What can we learn from a simple fitness device?
A Bosu trainer caught my eye at the gym yesterday:
For the uninitiated, the Bosu Balance Trainer is a simple fitness device designed for one thing: intentional instability.
By design, the Bosu's partially inflated rubber dome creates a shape-shifting shit show of a workout that, at first attempt, seems near impossible to balance upon.
But aside from the physical torment the Bosu inflicts, the concept of intentional instability stayed with me for a while seeking deeper inspection.
Intentional instability
I asked myself: What would it look like if I applied intentional instability to my brain? It seems beneficial to challenge my cognitive strength by putting it in wobbly situations where I not only question my assumptions, but also exercised new ways of thinking, i.e. my "stabilizer neurons" if you will.
The Bosu brain
That same day my best friend Chris happened to text me this link: https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/mental-models/
What Chris had shared with me—compliments of Farnam Street—was a list of 113 different mental models, each of which constitute a mini-Bosu exercise in cognitive stability. My Bosu brain training program had arrived!
If there's one thing you take away from this blog post: bookmark this link. It provides a cognitive exercise regiment of compelling value.
The good people of Farnam Street took the time to compile a fairly exhaustive list of heuristics and mental models humans can use to think about challenges and opportunities in new ways. The end goal of all this is to make better decisions, and think more deeply.
For example:
Inversion: thinking backwards or in reverse
Confirmation bias: what we believe is what we choose to see
Circle of competence: knowing and respecting the bounds of our own knowledge
Hanlon's Razor: appreciating human stupidity instead of assuming malice
Second-order thinking: extrapolating the effects of the effects (of a given action/decision)
Probabilistic thinking: favoring probabilities over possibilities; also: superforecasting
Regression to the mean: confusing statistically likely events with causal ones
What mental model will you explore? How can you embrace the Bosu brain?
