The PR BlogCreativityCognitive PerformanceImage Streaming—Unleash Your Inner Genius

Image Streaming — Unleash Your Inner Genius

How I unlocked my inner genius using a mental technique.

Cover photo: @jerrysilfwer

Image stream­ing increased my cre­ativ­ity and unlocked my inner genius.

You might be strug­gling, as I was, to come up with new ideas for your business.

You might have tried many dif­fer­ent tech­niques, but none of them works.

In this art­icle, I will detail exactly how you can use image stream­ing to unlock your inner geni­us and become more creative.

Here we go:

There Are No Bad Ideas”

I’m told I was a cre­at­ive child, but I lost that flair grow­ing up.

My lack of cre­at­ive ideas became a prob­lem at the begin­ning of my pub­lic rela­tions career. I feared being invited to brain­storm­ing sessions.

During brain­storms, I would sit there, quiet and unable to devel­op good ideas. Only rarely would I be able to pro­duce a single idea worthy of fur­ther consideration.

At first, I bar­gained with myself. One doesn’t need cre­ativ­ity for creativity’s sake, I argued. 

I can rely on my stra­tegic mind instead,” I thought.

Big Ideas Gave Better Results

One cli­ent wanted to raise aware­ness of their recruit­ment ser­vices. My “stra­tegic” line of think­ing stated that I should do a SWOT ana­lys­is based on data and, based on those insights, pos­i­tion the brand accord­ingly in the news media.

I would pitch stra­tegic­ally chosen con­flicts to cla­ri­fy my client’s pos­i­tion to news report­ers and edit­ors and get one, two, three, four, or five men­tions over time. 

It was always a lot of hard ground­work and patience, but it worked. And it could have worked for the recruit­ment ser­vice, too.

Despite rely­ing on this “stra­tegic mind” of mine, my best work still came from rare sparks of creativity.

On a rare whim, I wanted to do some­thing dif­fer­ent for the recruit­ment ser­vice. I wanted to know if job applic­ants lied on their resumes. This had noth­ing to do with the brand’s pos­i­tion — I was just curious.

I reckoned that most people lie on their resumes. But no one talked about it.

We decided that it was a fun idea, and in typ­ic­al PR fash­ion, we com­mis­sioned a survey:

It turned out that 4 in 5 would hap­pily admit to hav­ing lied on their resume. And this stat­ist­ic made the news — big time.

A flash of cre­ativ­ity yiel­ded bet­ter and more instant­an­eous res­ults than my typ­ic­al stra­tegic process.

Also, the cre­at­ive out­comes deman­ded more praise from both cli­ent and employ­er than my sys­tem­at­ic and meth­od­ic­al grind. 

One Is Better Than Zero

To con­cen­trate on get­ting bet­ter PR ideas, I stopped listen­ing to what my col­leagues were say­ing, and after one hour of block­ing out the chat­ter, then — per­haps — I could come up with at least one usable idea.

One is bet­ter than zero, at least.

But at this point, my col­leagues had ener­get­ic­ally pro­duced numer­ous ideas. And I had just been sit­ting there. Quietly. The whole thing was depress­ing and humiliating.

Solving prob­lems using a stra­tegic pro­cess was func­tion­al and, com­bined with the grind, kept me afloat at the agency.

But, I had to become more cre­at­ive. But how?

The Goal: Understand Creativity

I took the only path I knew to take: I devised a stra­tegic pro­cess to solve the prob­lem. I researched inform­a­tion, and I developed a test­able hypothesis. 

My first insight was that there are people who con­stantly pro­duce big ideas. But how? I wanted to know precisely.

I quickly real­ised that people who came up with big ideas also had ter­rible ideas. It seemed more pro­duct­ive to focus on gen­er­at­ing lots of ideas rather than try­ing only to have good ones pop up in your brain.

This might be intu­it­ive for most cre­at­ives, but this prin­ciple was news to me:

If you gen­er­ate 100 ideas, at least one will be help­ful. If you gen­er­ate 1,000 ideas, at least one will be significant.

I might have lost my cre­ativ­ity at a young age, but I under­stood statistics:

I needed to learn how to have more ideas before learn­ing how to have big ideas. But how do you pro­duce many cre­at­ive ideas when you struggle to cre­ate a single one?

Quantity Comes Before Quality

My obser­va­tion was that cre­at­ive people are intu­it­ive and often highly visu­al. They seemed to be able to turn off parts of their brains tasked with logic and lin­ear think­ing and instead “see” dif­fer­ent ideas pop up.

Big idea cre­at­ives seemed to be able to go with a flow of sub­con­scious visu­al­isa­tion more freely than oth­ers as if they knew how to trust and sur­render to their instincts. 

I kept read­ing to find sci­entif­ic explan­a­tions for these char­ac­ter­ist­ics. Finding such answers proved more fas­cin­at­ing than I thought:

Our minds were nat­ur­ally visu­al before we developed human lan­guage and inner dia­logue. Without lan­guage, they had to be. 

Many of us use inner dia­logue to reas­on, a lin­ear pro­cess. Linear think­ing has mer­it, but we might also be squelch­ing visu­al notions.

I read about how many geni­uses through­out his­tory have been cred­it­ing sig­ni­fic­ant break­throughs to visu­al rep­res­ent­a­tions that emerged instantly, like a flash of lightning. 

Many geni­uses were also highly pro­duct­ive, but their out­comes seemed to be based on quant­ity rather than qual­ity. This insight is sug­ges­ted to sup­port the import­ance of hav­ing many ideas as a pre­requis­ite to get­ting the res­ult of hav­ing big ideas.

Write It Down”

I also found that quite a few his­tor­ic­al geni­uses ten­ded to write things down. 

What did all of this mean?

I didn’t know how to prac­tic­ally con­vince my sub­con­scious to push more bril­liance into my con­scious mind.

And I still didn’t know how to pro­duce lots of ideas.

But I knew how to write things down!

When research­ing lit­er­at­ure on beha­viour psy­cho­logy, a par­tic­u­lar theme seemed to be recurring:

For any beha­viour, you get more of what you reinforce.

What if writ­ing things down is more than just a quant­it­at­ive effort?
What if writ­ing ideas down rein­forces a steady stream of ideas?

I decided to take a quant­it­at­ive approach to note-taking.

I pushed myself to write down ten ideas per day for three months. At first, it took a lot of effort and time. But at the end of three months, I could jot down 20 ideas in as many minutes — with little effort. Most of them were rub­bish, but still. 20 ideas in 20 minutes!

I was amazed. 

All those scrib­blings, note­books, and ideas. Reinforcement works!

Reinforcement learn­ing the­ory sug­gests that reward pos­it­iv­ity dimin­ishes or dis­ap­pears in the absence of action, high­light­ing the key role of agency in pro­du­cing learn­ing sig­nals.”
Source: Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 1Hassall, C., Hajcak, G., & Krigolson, O. (2019). The import­ance of agency in human reward pro­cessing. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 1 – 9. … Continue read­ing

Good stuff, yes.
Complicated ter­rit­ory? Indeed.

Neuroplasticity and Reinforcement

At this time, there wasn’t much lit­er­at­ure on the top­ic. However, the emer­ging evid­ence for neuro­plas­ti­city seemed promising. 

Neuroplasticity research shows that the brain can grow under favor­able cir­cum­stances, poten­tially affect­ing intel­li­gence.”
Source: Journal of the Indian Medical Association 2Chakraborty, R., Chatterjee, A., Choudhary, S., & Chakraborty, P. (2007). Neuroplasticity – a paradigm shift in neur­os­ciences. Journal of the Indian Medical Association, 105 9, 513 – 4, 516 – 8, 520 – 1

Neuroplasticity can respond to stim­uli by reor­gan­iz­ing its struc­ture, func­tion, and con­nec­tions, and prom­ising ther­apies like brain stim­u­la­tion and neuro­phar­ma­co­lo­gic­al inter­ven­tions may enhance train­ing-induced cog­nit­ive and motor learn­ing.”
Source: Brain 3Cramer, S., Sur, M., Dobkin, B., O’Brien, C., Sanger, T., Trojanowski, J., Rumsey, J., Hicks, R., Cameron, J., Chen, D., Chen, W., Cohen, L., Decharms, C., Duffy, C., Eden, G., Fetz, E., Filart, R., … Continue read­ing

Research on neuro­plas­ti­city stated that the brain could wire and rewire itself based on extern­al stim­uli. It sug­gests that our brain con­stantly rein­forces and elim­in­ates neur­al pathways.

Reinforcement learn­ing is linked to neuro­plas­ti­city, as a large pro­por­tion of the brain is involved in rep­res­ent­ing and updat­ing value func­tions and using them to choose actions.”
Source: Annual review of neur­os­cience 4Lee, D., Seo, H., & Jung, M. (2012). Neural basis of rein­force­ment learn­ing and decision mak­ing. Annual review of neur­os­cience, 35,
287 – 308. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​1​4​6​/​a​n​n​u​r​e​v​-​n​e​u​r​o​-​0​6​2​111 – 150512

So, I assumed that writ­ing ideas down might rein­force neur­al path­ways help­ful in gen­er­at­ing ideas. I tried rig­or­ously writ­ing down each idea — and I got more ideas.

Now, please note that I’m not mak­ing any claims here. I under­stand the dif­fer­ence between anec­dot­al exper­i­ences and sci­entif­ic facts. I know the dif­fer­ence between cor­rel­a­tion and causality.

But I nev­er set out to estab­lish new facts. I only set out to find ways to become more cre­at­ive. If I got there by trick­ing my psy­cho­logy, it didn’t mat­ter. If it worked, it didn’t mat­ter why.

As I began per­form­ing increas­ingly bet­ter dur­ing brain­storms, my con­fid­ence grew. And con­fid­ence is likely part of the explan­a­tion, too. I kept writ­ing down my ideas, and the exper­i­ment worked fine.

But, I still felt I hadn’t under­stood the cre­at­ive pro­cess. And it was hard work writ­ing down every new idea.

I kept won­der­ing why writ­ing ideas down was essen­tial to the pro­cess. If I stopped writ­ing ideas down, my pro­gress quickly plat­eaued. I was miss­ing some­thing, I thought.

Win Wenger and Project Renaissance

Unfortunately, I could not find sci­entif­ic lit­er­at­ure on what type of beha­viours seemed to have a more sig­ni­fic­ant impact (and why) on neuro­plas­ti­city. This is where I stumbled upon Project Renaissance and the con­trari­an ideas of Win Wenger, PhD. 

Wenger had developed a hypo­thes­is that I found to be highly inter­est­ing for my line of research: he argued that neur­al path­ways were rein­forced by phys­ic­al feed­back only. Meaning: Just think­ing about things doesn’t rein­force beha­viours. Only phys­ic­al action does.

For instance: If you’re think­ing of going to the gym without actu­ally going, your brain will inter­pret this as a waste of energy.

There was an evol­u­tion­ary argu­ment for Wenger’s line of reasoning: 

Infants must learn a lot to sur­vive — quickly. However, con­ven­tion­al skill devel­op­ment and habit build­ing are too time-con­sum­ing. Infants learn differently.

The Physical Feedback Loop

In some sense, infants are born with a “fully wired brain.” This allows infants to learn rap­idly by redu­cing neur­al path­ways instead of cre­at­ing them. How does this work?

Infants show evid­ence of rule learn­ing only in the pres­ence of inform­at­ive mul­timod­al cues, which may help explain their suc­cess in learn­ing abstract rules.”
Source: Developmental sci­ence 5Frank, M., Slemmer, J., Marcus, G., & Johnson, S. (2009). Information from mul­tiple mod­al­it­ies helps 5‑month-olds learn abstract rules. Developmental sci­ence, 12 4,504−9. … Continue read­ing

Multimodal cues = These modes can include visu­al, aud­it­ory, tact­ile, ges­tur­al, and lin­guist­ic chan­nels in human interaction.

Imagine a new­born baby. How does it learn to con­trol arms and legs? The baby’s brains send mil­lions of sig­nals, some pro­du­cing a phys­ic­al response. This cre­ates a feed­back loop.

The feed­back loop informs the baby’s brain about what con­trols what. Signals that don’t res­ult in phys­ic­al feed­back and the brain’s syn­aptic struc­ture are effi­ciently chis­elled out — in theory. 

And through neuro­plas­ti­city, the phys­ic­al feed­back loop keeps affect­ing our brain structures.

Since human lan­guage and inner dia­logue entered our evol­u­tion­ary path so late, men­tal reas­on­ing still sits entirely out­side this ancient neur­al feed­back system.

The feed­back loop sug­gests that most of us might be wast­ing lots of men­tal energy on build­ing skills and habits without prop­erly rein­for­cing them physically.

Your Actions Form Your Thinking

Activity-depend­ent neuro­plas­ti­city is indu­cible by regi­mens of exer­cises and ther­apies, and mech­an­ic­al stim­u­la­tion of brain regions through thera­peut­ic hypo­ther­mia or deep brain stim­u­la­tion.”
Source: International Journal of Neuroscience 6Sasmita, A., Kuruvilla, J., & Ling, A. (2018). Harnessing neuro­plas­ti­city: mod­ern approaches and clin­ic­al future. International Journal of Neuroscience, 128, 1061 – 1077. … Continue read­ing

Here’s one way of describ­ing the potency of the phys­ic­al feed­back loop:

If you get a great idea but neg­lect to mani­fest it through a phys­ic­al act (like writ­ing it down), you send sig­nals to your brain to downs­ize those syn­aptic struc­tures to con­serve energy.

If you get great ideas and you mani­fest them phys­ic­ally, your brain will rein­force those syn­aptic struc­tures to increase your chances of sur­viv­al. If you get great ideas but neg­lect to mani­fest them phys­ic­ally, your brain will weak­en those syn­aptic struc­tures to con­serve energy.

As I was read­ing about his some­what eso­ter­ic find­ings on Wenger, he had more to say on the subject:

What if our lan­guage-driv­en inner dia­logue fails to tap into avail­able sub­con­scious resources? What if sig­ni­fic­ant reserves of ingenu­ity and cre­ativ­ity reside in us sub­con­sciously? It’s a beau­ti­ful idea, for sure.

Welcome To Crazy Town

Wenger sug­ges­ted that the sub­con­scious parts of our brains, being “ancient” from an evol­u­tion­ary per­spect­ive, might not “speak” human lan­guage. Instead, he pro­posed that these parts of our brains com­mu­nic­ate visu­ally. This is why dreams are primar­ily visu­al, for instance.

To unlock our inner ingenu­ity, we must tap into these ancient parts of our brains. We must find a way to con­di­tion our con­scious mind to visu­al­isa­tions bub­bling up from our sub­con­scious depths.

Wenger sug­ges­ted a form of med­it­a­tion, image stream­ing, which was then rein­forced using pen and paper or a tape recorder.

Okay. Welcome to crazy town, I thought.
How did you end up in this new-age space?

Still, easy enough to put to the test.

The Practice of Image Streaming

I star­ted prac­tising image stream­ing. I sit down for a few minutes, and I close my eyes. Unlike med­it­a­tion, where you prac­tice let­ting go of thoughts enter­ing your mind, you wait for visu­al­isa­tions to enter your mind.

You then stay with whatever visu­als mani­fest, examin­ing them in detail using your inner eye. Directly after­wards, you write down your observations. 

You begin by examin­ing one visu­al per ses­sion. As you get used to the prac­tice, visu­als flow more freely. They also become more vivid in col­our and detail. You can do many of them if you write them down dir­ectly afterwards.

Image stream­ing is a simple habit. You sit down, close your eyes, and relax. If you’re famil­i­ar with med­it­a­tion, that will help. Instead of let­ting thoughts pass, you pay atten­tion to any imagery that presents itself mentally.

After a short ses­sion, you describe any images you encountered as detailed as pos­sible into a tape record­er or onto a note­pad or a word pro­cessing doc­u­ment. Whatever works for you.

A Profound Personal Shift

For me, the res­ults of com­bin­ing visu­al­isa­tion with note-tak­ing have been breathtaking.

Daily, I now see the visu­als of prob­lems, solu­tions, ideas, con­cepts, com­plex­ity, pat­terns, music, texts, and people. Before I star­ted prac­tising image stream­ing, I didn’t see any­thing. I only heard my inner voice talk­ing lin­early in a lan­guage I could understand.

The dif­fer­ence is dif­fi­cult for me to explain, but the exper­i­ence of see­ing most things as visu­als instead of hear­ing them as words is profound.

It could be that image stream­ing works because I think it does. One per­son­al anec­dote doesn’t con­sti­tute evid­ence. But even if I’m wrong about the phys­ic­al feed­back loop and image-stream­ing, I’m still happy to reap the bene­fits personally. 

Still, as a the­or­et­ic­al frame­work for increas­ing cre­ativ­ity, image stream­ing is con­cep­tu­ally inter­est­ing — and fur­ther testable. 

Thinking of it, I bet­ter write this down… 


Please sup­port my blog by shar­ing it with oth­er PR- and com­mu­nic­a­tion pro­fes­sion­als. For ques­tions or PR sup­port, con­tact me via jerry@​spinfactory.​com.

More Creative Projects

My Creative Projects

I strive to keep learn­ing to enhance my cre­ativ­ity. Here are a few of my more focused projects:

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PR Resource: Mental Models

Mental Models: How To Think Better — Faster

You only have to do a few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.”
— Warren Buffett

Mental mod­els emphas­ize the import­ance of view­ing prob­lems from mul­tiple per­spect­ives, recog­niz­ing per­son­al lim­it­a­tions, and under­stand­ing the often unfore­seen inter­ac­tions between dif­fer­ent factors. 

These mod­els are inspired heav­ily by the writ­ings of Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and long-time col­lab­or­at­or of Warren Buffett and many oth­ers.7It’s worth not­ing that these mod­els are not exclus­ively Charlie Munger’s inven­tions but tools he advoc­ates for effect­ive think­ing and decision-mak­ing.

Here’s a list of my favour­ite men­tal models: 

The Iron Prescription—This men­tal mod­el sug­gests that some­times, the most chal­len­ging actions or decisions yield the best long-term res­ults. Sticking to a tough workout involves push­ing through dif­fi­culties and res­ist­ance to achieve great­er rewards. It’s about dis­cip­line, per­sever­ance, and the will­ing­ness to under­take hard tasks for future gain.

The Red Queen Effect—Originating from Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking-Glass,” this meta­phor describes a situ­ation where one must con­tinu­ously adapt, evolve, and work to main­tain their pos­i­tion. It’s often used in the con­text of busi­nesses need­ing to innov­ate con­stantly to stay competitive.

Occam’s Razor—This prin­ciple sug­gests that the simplest explan­a­tion is usu­ally cor­rect. The one with the few­est assump­tions should be selec­ted when presen­ted with com­pet­ing hypo­theses. It’s a tool for cut­ting through com­plex­ity and focus­ing on what’s most likely true.

Hanlon’s Razor—This mod­el advises not to attrib­ute to malice what can be adequately explained by incom­pet­ence or mis­take. It’s a remind­er to look for sim­pler explan­a­tions before jump­ing to con­clu­sions about someone’s intentions.

Vaguely Right vs Precisely Wrong—This prin­ciple sug­gests it is bet­ter to be approx­im­ately cor­rect than exactly incor­rect. In many situ­ations, seek­ing pre­ci­sion can lead to errors if the under­ly­ing assump­tions or data are flawed. Sometimes, a rough estim­ate is more use­ful than a pre­cise but poten­tially mis­lead­ing figure.

Fat Pitch—Borrowed from base­ball, this concept refers to wait­ing patiently for the per­fect oppor­tun­ity — a situ­ation where the chances of suc­cess are excep­tion­ally high. It sug­gests the import­ance of patience and strik­ing when the time is right.

Chesterton’s Fence—A prin­ciple stat­ing that reforms should not be made until the reas­on­ing behind the exist­ing state of affairs is under­stood. It’s about respect­ing the wis­dom embed­ded in estab­lished prac­tices and con­ven­tions before mak­ing changes.

First-Conclusion Bias—This is the tend­ency to stick with the first con­clu­sion reached without con­sid­er­ing altern­at­ive pos­sib­il­it­ies or addi­tion­al inform­a­tion. It’s a cog­nit­ive bias that can impede crit­ic­al think­ing and thor­ough analysis.

First Principles Thinking—This approach involves break­ing down com­plex prob­lems into their most basic ele­ments and then reas­sembling them from the ground up. It’s about get­ting to the fun­da­ment­al truths of a situ­ation and build­ing your under­stand­ing from there rather than rely­ing on assump­tions or con­ven­tion­al wisdom.

The Map Is Not the Territory—This mod­el reminds us that rep­res­ent­a­tions of real­ity are not real­ity itself. Maps, mod­els, and descrip­tions are sim­pli­fic­a­tions and can­not cap­ture every aspect of the actu­al ter­rit­ory or situ­ation. It’s a cau­tion against over-rely­ing on mod­els and the­or­ies without con­sid­er­ing the nuances of real-world situ­ations. 8Silfwer, J. (2022, November 3). Walter Lippmann: Public Opinion and Perception Management. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​w​a​l​t​e​r​-​l​i​p​p​m​a​nn/

Bell Curve—This curve is a graph­ic­al depic­tion of a nor­mal dis­tri­bu­tion, show­ing how many occur­rences fall near the mean value and few­er occur as you move away from the mean. In decision-mak­ing, it’s used to under­stand and anti­cip­ate vari­ab­il­ity and to recog­nize that while extreme cases exist, most out­comes will cluster around the average.

Compounding—Often used in the con­text of fin­ance, com­pound­ing refers to the pro­cess where the value of an invest­ment increases because the earn­ings on an invest­ment, both cap­it­al gains and interest, earn interest as time passes. This prin­ciple can be applied more broadly to under­stand how small, con­sist­ent efforts can yield sig­ni­fic­ant long-term results.

Survival of the Fittest—Borrowed from evol­u­tion­ary bio­logy, this men­tal mod­el sug­gests that only those best adap­ted to their envir­on­ment sur­vive and thrive. In a busi­ness con­text, it can refer to com­pan­ies that adapt to chan­ging mar­ket con­di­tions and are more likely to succeed.

Mr. Market—A meta­phor cre­ated by Benjamin Graham, rep­res­ent­ing the stock mar­ket’s mood swings from optim­ism to pess­im­ism. It’s used to illus­trate emo­tion­al reac­tions in the mar­ket and the import­ance of main­tain­ing objectivity.

Second-Order Thinking—This kind of think­ing goes bey­ond the imme­di­ate effects of an action to con­sider the sub­sequent effects. It’s about think­ing ahead and under­stand­ing the longer-term con­sequences of decisions bey­ond just the imme­di­ate results.

Law of Diminishing Returns—This eco­nom­ic prin­ciple states that as invest­ment in a par­tic­u­lar area increases, the rate of profit from that invest­ment, after a cer­tain point, can­not increase pro­por­tion­ally and may even decrease. It’s import­ant to under­stand when addi­tion­al invest­ment yields pro­gress­ively smal­ler returns.

Opportunity Cost—This concept refers to the poten­tial bene­fits that one misses out on when choos­ing one altern­at­ive over anoth­er. It’s the cost of the next best option fore­gone. Understanding oppor­tun­ity costs helps make informed decisions by con­sid­er­ing what you must give up when choosing.

Swiss Army Knife Approach—This concept emphas­izes the import­ance of hav­ing diverse tools (or skills). Being ver­sat­ile and adapt­able in vari­ous situ­ations is valu­able, like a Swiss Army knife. This mod­el is par­tic­u­larly use­ful for uncer­tain and volat­ile situations.

Acceleration Theory—This concept indic­ates that the win­ner mustn’t lead the race from start to fin­ish. Mathematically, delay­ing max­im­um “speed” by pro­long­ing the slower accel­er­a­tion phase cor­rectly will get you across the fin­ish line faster. 9Silfwer, J. (2012, October 31). The Acceleration Theory: Use Momentum To Finish First. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​a​c​c​e​l​e​r​a​t​i​o​n​-​t​h​e​o​ry/

Manage Expectations—This concept involves set­ting real­ist­ic expect­a­tions for your­self and oth­ers. It’s about align­ing hopes and pre­dic­tions with what is achiev­able and prob­able, thus redu­cing dis­ap­point­ment and increas­ing sat­is­fac­tion. Effective expect­a­tion man­age­ment can lead to bet­ter per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ships and outcomes.

Techlash—This men­tal mod­el acknow­ledges that while tech­no­logy can provide solu­tions, it can cre­ate anti­cip­ated and unanti­cip­ated prob­lems. It’s a remind­er to approach tech­no­lo­gic­al innov­a­tions cau­tiously, con­sid­er­ing poten­tial neg­at­ive impacts along­side the benefits.

World’s Most Intelligent Question—This men­tal mod­el refers to repeatedly ask­ing “Why?” to delve deep­er into a prob­lem and under­stand its root causes. One can uncov­er lay­ers of under­stand­ing that might remain hid­den by con­tinu­ally ask­ing why some­thing happens.

Regression to the Mean—This stat­ist­ic­al prin­ciple states that extreme events are likely to be fol­lowed by more mod­er­ate ones. Over time, val­ues tend to revert to the aver­age, a concept rel­ev­ant in many areas, from sports per­form­ance to busi­ness metrics.

False Dichotomy—This logic­al fal­lacy occurs when a situ­ation is presen­ted as hav­ing only two exclus­ive and mutu­ally exhaust­ive options when oth­er pos­sib­il­it­ies exist. It over­sim­pli­fies com­plex issues into an “either/​or” choice. For instance, say­ing, “You are either with us or against us”, ignores the pos­sib­il­ity of neut­ral or altern­at­ive positions.

Inversion—Inversion involves look­ing at prob­lems back­wards or from the end goal. Instead of think­ing about how to achieve some­thing, you con­sider what would pre­vent it from hap­pen­ing. This can reveal hid­den obstacles and altern­at­ive solutions.

Psychology of Human Misjudgment—This men­tal mod­el refers to under­stand­ing the com­mon biases and errors in human think­ing. One can make more ration­al and object­ive decisions by know­ing how cog­nit­ive biases, like con­firm­a­tion bias or the anchor­ing effect, can lead to flawed reasoning.

Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast—Often used in mil­it­ary and tac­tic­al train­ing, this phrase encap­su­lates the idea that some­times, slow­ing down can lead to faster over­all pro­gress. The prin­ciple is that tak­ing delib­er­ate, con­sidered actions reduces mis­takes and inef­fi­cien­cies, which can lead to faster out­comes in the long run. In prac­tice, it means plan­ning, train­ing, and execut­ing with care, lead­ing to smooth­er, more effi­cient oper­a­tions that achieve object­ives faster than rushed, less thought­ful efforts. 10Silfwer, J. (2020, April 24). Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​s​l​o​w​-​i​s​-​s​m​o​o​th/

Because You Are Worth It—This men­tal mod­el focuses on self-worth and invest­ing in one­self. It sug­gests recog­niz­ing and affirm­ing one’s value is cru­cial for per­son­al growth, hap­pi­ness, and suc­cess. This can involve self-care, edu­ca­tion, or simply mak­ing choices that reflect one’s own value and potential.

Physics Envy—This term describes the desire to apply the pre­ci­sion and cer­tainty of phys­ics to fields where such exactitude is impossible, like eco­nom­ics or social sci­ences. It’s a cau­tion against over­re­li­ance on quant­it­at­ive meth­ods in areas where qual­it­at­ive aspects play a sig­ni­fic­ant role.

Easy Street Strategy—This prin­ciple sug­gests that sim­pler solu­tions are often bet­ter and more effect­ive than com­plex ones. In decision-mak­ing and prob­lem-solv­ing, seek­ing straight­for­ward, clear-cut solu­tions can often lead to bet­ter out­comes than pur­su­ing overly com­plic­ated strategies. 11Silfwer, J. (2021, January 27). The Easy Street PR Strategy: Keep It Simple To Win. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​e​a​s​y​-​s​t​r​e​e​t​-​p​r​-​s​t​r​a​t​e​gy/

Scale is Key—This concept high­lights how the impact of decisions or actions can vary dra­mat­ic­ally depend­ing on their scale. What works well on a small scale might not be effect­ive or feas­ible on a lar­ger scale, and vice versa. 

Circle of Competence—This concept involves recog­niz­ing and under­stand­ing one’s own areas of expert­ise and lim­it­a­tions. The idea is to focus on areas where you have the most know­ledge and exper­i­ence rather than ven­tur­ing into fields where you lack expert­ise, thereby increas­ing the like­li­hood of success.

Fail Fast, Fail Often—By fail­ing fast, you quickly learn what does­n’t work, which helps in refin­ing your approach or pivot­ing to some­thing more prom­ising. Failing often is seen not as a series of set­backs but as a neces­sary part of the pro­cess towards suc­cess. This mind­set encour­ages exper­i­ment­a­tion, risk-tak­ing, and learn­ing from mis­takes, emphas­ising agil­ity and adaptability.

Correlation Do Not Equal Causation—This prin­ciple is a crit­ic­al remind­er in data ana­lys­is and sci­entif­ic research. Just because two vari­ables show a cor­rel­a­tion (they seem to move togeth­er or oppose each oth­er) does not mean one causes the oth­er. Other vari­ables could be at play, or it might be a coincidence. 

Critical Mass—This men­tal mod­el emphas­izes the import­ance of reach­ing a cer­tain threshold to trig­ger a sig­ni­fic­ant change, wheth­er user adop­tion, mar­ket pen­et­ra­tion, or social move­ment growth. This mod­el guides stra­tegic decisions, such as resource alloc­a­tion, mar­ket­ing strategies, and tim­ing of ini­ti­at­ives, to effect­ively reach and sur­pass this cru­cial point. 12Silfwer, J. (2019, March 10). Critical Mass: How Many Social Media Followers Do You Need? Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​c​r​i​t​i​c​a​l​-​m​a​s​s​-​f​o​l​l​o​w​e​rs/

Sorites Paradox—Also known as the para­dox of the heap, this para­dox arises from vague pre­dic­ates. It involves a sequence of small changes that don’t seem to make a dif­fer­ence indi­vidu­ally but, when accu­mu­lated, lead to a sig­ni­fic­ant change where the exact point of change is indis­cern­ible. For example, if you keep remov­ing grains of sand from a heap, when does it stop being a heap? Each grain does­n’t seem to make a dif­fer­ence, but even­tu­ally, you’re left with no heap.

The Power of Cycle Times—Mathematically, redu­cing cycle times in a pro­cess that grows expo­nen­tially (like con­tent shar­ing on social net­works) drastic­ally increases the growth rate, lead­ing to faster and wider dis­sem­in­a­tion of the con­tent, thereby driv­ing vir­al­ity. The com­bin­a­tion of expo­nen­tial growth, net­work effects, and feed­back loops makes cycle time a crit­ic­al factor. 13Let’s say the num­ber of new social media shares per cycle is a con­stant mul­ti­pli­er, m. If the cycle time is t and the total time under con­sid­er­a­tion is T, the num­ber of cycles in this time is T/​t​. … Continue read­ing 14Silfwer, J. (2017, February 6). Viral Loops (or How to Incentivise Social Media Sharing). Doctor Spin | the PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​v​i​r​a​l​-​l​o​op/

Non-Linearity—This men­tal mod­el recog­nises that out­comes in many situ­ations are not dir­ectly pro­por­tion­al to the inputs or efforts. It sug­gests that effects can be dis­pro­por­tion­ate to their causes, either escal­at­ing rap­idly with small changes or remain­ing stag­nant des­pite sig­ni­fic­ant efforts. Understanding non-lin­ear­ity helps in recog­niz­ing and anti­cip­at­ing com­plex pat­terns in vari­ous phenomena.

Checklists—This men­tal mod­el stresses the import­ance of sys­tem­at­ic approaches to pre­vent mis­takes and over­sights. Using check­lists in com­plex or repet­it­ive tasks ensures that all neces­sary steps are fol­lowed, and noth­ing is over­looked, thereby increas­ing effi­ciency and accuracy.

Lollapalooza—Coined by Munger, this term refers to situ­ations where mul­tiple factors, tend­en­cies, or biases inter­act so that the com­bined effect is much great­er than the sum of indi­vidu­al effects. It’s a remind­er of how vari­ous ele­ments can con­verge to cre­ate sig­ni­fic­ant impacts, often unex­pec­ted or unprecedented.

Limits—This men­tal mod­el acknow­ledges that everything has bound­ar­ies or lim­its, bey­ond which there can be neg­at­ive con­sequences. Recognizing and respect­ing per­son­al, pro­fes­sion­al, and phys­ic­al lim­its is essen­tial for sus­tain­able growth and success.

The 5Ws—This men­tal mod­el refers to the prac­tice of ask­ing “Who, What, When, Where, Why” (and some­times “How”) to under­stand a situ­ation or prob­lem fully. By sys­tem­at­ic­ally address­ing these ques­tions, one can com­pre­hens­ively under­stand an issue’s con­text, causes, and poten­tial solu­tions, lead­ing to more informed decision-making.

Chauffeur Knowledge—This men­tal mod­el dis­tin­guishes between hav­ing a sur­face-level under­stand­ing (like a chauf­feur who knows the route) and deep, genu­ine know­ledge (like an expert who under­stands the intric­a­cies of a sub­ject). It warns against the illu­sion of expert­ise based on super­fi­cial know­ledge and emphas­izes the import­ance of true, deep understanding.

Make Friends with Eminent Dead—This men­tal mod­el advoc­ates learn­ing from the past, par­tic­u­larly from sig­ni­fic­ant his­tor­ic­al fig­ures and their writ­ings. One can gain valu­able insights and wis­dom by study­ing the exper­i­ences and thoughts of those who have excelled in their fields.

Seizing the Middle—This strategy involves find­ing and main­tain­ing a bal­anced, mod­er­ate pos­i­tion, espe­cially in con­flict or nego­ti­ation. It’s about avoid­ing extremes and find­ing a sus­tain­able, middle-ground solu­tion. Also, centre pos­i­tions often offer the widest range of options.

Asymmetric Warfare—This refers to con­flict between parties of unequal strength, where the weak­er party uses uncon­ven­tion­al tac­tics to exploit the vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies of the stronger oppon­ent. It’s often dis­cussed in mil­it­ary and busi­ness contexts.

Boredom Syndrome—This term refers to the human tend­ency to seek stim­u­la­tion or change when things become routine or mono­ton­ous, which can lead to unne­ces­sary changes or risks. Sometimes, tak­ing no action is bet­ter than tak­ing action, but remain­ing idle is some­times difficult.

Survivorship Bias—This cog­nit­ive bias involves focus­ing on people or things that have “sur­vived” some pro­cess and inad­vert­ently over­look­ing those that did not due to their lack of vis­ib­il­ity. This can lead to false con­clu­sions because it ignores the exper­i­ences of those who did not make it through the pro­cess. 15Silfwer, J. (2019, October 17). Survivorship Bias — Correlation Does Not Equal Causation. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​s​u​r​v​i​v​o​r​s​h​i​p​-​b​i​as/

Each men­tal mod­el offers a unique lens for view­ing prob­lems, mak­ing decisions, and strategiz­ing, reflect­ing the com­plex­ity and diversity of thought required in vari­ous fields and situations.

In addi­tion, numer­ous oth­er men­tal mod­els are used in vari­ous fields, such as eco­nom­ics, psy­cho­logy, and sys­tems thinking.

Learn more: Mental Models: How To Think Better — And Faster

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ANNOTATIONS
ANNOTATIONS
1 Hassall, C., Hajcak, G., & Krigolson, O. (2019). The import­ance of agency in human reward pro­cessing. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 1 – 9. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​3​7​5​8​/​s​1​3​4​1​5​-​019 – 00730‑2
2 Chakraborty, R., Chatterjee, A., Choudhary, S., & Chakraborty, P. (2007). Neuroplasticity – a paradigm shift in neur­os­ciences. Journal of the Indian Medical Association, 105 9, 513 – 4, 516 – 8, 520 – 1
3 Cramer, S., Sur, M., Dobkin, B., O’Brien, C., Sanger, T., Trojanowski, J., Rumsey, J., Hicks, R., Cameron, J., Chen, D., Chen, W., Cohen, L., Decharms, C., Duffy, C., Eden, G., Fetz, E., Filart, R., Freund, M., Grant, S., Haber, S., Kalivas, P., Kolb, B., Kramer, A., Lynch, M., Mayberg, H., McQuillen, P., Nitkin, R., Pascual-Leone, Á., Reuter-Lorenz, P., Schiff, N., Sharma, A., Shekim, L., Stryker, M., Sullivan, E., & Vinogradov, S. (2011). Harnessing neuro­plas­ti­city for clin­ic­al applic­a­tions. Brain, 134, 1591 – 1609. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​9​3​/​b​r​a​i​n​/​a​w​r​039
4 Lee, D., Seo, H., & Jung, M. (2012). Neural basis of rein­force­ment learn­ing and decision mak­ing. Annual review of neur­os­cience, 35,
287 – 308. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​1​4​6​/​a​n​n​u​r​e​v​-​n​e​u​r​o​-​0​6​2​111 – 150512
5 Frank, M., Slemmer, J., Marcus, G., & Johnson, S. (2009). Information from mul­tiple mod­al­it­ies helps 5‑month-olds learn abstract rules. Developmental sci­ence, 12 4,
504 – 9. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​1​1​1​/​j​.​1​467 – 7687.2008.00794.x
6 Sasmita, A., Kuruvilla, J., & Ling, A. (2018). Harnessing neuro­plas­ti­city: mod­ern approaches and clin­ic­al future. International Journal of Neuroscience, 128, 1061 – 1077. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​8​0​/​0​0​2​0​7​4​5​4​.​2​0​1​8​.​1​4​6​6​781
7 It’s worth not­ing that these mod­els are not exclus­ively Charlie Munger’s inven­tions but tools he advoc­ates for effect­ive think­ing and decision-making.
8 Silfwer, J. (2022, November 3). Walter Lippmann: Public Opinion and Perception Management. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​w​a​l​t​e​r​-​l​i​p​p​m​a​nn/
9 Silfwer, J. (2012, October 31). The Acceleration Theory: Use Momentum To Finish First. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​a​c​c​e​l​e​r​a​t​i​o​n​-​t​h​e​o​ry/
10 Silfwer, J. (2020, April 24). Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​s​l​o​w​-​i​s​-​s​m​o​o​th/
11 Silfwer, J. (2021, January 27). The Easy Street PR Strategy: Keep It Simple To Win. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​e​a​s​y​-​s​t​r​e​e​t​-​p​r​-​s​t​r​a​t​e​gy/
12 Silfwer, J. (2019, March 10). Critical Mass: How Many Social Media Followers Do You Need? Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​c​r​i​t​i​c​a​l​-​m​a​s​s​-​f​o​l​l​o​w​e​rs/
13 Let’s say the num­ber of new social media shares per cycle is a con­stant mul­ti­pli­er, m. If the cycle time is t and the total time under con­sid­er­a­tion is T, the num­ber of cycles in this time is T/​t​. The total reach after time T can be approx­im­ated by m(T/​t), assum­ing one ini­tial share. When t decreases, T/​t​ increases, mean­ing more cycles occur in the same total time, T. This leads to a high­er power of m in the expres­sion m(T/​t), which means a sig­ni­fic­antly lar­ger reach.
14 Silfwer, J. (2017, February 6). Viral Loops (or How to Incentivise Social Media Sharing). Doctor Spin | the PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​v​i​r​a​l​-​l​o​op/
15 Silfwer, J. (2019, October 17). Survivorship Bias — Correlation Does Not Equal Causation. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​s​u​r​v​i​v​o​r​s​h​i​p​-​b​i​as/
Jerry Silfwer
Jerry Silfwerhttps://doctorspin.net/
Jerry Silfwer, alias Doctor Spin, is an awarded senior adviser specialising in public relations and digital strategy. Currently CEO at KIX Index and Spin Factory. Before that, he worked at Kaufmann, Whispr Group, Springtime PR, and Spotlight PR. Based in Stockholm, Sweden.

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