These recurring concepts are called mental models. Once you are familiar with them, you can use them to quickly create a mental picture of a situation, which becomes a model that you can later apply in similar situations.

In spite of their usefulness, most of these concepts are not universally taught in school, even at the university level.

the bulk of them we learned on our own through reading, conversations, and experience.

Though we discuss a wide array of topics, we often find common threads—recurring concepts that help us explain, predict, or approach these seemingly disparate subjects

As the saying goes, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” If you can identify a mental model that applies to the situation in front of you, then you immediately know a lot about it.