📚 I’ve just finished reading a preview of Useful Not True from Derek Sivers, and you can too if you click on that link. It is a slight book that very much deserves to be a book and not a blog post — I can’t wait to get a hold of a hard copy.

Sivers takes the aphorism that all models are wrong, but some are useful — well-known to statisticians and, increasingly, scientists of “hard” sciences — and applies it to mental models. At least that is how I read it: he never mentions the aphorism by name and stays clear of explicitly aligning himself with any particular school of thought. I wouldn’t expect anything else from the author of How to Live.

The stated intent is to introduce the reader to reframing as a way to — and this is now my interpretation — decrease anxiety, increase agency and lead a more purposeful life. It does that splendidly. So well, in fact, that I plan on buying a dozen or so to give out as presents this holiday season (apologies if I have now spoiled the surprise). There is some selfishness there: conversations would be so much more fruitful if we didn’t have to preface everything we said with “I believe that…” and other true but not very useful verbal ticks.