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Prompts·4 min read·

The Mental-Models Coach: Get Claude to Pick the Right Thinking Tool for Your Actual Problem

Describe a real decision and Claude selects the 2 or 3 mental models that fit, applies them to your details, and asks the question you've been avoiding.

You own a toolbox and you keep reaching for the same hammer.

You've read the mental models list. Inversion, second-order thinking, opportunity cost, base rates. You nodded at all of them and then went back to making decisions the way you always have: gut feel, a bit of a spiral at 2am, and whichever option is easiest to explain to other people.

The gap isn't knowledge. It's that nobody tells you which tool fits which problem. A hiring decision and a pricing decision and a should-I-move-cities decision need completely different thinking, and applying the wrong model is worse than applying none, because it comes with a false sense of rigour.

Matching tool to problem is the skill. It's also exactly the kind of pattern-matching worth outsourcing, right up to the point where the actual judgement starts. Claude picks the tools and does the work. You still make the call.

I run every decision over $500 or 2 weeks of work through this. The "question I'm avoiding" section has changed my mind twice this year.

What's Inside

  • A diagnosis of what kind of decision you're actually facing, which is usually not the one you think.
  • 2 or 3 fitting models applied to your real details, with no theory and no definitions.
  • The conflict between models made visible, plus the question you've carefully not asked yourself.

The Prompt

Describe a real decision to Claude, including what you're afraid of and what you're leaning toward, then ask it to pick the right mental models and run them on your actual details.

Mental-Models Coach prompt
I have a decision to make and I'm about to think about it in the laziest
available way. Stop me.

THE SITUATION: [describe it plainly, including what you're actually afraid of]
WHAT I'M LEANING TOWARDS: [your current answer, honestly]
CONSTRAINTS: [time, money, people, anything genuinely fixed]

Work through these 5 steps.

1. DIAGNOSE THE PROBLEM TYPE
Is this reversible or irreversible? A one-off or a repeated game? Is it a
problem of information, incentives, timing or nerve? Three sentences, no more.

2. PICK THE TOOLS
Choose the 2 or 3 mental models that genuinely fit this problem. Not the
famous ones, the fitting ones. Available options include, and are not limited
to: inversion, second and third order consequences, opportunity cost, base
rates, expected value, asymmetry of outcomes, the reversibility test,
incentives, sunk cost, the 10/10/10 rule, via negativa, circle of competence.
For each one, give me a single line on why this problem calls for it.

3. RUN THEM
Apply each model to my actual situation, using my actual details. No
definitions, no theory, no "this model teaches us that". Just the work. Each
one must surface something I hadn't already thought of.

4. WHERE THEY DISAGREE
If the models point different ways, do not average them into mush. Show me the
conflict and tell me which one deserves more weight here, and why.

5. THE QUESTION I'M AVOIDING
Based on how I described this, what have I carefully not asked myself? Ask it
directly.

Do not make the decision and do not recommend an option. Hand me back a
sharper version of my own problem.

This is the prompt that stops you from applying the same mental model to every decision and instead matches the right thinking tool to your actual problem.

How To Use It

  1. 1Write the situation the way you'd tell a friend, including the fear. Sanitised inputs produce a tidy answer to a problem you don't have.
  2. 2Read step 3 before step 5, then sit with step 5 for a minute before you reply. It usually stings slightly, which is how you know it landed.
  3. 3Make the call yourself. If you find yourself asking Claude "so what should I do", you've handed over the one part that was yours.
  4. 4Make it yours: Add "run step 5 first" when you already suspect you're avoiding something. It's a shorter, more uncomfortable, more useful version.

Give it a go and let me know if you find it useful!

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