8 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
American investor and vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway — Warren Buffett's indispensable intellectual partner — whose Poor Charlie's Almanack and speeches articulate the most systematic framework for good thinking available: multidisciplinary mental models, inverting problems, and eliminating error through checklists.
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz's 2022 book applying large-scale data analysis to personal life decisions — career, relationships, parenting — arguing that data consistently outperforms intuition in high-stakes choices.
Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's 2008 book — arguing that choice architecture (how options are presented) powerfully influences decisions, and that nudges (small changes to defaults and framing) can improve outcomes while preserving freedom.
Essay exploring the Nova Effect — the phenomenon where sudden, extreme positive events (jackpots, unexpected successes) paradoxically reduce long-term wellbeing — as a framework for understanding why luck and windfall are more complex than simple gain.
Daniel Kahneman's 2011 synthesis of a career's behavioral economics research — presenting the System 1/System 2 framework for human cognition — the most widely read academic psychology book of the 21st century.
Hal Hershfield's 2023 guide to connecting with your future self — synthesizing temporal psychology research to help readers make better long-term decisions by developing a more vivid relationship with who they will become.
Shane Parrish's podcast interviewing exceptional practitioners about how they think, decide, and operate — focused on extracting generalizable wisdom rather than surface-level career narrative.
Shane Parrish's blog and newsletter dedicated to mental models, decision-making frameworks, and learning from the best thinkers — named after the street where Warren Buffett's office is located.