Misc

12 Ways to Get Smarter in One Infographic

Published

2 years ago

July 28, 2021

Jeff Desjardins

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12 Ways to Get Smarter in One Infographic

View the high resolution version of today’s graphic by clicking here.

The level of a person’s raw intelligence, as measured by aptitude tests such as IQ scores, is generally stable for most people during the course of their adulthood.

While it’s true that there are things you can do to fine tune your natural capabilities, such as doing brain exercises, solving puzzles, and getting optimal sleep—the amount of raw brainpower you have is difficult to increase in any meaningful or permanent way.

For those of us who constantly strive to be high-performers in our fields, this seems like bad news. If we can’t increase our processing power, then how can we solve life’s bigger problems as we move up the ladder?

The Key: Mental Models

The good news is that while raw cognitive abilities matter, it’s how you use and harness those abilities that really makes the difference.

The world’s most successful people, from Ray Dalio to Warren Buffett, are not necessarily leagues above the rest of us in raw intelligence—instead, they simply develop and learn to apply better mental models of how the world works, and they use these principles to filter their thoughts, decisions, strategies, and execution.

This infographic comes from best-selling author and entrepreneur Michael Simmons, who has collected over 650 mental models through his work. The infographic, in a similar style to one we previously published on cognitive biases, synthesizes these models down to the most useful and universal mental models that people should learn to master first.

Concepts such as the 80/20 rule (Pareto’s principle), compound interest, and network building are summarized in the visualization, and their major components are broken down further within the circle.

Mental Model Examples

Example #1: Pareto’s Principle (80/20 Rule for Prioritization)

In a recent Medium post by Simmons, he highlights a well-known mental model that is the perfect bread crumb to start with.

The 80/20 rule (Pareto’s principle) is named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who was likely the first person to note the 80/20 connection in an 1896 paper.

In short, it shows that 20% of inputs (work, time, effort) often leads to 80% of outputs (performance, sales, revenue, etc.), creating an extremely vivid mental framework for making prioritization decisions.

80-20 law Pareto's principle

The 80/20 rule represents a power law distribution that has been empirically shown to exist throughout nature, and it also has huge implications on business.

If you focus your effort on these 20% of tasks first, and get the most out of them, you will be able to drive results much more efficiently than wasting time on the 80% “long-tail” shown below.

Power law distribution

Example #2: Metcalfe’s Law (Network Building)

Metcalfe’s Law is one of network effects, stating that a network’s value is proportional to the square of the number of nodes in the network.

From a mental model perspective, this is a useful way to understand how certain types of technology-driven businesses derive value.

If you have a smart grid that is only connected to one power source, that’s alright—but one connected to many different energy sources and potential consumers is much more useful for everyone on the grid. Each additional node provides value for the rest of the connections.

Metcalfe's Law illustrated

This mental model can be applied outside of strict technology or business terms as well.

For example, if you build a personal network of connections, each additional relationship can provide more value to the other people in your network. It’s the same principle that Harvard or other prestigious universities operate on: the more value a student can get from the alumni network, the higher price they can charge for tuition.

It’s hard to compete with a fully formed network at scale, as they create massive economic moats for the owner. Modern social networks and messaging apps like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, WhatsApp, and Snapchat all operate with this in mind.

The Power of Mental Models

These are just two examples of how powerful mental models can be effective in making you think clearer and work smarter.

If you want to be a top performer, it’s worth looking into other mental models out there as well. They can help you better frame reality, so that you can harness your intelligence and effort in the most effective way possible—and it’ll allow you to deliver results along the way.

This post was first published in 2018. We have since updated it, adding in new content for 2021.

Related Topics:smart mental models brain cognitive intelligence iq

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Education

Ranked: America’s Best Universities

Evaluated on 19 different metrics, here’s the list of America’s best universities, led by 14 private schools.

Published

5 days ago

November 25, 2023

Pallavi Rao

Ranked: America’s Best Universities

The latest ranking of America’s best universities is here, perfectly timed for the approaching admissions season.

“Best” is of course subjective, and U.S. News and World Report has compiled 19 metrics on which they evaluated more than 400 national universities. Some of them include:

Graduation rates & performance: A four-year rolling average of the proportion of each entering class earning a bachelor’s degree in six years or less. Performance is measured against predictions made by the publishers, and when beaten, the university gains a higher scoring.
Peer assessment: A two-year weighted average of ratings from top academics—presidents, provosts and deans of admissions—on academic quality of peer institutions with which they are familiar.
Financial resources: The average per student spend on instruction, research, student services and related educational expenditures in the 2021 fiscal year.
Debt: A school’s average accumulated federal loan debt among borrowers only.
Pell graduation rates & performance: the same calculation as stated above, but focused only on Pell Grant students, adjusted to give more credit to schools with larger Pell student proportions.

The website’s methodology section details how they sourced their data, the weights assigned to each metric, and their changes over the years.

From the hundreds assessed come the nearly 50 best universities that offer a variety of undergraduate majors, post-graduate programs, emphasize research, or award professional practice doctorates.

Which are the Best Universities in America?

At the top of the list, Princeton University is the best university in the country, known for its physics, economics, and international relations departments. Notably, it’s a rare Ivy league university that does not have a law, medical, or business school.

Here’s the full ranking of America’s best universities, along with annual tuition requirements.

Rank	School Name	State	Tuition
1	Princeton University	New Jersey	$59,710
2	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	Massachusetts	$60,156
3	Harvard University	Massachusetts	$59,076
3	Stanford University	California	$62,484
5	Yale University	Connecticut	$64,700
6	University of Pennsylvania	Pennsylvania	$66,104
7	California Institute of Technology	California	$63,255
7	Duke University	North Carolina	$66,172
9	Brown University	Rhode Island	$68,230
9	Johns Hopkins University	Maryland	$63,340
9	Northwestern University	Illinois	$65,997
12	Columbia University	New York	$65,524
12	Cornell University	New York	$66,014
12	University of Chicago	Illinois	$65,619
15	University of California, Berkeley	California	$48,465 (out-state) $15,891 (in-state)
15	University of California, LA	California	$46,326 (out-state) $13,752 (in-state)
17	Rice University	Texas	$58,128
18	Dartmouth College	New Hampshire	$65,511
18	Vanderbilt University	Tennessee	$63,946
20	University of Notre Dame	Indiana	$62,693
21	University of Michigan, Ann Arbor	Michigan	$57,273 (out-state) $17,786 (in-state)
22	Georgetown University	Washington, DC	$65,082
22	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	North Carolina	$39,338 (out-state) $8,998 (in-state)
24	Carnegie Mellon University	Pennsylvania	$63,829
24	Emory University	Georgia	$60,774
24	University of Virginia	Virginia	$58,950 (out-state) $22,323 (in-state)
24	Washington University, St. Louis	Missouri	$62,982
28	University of California, Davis	California	$46,043 (out-state) $15,266 (in-state)
28	University of California, San Diego	California	$48,630 (out-state) $16,056 (in-state)
28	University of Florida	Florida	$28,658 (out-state) $6,381 (in-state)
28	University of Southern California	California	$68,237
32	University of Texas, Austin	Texas	$41,070 (out-state) $11,698 (in-state)
33	Georgia Institute of Technology	Georgia	$32,876 (out-state) $11,764 (in-state)
33	University of California, Irvine	California	$47,759 (out-state) $15,185 (in-state)
35	New York University	New York	$60,438
35	University of California, Santa Barbara	California	$45,658 (out-state) $14,881 (in-state)
35	University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign	Illinois	$36,068 (out-state) $17,572 (in-state)
35	University of Wisconsin, Madison	Wisconsin	$40,603 (out-state) $11,205 (in-state)
39	Boston College	Massachusetts	$67,680
40	Rutgers University, New Brunswick	New Jersey	$36,001 (out-state) $17,239 (in-state)
40	Tufts University	Massachusetts	$67,844
40	University of Washington	Washington	$41,997 (out-state) $12,643 (in-state)
43	Boston University	Massachusetts	$65,168
43	The Ohio State University	Ohio	$36,722 (out-state) $12,485 (in-state)
43	Purdue University, Main Campus	Indiana	$28,794 (out-state) $9,992 (in-state)
46	University of Maryland, College Park	Maryland	$40,306 (out-state) $11,505 (in-state)
47	Lehigh University	Pennsylvania	$62,180
47	Texas A&M University	Texas	$40,607 (out-state) $12,413 (in-state)
47	University of Georgia	Georgia	$30,220 (out-state) $11,180 (in-state)
47	University of Rochester	New York	$64,384
47	Virginia Tech	Virginia	$36,090 (out-state) $15,478 (in-state)
47	Wake Forest University	North Carolina	$64,758
53	Case Western Reserve University	Ohio	$62,234
53	Florida State University	Florida	$21,683 (out-state) $6,517 (in-state)
53	Northeastern University	Massachusetts	$63,141
53	University of Minnesota, Twin Cities	Minnesota	$36,402 (out-state) $16,488 (in-state)
53	William & Mary	Virginia	$48,841 (out-state) $25,041 (in-state)

MIT places second, and Harvard and Stanford tie for third. Yale rounds out the top five.

Private universities, including seven Ivy League colleges, dominate the top of the rankings. Meanwhile, the highest-ranked public schools are tied at 15th, both state schools in California.

For affordability, since the higher ranks are populated by private universities, there tends to be a broad correlation of better universities being more expensive. That said, the most expensive school in the top 50 ranks is actually the University of Southern California, tied at 28th, for $68,237/year.

As it happens, also tied at 28th, the University of Florida is the most affordable public school for in-state students ($6,381/year) and Florida State University tied at 53rd, is the most affordable for out-of-staters at $21,683/year.

However these costs are tuition-only, and don’t account for other necessary expenses: accommodation, food, and textbooks.

Best University versus Best “Fit”

Finding the best university for prospective students is more than just perusing a long ranking list.

Aside from the numerous schools present within each university—which can often be the best for specific majors—factors like location, proximity to family, campus culture, the non-academic pursuits (sports, extracurriculars, internships) are also taken into consideration.

In fact, research has found that just attaining a university degree improves future earnings potential and employability.

Furthermore, individual engagement at college (irrespective of the rank of the school in question) plays a far bigger role in learning and general well-being than simply attending a highly-ranked school.

However, for low income and minority students, attending a top-ranked school does improve future earnings considerably. For women, it also often results in delaying marriage and kids, which results in more work-hours and as a result, more pay.