63. How To Play With Chaos (4 Laws)

The Sam Ovens Podcast

Until you make the unknown known, it will dictate your life and you will call it "fate". We live in a world of complexity and chaos — you either drown in it, or you understand it. How do you understand the complexity and chaos? Through the use of mental models.

Mental models are how we understand the world. Not only do they shape what we think and how we understand but they shape the connections and opportunities that we see. Mental models are how we simplify complexity, why we consider some things more relevant than others, and how we reason. A mental model is simply a representation of how something works. We cannot keep all of the details of the world in our brains, so we use models to simplify the complex into understandable and organizable chunks. Today's podcast is the first of a new "mental model mini-series". I plan to release new content weekly that covers different mental models I use to understand the world and make decisions. Today's mental model is "Chaos Theory", understanding the 4 universal laws from which infinite complexity emerges. This is a biggy! One podcast you seriously don't want to miss!