Charlie Munger, American billionaire investor and vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, says, “All the wisdom of the world is not to be found in one little academic department,” and suggests using a “latticework of mental models.”

As you acquire more mental models, you are enabled to use knowledge of multiple disciplines, from philosophy to physics, to see life. Each model illuminates a part of the situation that you could have missed or misinterpreted earlier. And the more such parts you can illuminate, the better you can see.

You see, every world-class thinker shares this one secret: they are not limited to a single discipline. They apply the fundamentals of multiple disciplines to get a really accurate view of reality, enabling them to spot solutions in places that most people overlook.

As it is, there are hundreds of mental models but just like you don’t need all the knowledge to understand the world, you don’t need all the models either. To quote Munger again, “80 or 90 important models will carry about 90 percent of the freight in making you a worldly-wise person. And, of those, only a mere handful really carry very heavy freight.”

If you want to be a critical and rational thinker, your goal should be to master these handful models, and in this journey, you are already moving closer to this goal.