Start here.
Models with one moving part. Read one tonight, use it on tomorrow's decision.
11 models
The Hammer and the Nail
Alfred Hitchcock set Robert Bloch’s Psycho on a Paramount executive’s desk in the summer of 1959.
Redundancy
Oren Jacob watched the files vanish. He stood in Larry Cutler’s office at Pixar’s Richmond, California campus in 1998, staring at a directory for the character Woody on his screen.
Satisficing
Isaac Asimov sat at his electric typewriter by seven-thirty each morning, a backup machine in the closet for the day the first one died.
Activation Energy
Twyla Tharp stepped out of her Manhattan apartment at 5:30 in the morning, wearing leg warmers, sweatshirts, and a hat.
Mere Exposure Effect
On February 14, 1887, forty-seven of France’s most celebrated artists published a letter of protest on the front page of Le Temps.
Peak-End Rule
On May 7, 1824, Caroline Unger turned a deaf man around.
Inversion
Christopher Nolan wrote Memento as a linear story first.
Luck Surface Area
Jean-Michel Basquiat had just killed his graffiti persona.
Four Stages of Creativity
Henri Poincaré stepped onto an omnibus at Coutances in 1880.
Eisenhower Matrix
Charles Dickens sat at his desk in Devonshire Terrace on an October evening in 1843, reading sales figures for a novel that was bleeding readers.
First Principles Thinking
Wilbur Wright stood in a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, twisting a cardboard box.