The Flow — one idea at a time
The Flow is ReadGlobe’s full-screen reading mode: one complete idea per screen — a mental model, a cognitive bias, a sourced quote, a masterwork, or the book that teaches it — advanced one swipe, key, or tap at a time, in an order that learns what you love.
First-principles thinking
Priced as raw cobalt and nickel, the $600 battery pack turned out to be mostly habit.
First-principles thinking is breaking a problem down to its most basic, undeniable truths and reasoning up from there — rather than reasoning by analogy to how things are usually done. It strips away inherited assumptions and rebuilds from the ground.
Second-order thinking
The price cut that wins customers today trains them to wait for discounts tomorrow.
Second-order thinking is considering not just the immediate result of a decision but the consequences of those consequences — the “and then what?” effects that ripple out over time. First-order thinking stops at the obvious; second-order traces the chain.
📖 Taught in The Most Important Thing by Howard Marks
Inversion
List every way to wreck a career; avoiding them beats any positive plan.
Inversion is solving a problem from the opposite end — asking how to fail, then avoiding that. Instead of “how do I succeed?”, you ask “what would guarantee disaster?” and systematically eliminate it.
📖 Taught in Poor Charlie's Almanack by Charlie Munger
Opportunity cost
Every yes is a no to the best thing you could have done instead.
Opportunity cost is the value of the best alternative you give up when you make a choice. The true cost of anything isn’t just its price — it’s everything you could have done with the same time, money, or attention instead.
“You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
Circle of competence
Buffett skipped tech stocks for decades; the edge that mattered was the one around his own knowledge.
Your circle of competence is the set of areas where you genuinely have expertise. The model says: know its boundary, operate inside it, and be honest about what lies outside — because most costly errors come from acting confidently beyond your real knowledge.
📖 Taught in Poor Charlie's Almanack by Charlie Munger
Occam’s razor
Each extra assumption is another way to be wrong; check the typo before the coordinated attack.
Occam’s razor is the principle that, among competing explanations, the one requiring the fewest assumptions is usually the best place to start. Simpler explanations are more likely and easier to test — not always right, but the right default.
The map is not the territory
Optimise the metric hard enough and the thing it stood for quietly collapses.
“The map is not the territory” means any model, description, or belief is a simplified representation of reality — never reality itself. Maps are useful precisely because they leave things out, but mistaking the map for the terrain leads you astray.