-cant-i-stick-to-my-new-habits/
🔗(PDF) The Minimum Effective Training Dose Required to Increase ..., accessed September 25, 2025, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337716488_The_Minimum_Effective_Training_Dose_Required_to_Increase_1RM_Strength_in_Resistance-Trained_Men_A_Systematic_Review_and_Meta-Analysis
🔗The Minimum Effective Training Dose Required to Increase 1RM ..., accessed September 25, 2025, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31797219/
🔗How Minimalist Training Can Save Time Without Sacrificing Gains, accessed September 25, 2025, https://www.menshealth.com/uk/building-muscle/train-smarter/a63781902/minimalist-training-muscle-growth/
🔗Minimum Effective Dose - Invictus Fitness, accessed September 25, 2025, https://invictusfitness.com/blog/minimum-effective-dose/
🔗Sleep is essential to health: an American Academy of Sleep ..., accessed September 25, 2025, https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.9476
🔗Sleeping hours: what is the ideal number and how does age impact this? - PMC, accessed September 25, 2025, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6267703/
🔗Sleep and Health | Sleep Medicine, accessed September 25, 2025, https://sleep.hms.harvard.edu/education-training/public-education/sleep-and-health-education-program/sleep-health-education-86
🔗Minimum and optimal combined variations in sleep, physical activity, and nutrition in relation to all-cause mortality risk - PMC - PubMed Central, accessed September 25, 2025, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11863424/
🔗"Atomic Habits" – Harnessing the Power of Habits to Shape Performance, accessed September 25, 2025, https://centerforhci.org/atomic-habits-by-james-clear/
🔗Insights from Atomic Habits by James Clear | by Akogwu Uche ..., accessed September 25, 2025, https://medium.com/@akogwuuche/insights-from-atomic-habits-by-james-clear-50d735fe6eed
🔗Atomic Habits: How to Get 1% Better Every Day - James Clear - YouTube, accessed September 25, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_nzqnXWvSo
🔗Is musical ability related to second-language acquisition? A meta ..., accessed September 25, 2025, https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.241193
🔗Using Music to Enhance Language Learning: Strategies and Benefits, accessed September 25, 2025, https://www.greatertorontomusic.ca/post/using-music-to-enhance-language-learning-strategies-and-benefits
🔗Somewhere In-Between: Overcoming Perfectionism Through Habit ..., accessed September 25, 2025, https://img.faculty.unlv.edu/lab/newsletter/issue-19/somewhere-in-between-overcoming-perfectionism-through-habit-shaping/
🔗Decision Fatigue, Choosing for Others, and Self-Construal - Carlson School of Management - University of Minnesota, accessed September 25, 2025, https://carlsonschool.umn.edu/sites/carlsonschool.umn.edu/files/2018-12/polman_vohs_2016_spps_decision_fatigue_0_0.pdf
🔗Decision Fatigue: A Conceptual Analysis - PMC, accessed September 25, 2025, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6119549/
🔗Clinical decision fatigue: a systematic and scoping review with meta-synthesis, accessed September 25, 2025, https://fmch.bmj.com/content/13/1/e003033
🔗The Science of Decision Fatigue | Full Focus, accessed September 25, 2025, https://fullfocus.co/the-science-of-decision-fatigue/
🔗How The What-The-Hell Effect Impacts Your Willpower | Psychology ..., accessed September 25, 2025, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pressure-proof/201701/how-the-what-the-hell-effect-impacts-your-willpower
🔗The “What the Hell" Effect & How to Conquer Its Vicious Cycle | Brainscape Academy, accessed September 25, 2025, https://www.brainscape.com/academy/what-the-hell-effect/
🔗What-The-Hell Effect | CCL Finsights Guide, accessed September 25, 2025, https://case-studies.advanced-hindsight.com/concepts/what-the-hell-effect/
🔗The “What The Hell” Effect, Weight Loss And COVID-19 | by William Anderson, LMHC, accessed September 25, 2025, https://williamandersonmalmhc.medium.com/the-what-the-hell-effect-weight-loss-and-covid-19-b200054b10d9
🔗 How to Maintain Habits Without Failing (Backed by Science) | by Mental Garden - Medium, accessed September 25, 2025, https://medium.com/change-your-mind/how-to-maintain-habits-without-failing-backed-by-science-89bb165445cb
The content on this site is provided for general informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute professional advice and should not be relied upon as such. While we strive to provide accurate information, we make no guarantees regarding its completeness, reliability, or accuracy. Your use of this site and its content is at your own responsibility.
Comments