Mental Models
Understand what Mental Models are and how choosing one changes the way «o» breaks a goal down into tasks.
A Mental Model is a reasoning framework, a lens. In o42, it’s what defines how «o» thinks when breaking down your goal. It’s not a prompt or a loose skill — it’s a way of thinking.
What you need before you start
- A connected AI model and a sample project open.
The catalog
o42 ships with several Mental Models out of the box — Systems Thinking, Design Thinking, First Principles, Inversion, the OODA loop, and more. Each one leads «o» to analyze your goal in a different way.
Choosing a lens when creating a goal
Creating a goal inside a project surfaces the Mental Models row. The three core ones show as buttons — Systems Thinking, Design Thinking, and First Principles — with the rest grouped under “More models”. Systems Thinking is selected by default.
Write your goal
For example: “Publish the podcast’s first episode in four weeks.”
Pick the lens and submit
With Systems Thinking selected, «o» applies that lens to the project and the goal, and returns an analysis plus a list of suggested tasks — reasoning centered on relationships, dependencies, and the whole system.
Compare with another lens
Switch to First Principles and submit the same goal again. The breakdown is different: it starts from what’s essential, questions assumptions. Same objective, different reasoning, different tasks — that’s the power of the Mental Model: you don’t change the goal, you change how it’s thought through.
One key detail: if you don’t pick any Mental Model, «o» won’t generate tasks. The lens is what turns the analysis on.
Once the analysis convinces you, you approve and the tasks are created — that full flow is covered in the Productivity Plane tutorial.
Next: Plane 1 — Productivity
From goal to tasks, in the Productivity Plane.