IDEA · 05 · Exploring · OS
When I read a great book, I often highlight ideas that feel important.
A few months later, I remember the book, but I forget most of the principles that made it valuable.
Instead of collecting summaries, I want to collect mental models.
A mental model is a way of thinking that helps solve many different problems.
Charlie Munger is famous for this idea. Rather than memorizing isolated facts, he built a collection of mental models from economics, psychology, mathematics, biology, engineering, and many other fields. Whenever he had to make a decision, he looked at the problem through those models instead of relying on intuition alone.
For example:
Incentives — People usually respond to incentives more than intentions.
Compounding — Small improvements repeated over many years create extraordinary results.
Opportunity Cost — Choosing one thing means giving up another.
Inversion — Instead of asking how to succeed, ask what would guarantee failure.
The same idea appears in science.
Richard Feynman didn't try to memorize everything. He built notebooks where he explained ideas in his own words and collected questions he couldn't yet answer. His notebooks became an extension of his thinking rather than a storage place for information.
I want to build something similar, but focused on software engineering, learning, decision-making, business, psychology, and life.
Every time I finish a great book—The Pragmatic Programmer, Refactoring, Designing Data-Intensive Applications, or any other—I won't write a summary.
I'll ask one question:
What timeless principle from this book deserves a permanent place in my handbook?
Over time, this will become my personal operating system.
Not because it contains everything I know.
But because it contains the ideas I never want to forget.
I don't want to depend on remembering hundreds of books.
I want to build one place that captures the best ideas from everything I read and experience.
Years from now, I hope this becomes the first document I open before making an important decision or starting a new project.
Poor Charlie's Almanack
The Pragmatic Programmer
The Checklist Manifesto
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!