Knowledge Under Pressure

On Learning, Mental Models, and Legacy

Dan Dworkis, MD PhD
2 min readNov 10, 2022
Photo by Ivan Aleksic on Unsplash

Field notes from what we’ve been up to, what we’ve been taking in, and what we are thinking about at The Emergency Mind Project.

If you have ideas or things you’d like to see — or if you want to help and get more involved — I’d love to hear from you: dan@emergencymind.com

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Reading List: Make Better Decisions Under Pressure

Want to perform better under pressure? Learn to make better decisions. In this article, we look at five key books (seven actually) that anyone wanting to upgrade their high-stakes decision making should read. (Also works great as a holiday gift guide!)

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15 Mental Models for Decision Makers

Compilation of multiple interesting mental models around making better decisions. Particularly enjoyed the luck razor, but there’s a lot to work through and unpack for these decision tools.

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Learn from legacy, don’t lean on it. How can we identify the things that we’ve “always” done one way and proactively dig into them? What can we learn from why we do it that way and how could we make it even better? Designing systems to work well under pressure run the risk of satisficing — we find something that works ok and the pressure keeps us from continuing to innovate. As a result, probably leaving things on the table and strong chance we could keep making improvements…

Something you want to see? Idea for a future thing to dig into? Hit reply and let me know what you’re thinking.

Keep training, and good luck out there!

— Dan

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Dan Dworkis, MD PhD

Emergency Doctor. Applying knowledge under pressure. The Emergency Mind Book: bit.ly/emindbook