Guides

Activation energy in habits and chemistry, explained for productivity: why the first step dominates, how to reduce friction, and mental models that pair with it.

Edward Lorenz discovered that tiny differences in initial conditions can produce vastly different outcomes — a finding that reshaped science, business, and decision-making.

Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger's most important investment principle: stay within the boundaries of what you genuinely understand, and know exactly where those boundaries are.

Core values are the non-negotiable principles that guide decisions when incentives conflict. This guide explains what core values are, how to define them without clichés, and lists examples for teams and individuals — with links to related mental models.

Deliberate practice is the evidence-based method that produces genuine expertise. Drawn from Anders Ericsson's decades of research — and supported by the work of Benjamin Bloom, Herbert Simon, and William Chase — it explains why some people improve rapidly while others plateau for years. The framework applies to any domain where performance matters: music, chess, athletics, surgery, writing, leadership. It is not about logging hours. It is about the structure and intensity of how you spend them.

Entropy measures disorder in a system — and disorder is the default. Understanding entropy explains why maintenance, focus, and energy expenditure are non-negotiable.

Ethos, pathos, and logos are Aristotle’s three modes of persuasion — credibility, emotion, and logic. This guide explains each pillar, how they work together in speeches, sales, and writing, with examples, mistakes to avoid, and a quick reference for SEO and classroom use.

The Feynman technique is a four-step method to learn deeply: explain simply, find gaps, revisit sources, refine. Named for Richard Feynman, it pairs with active recall and spaced repetition in our broader how-to-learn stack.

First principles thinking is the practice of breaking problems down to their fundamental truths and reasoning up from there, rather than relying on analogy or convention. Aristotle gave it a name. Elon Musk and Richard Feynman turned it into a competitive advantage.

Hanlon's Razor is a mental shortcut for interpreting others' behaviour: assume incompetence or ignorance before assuming hostile intent — and you'll be right far more often.

A structured approach to understanding how companies create, deliver, and capture value — with frameworks for evaluating revenue models, unit economics, competitive positioning, and vulnerability to disruption.

A practical guide to developing leadership ability — drawn from the principles, habits, and mental models of the most effective leaders in business, military, and public life.

A practical guide to building durable competitive advantages — covering Warren Buffett's moat concept, Hamilton Helmer's 7 Powers, Michael Porter's competitive forces, and the strategies that protect businesses from competition over decades.

Evidence-backed ways to build good habits: environment design, identity, cues, and feedback — without pretending motivation is enough. Complements James Clear's themes with FTN mental models.

A guide to building the strategic thinking capacity that separates great operators from good ones — covering Rumelt's strategy kernel, Boyd's OODA loop, Porter's Five Forces, and the mental habits that turn analysis into intuition.

Distraction is the default. Focus is designed. This guide uses mental models — deep work, flow state, activation energy, and friction — to explain why concentration fails and how to engineer environments, routines, and systems that protect your attention.

Evidence-based techniques for accelerating learning — including spaced repetition, deliberate practice, interleaving, and the Feynman technique for deep understanding.

A framework for improving decision quality — covering mental models, cognitive biases, decision processes, and the habits that separate consistently good decision-makers from everyone else.

Practical strategies for retaining what you read — from active reading and note-taking systems to building a personal knowledge base that compounds over time.

Motivation is not a feeling you find — it is a system you build. This guide uses mental models — intrinsic motivation, compounding, loss aversion, and habit loops — to explain why motivation fades and how to design systems that sustain effort when inspiration disappears.

Why willpower fails and what actually works. This guide uses mental models — activation energy, present bias, friction, and more — to explain why you procrastinate and how to design systems that make action the path of least resistance.

A method for extracting transferable lessons from the careers of exceptional founders, CEOs, and investors — turning biography into a personal operating system.

This is Faster Than Normal’s free web guide to clearer reasoning—not Baker Publishing’s “Think Better” or other books with similar titles. It covers mental models, cognitive biases, and structured frameworks for better decisions.

Inversion explained: ask what guarantees failure, then avoid it. Stoic roots, Munger and Buffett, pre-mortems, and when forward thinking still wins.

A structured tour of life lessons that recur across philosophy, business, and psychology — compounding, attention, inversion, and more — with links to deeper playbooks on Faster Than Normal.

Roosevelt's 1910 'Man in the Arena' speech at the Sorbonne makes the case that credit belongs to those who act — not those who criticise from the sidelines.

William of Ockham's 14th-century principle — do not multiply entities beyond necessity — remains the most reliable filter for choosing between competing explanations.

The OODA loop is John Boyd’s decision cycle: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. Learn how faster, tighter loops beat slower opponents in strategy, product, and investing — with examples beyond the fighter-pilot cliché.

Second-order thinking traces consequences of consequences. Learn how to use it in strategy, policy, and investing — and when first-order logic is enough.

Survivorship bias defined with WWII bombers, startups, and investing: why missing failure data distorts decisions, and how to correct for it.

Alfred Korzybski's insight that models and reality are fundamentally different things — and confusing the two is the source of most catastrophic errors in business and life.

David Foster Wallace's 2005 Kenyon commencement speech argues that the real value of education is choosing what to pay attention to — a skill that determines the quality of daily life.

From Galileo's falling bodies to Schrödinger's cat, thought experiments have produced some of history's greatest breakthroughs — by reasoning about what would happen, not what did happen.