Damn you, self-help books. Why do I always think the next one will be worth my time?

When I heard Gabriel Weinberg speaking on The Knowledge Project podcast, I was quite excited. The guy was obviously smart and our mindsets seemed to resonate on the same frequency. Apart from the dickish title, Super Thinking promised to be an interesting book. Unfortunately it did not manage to deliver what it promised. Even though it is not a complete failure, it still felt like a complete waste of time.

The central role in the book is occupied by the concept of mental models. As lofty as the term sounds, mental models are partly principles to keep in mind when making judgments, partly methods that simplify complex issues into something people can solve. This sounds good and for somebody who has never read a book in their life, Super Thinking may be full of revelations. For me it offered nearly nothing new.

Weinberg and McCann present their most useful advice when they take ideas from software development and generalize these into an everyday life. Being aware of risks of premature optimization (going into details when the concept is not fixed yet) or usefulness of a minimum viable product (building only what you need to test the core functionality) is certainly a good thing. Some of the models are also useful to gain a better understanding of the world (fundamental attribution error, just world hypothesis, tyranny of small decisions). But in all cases this is hardly new stuff.

Worse is when the authors spend pages and pages on topics like decision trees, cost and benefit analysis or various probability distributions. These are not well connected to the rest of the book, and were also explained much better at other places. Even my university teachers were clearer while talking about these topics, despite their attempts to make everything seem complicated. As a result Super Thinking feels like a wordy copy of an MBA course guide.

Lastly, there is something odd with the pace of the book. At the beginning, the authors run across dozens of mental models in a very high pace, sometimes with one paragraph for each. Later in the book, they delve deep into some of the models. But the models that got more attention are not any more important than those which were only briefly mentioned. There isn't much structure to the book either, so apart from some distinct chapters (aforementioned probability distributions for example), I hardly saw a reason for the book to have any chapters at all.

Despite the above, Super Thinking is not a bad book. It's full of useful advice, but it's only useful if the concepts are new to you. I do not consider myself to be well-read, yet I kept stumbling upon topic after topic which I knew very well already. And so I wonder who is this book for. If you read similar literature regularly, you already know it all. If not, it may give you a good overview, but you may as well use the time to read something deeper instead. ( )

A great book to help you understand different strategies or mental models to quickly understand, organize and act upon information. It covers relevant models to help with problem solving, making decisions, working with others, planning for the future, managing your time and understanding data - in an easy to follow, often humorous and applicable way.
I would definitely recommend to anyone interested in learning and elevating their thinking.

( )

Being able to spot mental models / biases in the wild used to be a thing I enjoyed a few years ago so I knew I'd probably enjoy a "glossary" of them stitched together. This was that and more though. Gabriel also brings up a lot of useful tools to use in increasing your rational thinking prowess.

I think this book is a nice introduction into the world of meta-cognition and especially useful for a beginner entrepreneur, even if only to get acquainted with the various terminology she might encounter in the VC jungle.
( )