7 decks to understand how your brain makes decisions — and how to help it make better ones. Cognitive biases, mental models, critical thinking and decision frameworks.
From diagnosing biases to applying mental models in real decisions. A progressive path to thinking with more rigour and clarity.
The major cognitive biases documented by Kahneman, Thaler and Ariely: confirmation bias, anchoring, availability heuristic, overconfidence and status quo bias. The foundation for understanding your blind spots.
View deck →How mental shortcuts allow us to move fast — and when they mislead us. Representativeness heuristic, affect heuristic, substitution and framing effects.
View deck →The 25 foundational mental models according to Charlie Munger: inversion, circle of competence, marginal thinking, first principles reasoning, second-order thinking.
View deck →Frameworks for deciding rigorously: Eisenhower matrix, decision trees, pre-mortem analysis, OODA loop, 10/10/10 technique and reversible vs irreversible decisions.
View deck →Reasoning with rigour: spotting common fallacies, evaluating argument strength, distinguishing correlation from causation, and structuring complex thinking before sharing it.
View deck →Practical application in professional life: how biases influence your hiring decisions, estimates, negotiations and performance evaluations.
View deck →Understanding complex systems: feedback loops, leverage points, unintended consequences and the limits of linear thinking when dealing with interconnected problems.
View deck →Knowing about cognitive biases is not enough to avoid them. Studies show that even experts in behavioural economics remain subject to the biases they teach. What changes is how quickly you recognize them in a real situation.
That's precisely why flashcards are the right tool: rather than reading a summary of Kahneman's work once, you train your brain to recognize confirmation bias in a meeting, anchoring in a negotiation, or groupthink before it causes damage.
Mental models work the same way. The more you activate them mentally, the more they become usable reflexes in new situations. The FSRS algorithm schedules reviews at the optimal moment to turn this knowledge into an operational tool.
The 'Cognitive Biases — Fundamentals' deck lays the groundwork. It covers the 20 most documented and common biases in professional decision-making. 45 cards, roughly 3 weeks of review.
The FSRS algorithm automatically schedules your reviews. Be honest in your self-assessment: it's what allows the system to precisely target the concepts still fragile in your memory.
The power of flashcards on this topic: each card represents a tool you can use immediately. Start spotting your own biases before you've even finished the first deck.
'System 1 / System 2' and Kahneman's work on heuristics are at the core of decks 1 and 2. The flashcards don't replace reading 'Thinking, Fast and Slow', but they anchor the key concepts durably — where reading alone often leaves little trace after a few weeks.
A mental model is a reasoning framework you can apply across varied domains: inversion (thinking about what can go wrong rather than what can succeed), circle of competence (knowing where your expertise ends), marginal thinking (deciding in terms of additional cost and value). Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's partner, attributes his best decisions to a collection of 25 mental models he built over decades.
Knowledge alone doesn't eliminate biases, but it significantly improves detection. Studies by Mellers et al. on 'superforecasters' show that explicit knowledge of biases, regularly reactivated, improves forecasts by 20 to 40%. That's exactly what spaced repetition enables: keeping knowledge active, not just theoretical.
Recommended order: Fundamental biases → Heuristics and judgment → Mental models → Decision frameworks → Critical thinking → Applied biases → Systems thinking. The first two build vocabulary, the next two provide tools, the last three enable practical application.
Flashcards allow you to memorize the structures of rigorous reasoning: types of fallacies (ad hominem, straw man, false dilemma), criteria for evaluating a source, the correlation/causation distinction. Once these structures are memorized, applying them becomes a reflex in discussion or when facing an argument.
45 cards to build the foundations of clear thinking. First deck free, no credit card required.
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