Useful Ways of Looking
Useful Ways of Looking is a series on concepts I often reference. You could think of them as mental models, or primitives, or keys, or, well, Ways of Looking. You probably landed here because I referenced one and sent you this link for further explanation!
The Useful Ways of Looking are not necessarily true, but they are — as the name suggests — often useful. Finding where to skillfully apply them is part of the job.
The Ways
OODA loops
Loop through Observing, Orienting, Deciding, and Acting — with a special emphasis on Orientation, and on cycling back to it as quickly as possible; it works for fighter pilots and can work for you, too.
Theory of Constraints
To solve any problem: 1) properly define your goal, 2) clearly outline the system that will dictate the achievement of that goal, 3) determine the bottleneck of that system, and 4) address the bottleneck — and only the bottleneck.
Parkinson's Law, generalized
Work expands to the time allotted for its completion, and elsewhere constraints generally predict outcomes as well; the intelligent definition of constraints is often more important than the energy put into execution.
Ways of Looking
'The most fundamental fact about any experience is that it depends on the way of looking' (Rob Burbea); by leveraging this, we can make any 'problem' we're facing trivially soluble.
Useful vs. Correct
The usefulness of any idea is not necessarily correlated with how correct it is; it is only within a specified context that attributes like usefulness and correctness of the idea can be evaluated.