Gabriel Weinberg, founder of DuckDuckGo, writes about mental models, startup traction channels, book sales, fundraising, and privacy.
Commenters value his mental models list as a guide to what to learn next, and recommend his traction book and Bullseye framework for finding marketing channels.
Best thing for getting stuff into your head: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1250623.How_to_Develop_a_Brilliant_Memory_Week_by_Week
Much like weight lifting, following this book will give you specific memorisation techniques which can be useful, but also results in a general strengthening of memory, even when you don't use any of the exact techniques).
It also strengthens your ability to imagine things, and hold those images or arrangements in your head, which is useful for applying mental models you've learnt.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9793361-the-decision-book
Not the best, and I only really use the first one in the book (Eisenhower Matrix), but I found that alone to be worth the price (you could just google that one though). The rest of it is useful as examples of the wide variety of model types and types of things that can be modelled.
Thinking in Systems: A Primer, is a great book that I highly recommend. It's one of those books that serves as a great introduction to the subject of creating models of systems, and it's neither too long, nor overly specific on any particular subject. By the end of it, you'll know roughly enough to be able to know what you want to know next, in regards to system models.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3828902-thinking-in-systems
This blog post is more like a reference resource, and I think it's worth looking over and picking out whatever interests you:…
A few years ago I published a large list of mental models I find repeatedly useful (https://medium.com/@yegg/mental-models-i-find-repeatedly-useful-936f1cc405d), discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12040707.
I've spent my spare time since (day job is running DuckDuckGo) with my co-author (statistician, researcher, and wife!) turning that list into this book, which weaves the 300+ mental models into nine narrative thematic chapters, paired with 150+ illustrations. Here's the full list of models from the book (in order): https://superthinking.com/download/MentalModels.pdf
Happy to answer any questions about it and/or the process of getting this published. It's my second book (first is Traction).
If you want to capitalize on your Product Hunt launch, I've seen people have success blogging about their launch experience and then getting a second bump in traffic from sharing that post on Hacker News, Indie Hackers, and Reddit.
In the long term, though, you're in the same boat as everyone else: you have to find sustainable marketing channels that work for your business. I highly recommend Traction[0] by Gabriel Weinberg to learn more about growth and marketing.
[0] https://medium.com/@yegg/the-19-channels-you-can-use-to-get-traction-93c762d19339
The nice thing about mental models is you have so many to choose from[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8].
[1] https://medium.com/@yegg/mental-models-i-find-repeatedly-useful-936f1cc405d
[2] http://www.defmacro.org/2016/12/22/models.html
[3] https://fs.blog/mental-models/
[4] https://nesslabs.com/mental-models
[5] https://amzn.to/2KiKQEg (Don't recommend)
[6] https://amzn.to/2GOHoz4 (written by DuckDuckGo founder Gabe Weinberg)
[7] https://amzn.to/31lfK4Q (A classic)
[8] https://amzn.to/31tX17l (Haven't read but recommended by others)
> I wish I had learned many of these years earlier. In fact, the proximate cause for posting this was so I could more effectively answer the question I frequently get from people I work with: “what should I learn next?” If you’re trying to be generally effective, my best advice is to start with the things on this list. [1]
[1] https://medium.com/@yegg/mental-models-i-find-repeatedly-useful-936f1cc405d by @yegg, the link he shared in his comment.
There's obviously no guarantee in the long run, but Gabriel Weinberg (DDG founder) is arguably one of the most holistic tech founders when it comes to tackling socially impactful problems in tech probably due to his interdisciplinary background. He's detailed his approach in a variety of podcasts and blog posts over the years
https://medium.com/@yegg/mental-models-i-find-repeatedly-useful-936f1cc405d
https://fs.blog/gabriel-weinberg/