Could mental models be the key to streamlining our hectic days?
Do you ever have those days when everything just spins out of control? When it feels impossible to fit in all you need to? Of course you do. You’re human. And a parent.
I had one recently. What started as a typical day quickly spiralled into chaos. While I usually work from home, this day I was invited to present at an international webinar. It was important to me and I had prepared for it for some time.
The plan was simple. I just needed to dress and feed the kids, drop them at school, then go to the studio where the webinar was being broadcast live.
I went to my daughter’s room to wake her up, but she wasn’t there. I found her on the toilet. She had gastro. I helped her get clean, then went to wake my son.
During breakfast, my son thought his sister was receiving all the attention. In an attempt to shift focus back to him, he began crying because his socks were “too lumpy”.
With the sock crisis averted, I still had to get my son to school, my daughter to Grandma’s house, then make it to the studio. My mind was tumbling like a washing machine. Even simple tasks had started to feel like putting toothpaste back in the tube.
Days like this are part of life. And most certainly, the nature of parenting. Life can be complicated. We frequently need to manage competing desires and priorities. So how can we predictably achieve good outcomes in such a complex environment?
Introducing mental models
Day to day, the sheer volume of information we need to process can sometimes be unmanageable. To deal with this problem and safeguard us against perpetual overwhelm, our brain utilises mental models. Mental models subconsciously order things using higher-order representations. This helps our brains to simplify what is complex.
I like to think of mental models as shortcuts. They are the best wisdom others have already figured out to improve life efficiency. They distil the complexity of thousands of processes (thoughts and actions) into a simple explanation.
Shane Parrish, founder of self-improvement blog Farnam Street, states, “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 organisable chunks. The quality of our thinking is proportional to the models in our head and their usefulness in the situation at hand.”
Being aware of different mental models, and applying them in the right situations, can help us deal with complexity, reduce risks associated with decisions, and provide us with more options for responses.
Three mental models for parenting
Below are three mental models that I frequently use, particularly when parenting. They help me bring order to chaos. Invoking these models helps me overcome overwhelm, keep perspective, and often achieve a desired outcome.
- The 80/20 Rule
The 80/20 Rule (or Pareto principle) states that for many outcomes, roughly 80 percent of consequences come from 20 percent of the causes. This is super handy! I use this model when juggling numerous competing priorities (which is, as a parent, most of the time) or when feeling overwhelmed (so yes, I use it a lot).
To use it, I ask myself, ‘Of all the things I need to do, what are the one or two things that will produce 80 percent of the results I want?’ This simple exercise helps me focus on just one or two things, to the exclusion of the others (for the time being), that will produce the most significant outcome.
- Bottlenecks and Constraints
I frequently use this mental model to identify upstream blockages preventing my kids from progressing or achieving. When our teens and children face a challenge, it’s natural to look at the situation at face value. However, the real issue is often further upstream. For instance, my daughter was nervous about having to read a passage to her class. To help her, I could have had her repeatedly read the passage to me. Instead, applying the Bottlenecks and Constraints model encourages me to look further upstream. The upstream problem is a confidence and self-esteem problem. Helping her with her reading is only a band-aid solution to the real problem (which remains a work in progress, by the way).
- Circle of Competence
In the practice of psychology, the aim is to always best serve our patients. That requires knowing where our competence begins and ends in respect of our patient’s needs, and referring on as required. As parents, we’re required to perform in extremely diverse domains. In some, our performance won’t have significant implications for our young people. But in others, it does. Knowing this difference is key, and the Circle of Competence mental model is the tool I use to differentiate areas where I’m competent from areas where I’m not. Knowing where I’m not competent allows me to fill that gap, by either improving or seeking other input.
Mental models are not cure-alls. Just like everything else, they are open to interpretation and do have their flaws. However, I find they allow me to see the bigger picture in any given circumstance. This, in turn, highlights where I need to focus my effort and attention. And for me, at least, this helps reduce stress and overwhelm; as a busy parent, this can be a real gift! I hope you find these mental models help you, too.
