Maintain a personal model catalog with examples
Keep a written inventory of your models, each illustrated with a real example from your own experience.
Key takeaways
- What it is: Keep a written inventory of your models, each illustrated with a real example from your own experience.
- Why it works: A model stored only in abstract form is rarely retrieved in the field — the conditions for retrieval need to be concrete and situational. Anchoring each model to a personal example creates an episodic retrieval cue: when a future situation resembles the example, the model is activated automatically rather than requiring deliberate search.
- Evidence: Plausible mechanism, limited direct outcome data.
- Avoid: Filling the catalog with definitions copied from Farnam Street or Wikipedia rather than with your own examples — these don’t create the retrieval cues the practice depends on.
Why it works
A model stored only in abstract form is rarely retrieved in the field — the conditions for retrieval need to be concrete and situational. Anchoring each model to a personal example creates an episodic retrieval cue: when a future situation resembles the example, the model is activated automatically rather than requiring deliberate search.
How to do it
- 1Create a document, notebook, or card set with one model per entry.
- 2For each model, write: the name, the mechanism in two sentences, and one real example from your own life.
- 3Review the catalog monthly — reading your own examples is more activating than reading definitions.
- 4Add a new model every time you encounter one you’ve never used before.
What the evidence says
MechanisticEncoding specificity research (Tulving) shows that memory retrieval improves when retrieval conditions match encoding conditions. A personal example is a richer, more specific encoding cue than an abstract definition.
Honest caveat: The catalog approach is a practitioner tool; direct comparisons of catalog-based model recall to definition-only study are not formally studied.
- — Tulving & Thomson (1973), encoding specificity and retrieval processes, Psychological Review
Common mistake
Filling the catalog with definitions copied from Farnam Street or Wikipedia rather than with your own examples — these don’t create the retrieval cues the practice depends on.
IX Coach helps you build your model catalog session by session, asking you to name a personal example each time a new model is introduced, so the catalog grows from your experience, not from abstractions.
Practice this with IX Coach →