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Mental Models - Lenses for Thinking and Decisions (Part 1)

Summary

In this episode of Developer Tea, host Jonathan Cottrell introduces the concept of mental models as lenses for improving decision-making and personal growth. He emphasizes that improvement starts with understanding one’s purpose and values, and then applying frameworks to make better use of time and resources.

The first mental model discussed is compounding, typically associated with finance but equally applicable to knowledge and skills. Cottrell explains how learning new information enriches existing knowledge, creating exponential growth rather than linear accumulation. He encourages listeners to seek out learning opportunities that interact and enhance each other, such as combining unrelated skills or applying principles from one domain to another.

The second model is second, third, and fourth-order thinking—considering the longer-term consequences of decisions beyond immediate effects. Cottrell illustrates this with examples like sacrificing sleep for short-term productivity, which leads to negative compounding effects on health and performance. He stresses the importance of asking “and then what?” and “why?” repeatedly to uncover cascading impacts.

Throughout the episode, Cottrell connects these models to practical scenarios in a developer’s career, relationships, and personal habits. He argues that awareness of these frameworks allows individuals to identify opportunities for high-growth decisions and avoid suboptimal choices. The episode sets the stage for further exploration of mental models in subsequent installments.

By adopting these lenses, listeners can shift from reactive decision-making to proactive, strategic thinking that aligns with their long-term goals and values.

Recommendations

Tools

  • Clubhouse — A project management tool designed for developers, featuring Kanban-style workflows, limited work-in-progress, and integrations with tools like Slack and GitHub. The host mentions it’s used by companies like Elastic and Deloitte.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction to improvement and decision-making — Jonathan Cottrell opens the episode by defining improvement as making better decisions, using time effectively, and growing one’s career. He notes that developers often struggle with knowing what to learn or how to change, and promises to provide mental models for finding answers independently. The episode aims to inspire a shift in how listeners approach learning and self-improvement.
  • 00:02:21 — The importance of purpose and context — Cottrell introduces himself and the podcast’s mission to help developers connect with their career purpose. He argues that improvement must be guided by personal values and goals, not arbitrary standards. Understanding one’s context—what they care about and want to accomplish—is the foundation for meaningful growth and decision-making.
  • 00:04:12 — Introducing mental models as lenses — The host announces the episode’s focus: sharing mental models that serve as lenses for better leveraging time. These models apply beyond career to family, friends, and free time. Cottrell previews that the discussion will continue in future episodes and encourages listeners to subscribe.
  • 00:05:06 — Time as a resource and the first mental model: compounding — Cottrell frames time as a resource similar to money, where investments can yield more time in the future. He introduces compounding, explaining the concept of exponential growth from finance. The key insight is that knowledge compounds—new information enriches existing knowledge, creating greater value than the sum of parts.
  • 00:08:45 — Applying compounding to learning and decisions — The host discusses why compounding matters for learning and time management. By understanding how to leverage time for exponential returns, listeners can make better decisions. Examples include combining social lunches to create network effects or learning underlying principles that apply across different domains like work and home relationships.
  • 00:11:51 — Avoiding linear growth and the example of sleep — Cottrell encourages applying compounding to invest in high-growth areas. He contrasts this with linear or negative growth, using sleep deprivation as an example. Sacrificing sleep for immediate tasks leads to poor performance and health harm—a sub-linear decision. The host argues we must view sleep as an investment, not just a response to fatigue.
  • 00:13:10 — Sponsor message: Clubhouse project management tool — The episode is sponsored by Clubhouse, a project management tool designed for developers. Cottrell highlights features like Kanban boards, limited work-in-progress, and integrations with Slack and GitHub. Listeners can get two free months by visiting clubhouse.io/developertea.
  • 00:14:56 — Recap of compounding and introduction to second-order thinking — After the sponsor break, Cottrell recaps compounding as a model for exponential growth. He transitions to the second mental model: second, third, and fourth-order thinking. This involves looking beyond immediate effects to consider longer-term consequences, which is critical for making decisions that support compounding growth.
  • 00:17:15 — Explaining second, third, and fourth-order thinking — The host details how higher-order thinking works, using questions like “and then what?” and “why?” repeatedly. It requires considering cascading effects on oneself, family, coworkers, and community. Cottrell acknowledges that answers may be uncertain but stresses the importance of attempting to predict outcomes.
  • 00:18:26 — Personal example: returning to the gym after illness — Cottrell shares a personal story of returning to the gym too aggressively after being sick, which caused back soreness and further delay. He reflects that he made a conscious but short-sighted decision focused on immediate accomplishment rather than the second-order goal of reinstating healthy habits. This illustrates the gap between intention and higher-order thinking.
  • 00:19:35 — Conclusion and call to action — The host summarizes the two mental models: compounding interest and higher-order thinking. He hopes listeners will apply them to see tasks and opportunities differently. Cottrell invites feedback at developertea@gmail.com, promotes subscription for future episodes on mental models, and thanks the sponsor Clubhouse.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2019-01-14T10:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:21:00

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] By listening to this podcast, you’re probably raising your hand and saying that you want

[00:00:11] to improve.

[00:00:13] What does it mean to improve?

[00:00:15] Well, for the sake of today’s episode, to improve would mean that you’re making better

[00:00:21] decisions.

[00:00:24] time in a better way, or maybe you’re growing your career more effectively.

[00:00:32] You are improving yourself.

[00:00:35] You’re choosing to change in positive ways.

[00:00:40] Or maybe you are working on your outlook.

[00:00:44] You want to change the way that you see the world, not just the way that you act in the

[00:00:48] world.

[00:00:50] Improvement is not a simple concept, but usually improvement comes as a result of an experience

[00:00:58] or as a result of learning something.

[00:01:01] You can really look at learning something as its own experience, but we’re talking about

[00:01:06] improvement as a response to new information.

[00:01:12] And this is where a lot of developers end up getting stuck.

[00:01:16] It’s the kind of questions that we receive at developert.gmail.com.

[00:01:21] It’s the questions that people ask me in person.

[00:01:24] It’s the kind of questions that people ask on all kinds of forums online, not just the

[00:01:29] ones about how to do a specific thing with code, but what should I do?

[00:01:36] What information should I encounter?

[00:01:39] How should I change, and what should I be experiencing in order to improve?

[00:01:48] In today’s episode, I hope to inspire you to shift the way you think about what kinds

[00:01:54] of information and what kinds of learning you should be doing.

[00:01:59] This can create a engine.

[00:02:02] Rather than me giving you specific answers to these questions, I want to teach you how

[00:02:07] to find those answers for yourself, how to think critically, and how to act in a dynamic

[00:02:13] way about learning and about improvement that will last perhaps for your whole career.

[00:02:21] My name is Jonathan Cottrell, and you’re listening to Developer Tea.

[00:02:24] My goal on this show is to help driven developers like you connect to your career purpose and

[00:02:29] do better work so you can have a positive influence on the people around you.

[00:02:33] And that purpose is really the first step.

[00:02:36] It’s the first step to understanding how you should improve.

[00:02:39] Because if you’re just improving, well, that’s not really a specific thing, is it?

[00:02:46] In what ways are you improving, and for what reasons?

[00:02:49] Perhaps you can improve by one standard, but maybe that standard doesn’t serve your purpose

[00:02:55] at all.

[00:02:56] It may be arbitrary to you.

[00:03:00] And for this reason, the answer to what should I learn, what should I use, what should I

[00:03:05] do, is never going to be easy.

[00:03:09] It’s always going to start with, well, I need to know more about your context.

[00:03:15] Your context starts with understanding what you care about, your values, and ultimately

[00:03:21] what you want to accomplish with the time that you have while you’re alive, your purpose

[00:03:25] in life.

[00:03:26] So we aren’t going to talk about trying to identify that within yourself.

[00:03:30] There’s been other episodes where we’ve discussed that idea, and it certainly is a valuable

[00:03:35] set of exercises to figure out what it is that you do value, the things that you do

[00:03:39] care about.

[00:03:40] But instead, today, I’m going to assume that you have a general idea of what you want out

[00:03:47] of your career, of your values, of your purpose.

[00:03:50] And now you’re trying to set yourself up for success.

[00:03:54] You’re trying to find ways that you can improve the quality of your time, right?

[00:04:01] Improve the quality of the spending of your time, get more out of your time, and become

[00:04:07] better at a faster pace.

[00:04:12] In today’s and the following few episodes, I want to share some mental models with you.

[00:04:17] You can think about these as lenses that will help you understand ways to leverage your

[00:04:22] time better.

[00:04:23] Now, this isn’t specific to developers.

[00:04:26] You can use this information to improve your decision making in all kinds of situations,

[00:04:33] not just when you’re talking about your career, but also the way that you spend your time

[00:04:37] with your family, with your friends, the way that you spend your free time.

[00:04:42] All of these things can benefit from the principles, these mental models that we’re going to share

[00:04:46] in today’s episode.

[00:04:48] We’re going to continue talking about mental models into the next episode of Developer

[00:04:52] Tea.

[00:04:53] If you want to miss out on that, make sure you subscribe and whatever podcasting app

[00:04:56] you are currently listening to this episode with.

[00:04:59] So let’s talk about the first mental model that you can use to decide how to use your

[00:05:04] time better.

[00:05:06] And really, I want you to think about time as a resource.

[00:05:09] And this is particularly key when you have a lot of responsibilities.

[00:05:16] When you can buy your time back, for example, right?

[00:05:20] You have to decide how much your time is worth to you, but other people may decide

[00:05:26] how much your time is worth to them as well.

[00:05:29] Now, sometimes there are abstractions between those layers.

[00:05:34] For example, you may have a highly flexible mapping of time to income, but ultimately

[00:05:41] time and money are highly related to each other.

[00:05:45] So when I say that you’re spending your time, you can imagine that this is kind of like

[00:05:49] a bank account that you’re taking money out and investing your time into something.

[00:05:55] And what’s interesting is that one of the things that you can earn by investing your

[00:06:00] time is more time.

[00:06:03] If you, for example, invest time into some kind of venture that will give you passive

[00:06:10] income in the future, then in some ways you are buying yourself the freedom of using that

[00:06:16] time in the future in a different way.

[00:06:19] But the first mental model that I want to share with you is compounding.

[00:06:23] Now you’re probably familiar with the concept, especially if you have any kind of retirement

[00:06:28] account or if you’re interested in finance at all, the idea of earning interest and then

[00:06:34] earning compounding interest.

[00:06:36] If you take a dollar and you add, you know, 5% interest to that dollar, then you have

[00:06:42] a dollar and five cents.

[00:06:44] Now that interest of 5% applies not just to the dollar, but also to the dollar and five

[00:06:51] cents.

[00:06:52] It’s a bit easier to imagine the visual of the growth over time.

[00:06:57] If you think about compound interest, you’re looking at an exponential growth.

[00:07:02] That means that the line is not straight, it’s curved upward.

[00:07:07] As you go from the zero point or the base point of maybe that one dollar up to the right,

[00:07:13] it doesn’t go from 10 in a straight line, it would go from 10 in a curved

[00:07:20] line.

[00:07:21] Again, this is most commonly referred to when talking about finances, but perhaps an even

[00:07:27] more important area as this is concerned, as compounding is concerned, is your knowledge.

[00:07:35] If you think about your knowledge as a pool of information, when you add information to

[00:07:42] that pool, now that information is connected to the other information.

[00:07:49] So that piece of whatever it is that you learned, it now is enriched and it also is enriching

[00:07:58] the other information that you’ve already learned in the past.

[00:08:02] We’ve talked about this effect in the past when we talked about choosing what to learn

[00:08:06] next in a more simplistic way, having skill stacks, having a stack of skills that whenever

[00:08:14] you learn skill A and skill B, they’re more valuable together than they are alone.

[00:08:22] Imagine that you apply some arbitrary unit of value to skill A, let’s say 10, and skill

[00:08:29] B has five, and together, if you were to just add them together, it’d be 15, but when you

[00:08:34] learn those two together, they interact and they make the other one more valuable, so

[00:08:39] suddenly it’s 20 or it’s 25 instead of 15.

[00:08:43] So why does this matter?

[00:08:45] Why does it matter that we think in terms of compounding interest?

[00:08:51] When it comes to our learning, when it comes to spending time, when it comes to our money,

[00:08:55] we need to be understanding how compound interest can affect the outcomes.

[00:09:01] This is important because as you spend your time, if you understand what ways that you

[00:09:08] can leverage that time best, you will earn back from your time at an exponential rate.

[00:09:15] We’re not just talking about your salary and we can’t really say exactly how your salary

[00:09:21] will be affected by these principles, but it can help you start to make different decisions

[00:09:28] and therefore have different outcomes.

[00:09:31] For example, if you have a lunch planned with one of your friends on Monday and then another

[00:09:37] friend on Tuesday, but you believe that those two meeting each other would provide benefit

[00:09:44] to both of them, then maybe you start making decisions like planning the lunch with both

[00:09:50] people.

[00:09:51] This is a subtle shift and it doesn’t really take a lot more from you.

[00:09:55] In fact, in this case, you earn back another day’s worth of lunch time and the effects

[00:10:01] are not always directly predictable.

[00:10:05] You may have had more benefit from having those individual lunches than you would having

[00:10:11] lunch together, but what it does do is it starts you thinking about different ways to

[00:10:18] make your decisions.

[00:10:20] Learning tools or learning concepts that make the things that you already know more valuable.

[00:10:27] Half of the battle when it comes to these mental models is knowing that they exist so

[00:10:31] you can look for the opportunities to take advantage of them.

[00:10:35] For example, if you know that everything that you learn enriches the other things that you

[00:10:40] learn, then you can start to look for the underlying principles that govern your otherwise

[00:10:48] unrelated activities.

[00:10:50] For example, your relationships at work and your relationships at home.

[00:10:55] It may be easy to believe that these are two entirely different things, but the things

[00:11:00] that you learn about your relationships at home can absolutely apply to your relationships

[00:11:06] at work.

[00:11:08] The same is true from things that are perhaps less intuitive.

[00:11:13] Maybe you have a hobby or perhaps you have a degree in something that’s totally unrelated

[00:11:18] to software development, but you can draw from those experiences and compare and learn

[00:11:24] from underlying principles, learn from the ways that things work in other domains and

[00:11:30] clarify through a process of comparison.

[00:11:36] Compound interest applies not just to your 401k, it applies to the way that you spend

[00:11:42] your time, to the places that you go.

[00:11:46] So I encourage you to apply it in ways that invest.

[00:11:51] You invest in a high growth scheme for yourself.

[00:11:55] You can also apply this information to avoid linear or perhaps even worse than linear ways

[00:12:02] of growing.

[00:12:03] I’ll give you an example of this.

[00:12:05] If you believe that losing a couple of hours of sleep is worth it so you can get a few

[00:12:11] more tasks completed, this is linear or perhaps worse than linear growth.

[00:12:18] Because by robbing your body of sleep, not only are you losing out on a compound benefit,

[00:12:27] you’re harming your health and you’re also likely to perform those tasks poorly.

[00:12:33] This isn’t necessarily intuitive.

[00:12:34] We view sleep as something that we do only when we’re tired, when we’re too tired to

[00:12:40] continue.

[00:12:41] We don’t view sleep as an investment naturally.

[00:12:46] This is certainly a cultural thing.

[00:12:48] Perhaps there are cultures, there are people who are listening to this who absolutely prioritize

[00:12:52] your sleep and I applaud you for that.

[00:12:55] But we have to start understanding our decisions, not just in terms of their immediate effects,

[00:13:01] but in terms of their longer tail effects.

[00:13:05] This plays right into the other mental model that we’re going to talk about today.

[00:13:10] First I want to talk about today’s awesome sponsor, Clubhouse.

[00:13:13] If you’re like me, you’ve used a lot of project management tools over your career as a developer.

[00:13:20] Many of these tools, they go halfway, they do a little bit, but then they miss out on

[00:13:26] things that I really do care about as a software developer.

[00:13:30] For example, I care that everyone on the team can easily see what’s going on and that we

[00:13:36] can visualize this work.

[00:13:39] I also prefer a Kanban style of working, having limited work in progress, being able to use

[00:13:48] the information that I have from past work to predict how I’ll perform on future work.

[00:13:53] These are all things that I personally care about.

[00:13:56] I also needed to work with all of my existing tools.

[00:13:59] I use things like Slack and GitHub and all of this stuff is actually met by Clubhouse.

[00:14:06] Clubhouse is used by companies like Elastic, Deloitte, Wistia, there’s a long list of clients

[00:14:14] that use Clubhouse and that’s because Clubhouse has figured out the balance between simplicity

[00:14:21] and structure for better cross-functional collaboration.

[00:14:25] Listeners of Developer T can sign up for two free months of Clubhouse by visiting clubhouse.io

[00:14:32] slash developer T.

[00:14:34] That’s all one word, clubhouse.io slash developer T.

[00:14:38] And here’s the thing, you already get two weeks of a free trial, but you’ll get to use Clubhouse

[00:14:45] for free for two months beyond that.

[00:14:47] Go and check it out, clubhouse.io slash developer T.

[00:14:51] Thank you again to Clubhouse for sponsoring today’s episode of Developer T.

[00:14:56] So we’re talking about mental models today, we’ve already talked about compound interest

[00:15:00] and how we can think about ways to improve our existing use of time, use of money, use

[00:15:08] of resources, whatever decisions that you’re making, making decisions that help you grow

[00:15:14] exponentially and avoiding decisions that either hurt your growth, which would be growing

[00:15:22] at a sub-linear rate, or they only linearly improve you, instead focusing on high growth

[00:15:33] and focusing on that compound interest in improvement.

[00:15:37] But to make those kinds of decisions, you have to be able to kind of look past whatever

[00:15:42] is happening initially, right?

[00:15:43] We talked about losing sleep and that seems like a rational decision if you’re just trying

[00:15:49] to meet a deadline, right?

[00:15:51] The problem is that it’s not really a good decision for the next day and it’s not good

[00:15:58] for you in the long term for a lot of reasons.

[00:16:02] For example, if you set up the expectation that you’re willing to work late into the

[00:16:07] night on a regular basis, you’ve now created an expectation in others or in yourself, perhaps

[00:16:14] even unintentionally an expectation that’s unhealthy for you for the reasons that we

[00:16:19] mentioned before.

[00:16:22] We can also think about the longer term effects on your health and the effects that this will

[00:16:27] have on the quality of work over time.

[00:16:31] Things begin to degrade, but maybe it doesn’t happen right away.

[00:16:36] To be able to make decisions that provide for you a compounding interest, a positive

[00:16:43] compounding interest, you need to be able to see beyond the first layer.

[00:16:48] You need to be able to see not just the effect that this will have immediately, but the second

[00:16:53] and the third and the fourth order effects that this has down the road and beyond yourself

[00:17:01] to your family, to your coworkers, to your community, to the world.

[00:17:07] Second order, third order, fourth order thinking is critical to long term success.

[00:17:15] Second order and third order thinking start with questions like, and then what?

[00:17:21] It also starts with questions like, why?

[00:17:24] And then following up with another why.

[00:17:27] Sometimes these questions are hard to answer.

[00:17:30] Sometimes they’re impossible to answer.

[00:17:32] Sometimes we have to answer them with, well, maybe this will happen and maybe it won’t.

[00:17:38] Maybe one of these three things is going to happen.

[00:17:41] And I think that number two will happen because I have good evidence to think that something

[00:17:47] like this will happen.

[00:17:50] So this kind of thinking provides you with a way of making decisions that cascade rather

[00:17:57] than short term instantaneous decisions.

[00:18:02] A lot of the time, even when we’re trying to make good decisions for ourselves, even

[00:18:07] when we’re trying to make conscious and healthy decisions, we still make decisions that if

[00:18:14] we had thought about or had known the second order, third order or fourth order effects

[00:18:19] of those decisions, we wouldn’t have made them.

[00:18:23] I’ll give you a very simple example for myself.

[00:18:26] Recently I lost a few weeks of being in the gym because I was sick.

[00:18:32] And when I returned to the gym, I, against my better judgment now, I loaded up the weight

[00:18:39] rack a little bit too much.

[00:18:42] So I ended up being sore in my back, being tweaked a little bit and not being able to

[00:18:47] really work out for another couple of days because I wanted to jump back in too quickly.

[00:18:53] I took on more than I could handle.

[00:18:55] Had I weighed the risks and the benefits and thought about the second order effects, instead

[00:19:01] of thinking, well, I want to jump back in with full force and I want to feel accomplished

[00:19:07] in this workout.

[00:19:08] Instead, if I had thought actually what I want is to reinstate my good habits, my healthy

[00:19:14] habits of exercise, then I may have loaded the weight rack a little bit lighter.

[00:19:21] It wasn’t that I was making poor decisions for my health in a unconscious way.

[00:19:28] It’s that I wasn’t thinking further than today with my conscious decisions.

[00:19:35] So those are two mental models, lenses for seeing the world, ways of thinking that can

[00:19:40] totally change the way you make decisions.

[00:19:43] The first one, compounding interest, both of your time and of your money.

[00:19:48] The second one is second order, third order, fourth order thinking.

[00:19:53] I hope you enjoyed today’s episode and I hope that you find immediate value.

[00:19:57] Perhaps you see your task list a little bit differently today or you start to see your

[00:20:03] opportunities a little bit differently.

[00:20:06] In any case, I’d love to hear more from you about how this episode and other episodes

[00:20:10] of Developer Tea are affecting your life and your career.

[00:20:13] You can always send me messages at developertea at gmail.com.

[00:20:18] If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, then I encourage you to subscribe and whatever podcasting

[00:20:22] app you use, we’re going to be talking about mental models on the next episode of Developer

[00:20:26] Tea and we will be talking about this kind of stuff well into the future.

[00:20:31] We release three episodes a week, so it’s very important that you subscribe if you want

[00:20:36] to miss out on those episodes.

[00:20:37] Thank you again to Clubhouse for sponsoring today’s episode.

[00:20:41] You get two months for free by heading over to clubhouse.io slash developer tea.

[00:20:47] That’s all one word clubhouse.io slash developer tea.

[00:20:50] Thanks so much for listening and until next time, enjoy your tea.

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