Updates

  1. Person pages list letters, writing, profiles and links as sortable tables with filters, and show each person's companies as links; Fund letters show each letter's description in its own column.
  2. Experts show a checked job title and a short description of each person; 30 more people have photographs.
  3. Every company, fund, university and publication the experts work for has a page listing the people there.
  4. Fund letters show each letter's thesis and filter by it; 225 person pages list the essays, columns and newsletter issues the person wrote.
  5. Person pages list every essay and newsletter issue a person wrote, and their own books as a table in List view.
  6. Recommends shows the five largest kinds of book and the rest under More; browse pictures load sooner.
  7. Podcasts and talks link the original episode, filter by Audio and video or Press, and list each publisher once.
  8. Pages are wider, Recommends has List and Grid, and a filter clicked again turns off.
  9. Book cards sit in a ruled grid with Open Library and Goodreads links and each book's one-line note.
  10. Funds is now Investors; each investor's styles are buttons that filter the table.
  11. Podcasts and talks on a person's page filter by year and publisher and show as a list or a grid of pictures.
  12. Quotes show only people's own words: 472 summaries written by list sites are gone.
  13. Country pages open from Browse again, and every link on the shelf lands on a page.
  14. Subject and person pages show their sections as tabs, and each book appears once on a person's page.
  15. Book cards show the quote, who said it and the source; grids show five cards to a row.
  16. On a phone, a menu holds the sections, search, Updates, Feedback and dark mode.
  17. Feedback takes a screenshot of the page with no browser prompt, opens a screenshot full size when you click it, and clears itself once sent.
  18. Book cards are centred, search names the topic each book sits in, and any text cut short shows whole on hover.
  19. Search groups its results by kind: people, companies, geographies, subjects, topics, books, funds, fund letters and papers.
  20. The Books table lists who recommended each book by name, and the browser tab names the section you are in.
  21. Feedback can take a screenshot of the page, or one you paste or choose, and opens in the corner beside Updates.
  22. Each rail button reopens its section where you left it, and Browse, Table and People show on every book and subject page.
  23. Filters grey out choices that hold nothing instead of hiding them, and Books › People filters by authors or recommenders.
  24. Feedback takes a subject line and up to three screenshots.
  25. Biographies are grouped by the person they are about: 41 new pages, from Abraham Lincoln to Lee Kuan Yew.
  26. Sport splits into 23 sports, and Religion into one topic per faith.
  27. Book lists show as cards: the cover, one recommendation quote and every recommender by name.
  28. Seventeen subjects that had two or three pages under different names now have one page each.
  29. Every page lists its Experts as authors and recommenders, with a link to them on the Experts tab.
  30. Economics, Financial history, Financial panics and Accounting are subjects of their own, with one page per financial crisis.
  31. Book, person and subject pages open inside the app, so the tabs stay in view.
  32. 996 more book covers, and photographs or logos for 227 more people and companies.
  33. Books › Browse shows every subject as cards, and the rail holds Fund letters, Papers, Experts, Books and Funds.
  34. Every topic over 150 books splits into narrower topics, each with a page of its own.

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Bottlenecks and the Theory of Constraints

Mental models

Every system has one binding constraint, and improvement anywhere else is an illusion that shows up as inventory rather than throughput. Find the constraint, protect it, subordinate everything to it, then elevate it - and expect the constraint to move once you do. In business analysis it explains why capex in the wrong place buys nothing.

Books 5Experts 1Recommenders 12Resources 3

Start here

  1. The GoalEliyahu M. Goldratt, Jeff Cox, 1984
  2. The Phoenix ProjectGene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford, 2013
  3. Thinking in SystemsDonella H. Meadows, 2008
The GoalThe Goal
T1 The Goal
Eliyahu M. Goldratt, Jeff Cox · 1984
Open LibraryGoodreads

A plant manager learns that a system's output is set by its bottleneck.

Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai, Nat Eliason and 5 others

Thinking in SystemsThinking in Systems
T1 Thinking in Systems
Donella H. Meadows · 2008
Open LibraryGoodreads

Meadows wrote this before systems thinking became a popular phrase, and it remains the clearest account of why short-term interventions in complex systems so often backfire. The chapter on leverage points is the conceptual core of what long-term thinking actually requires from decision-makers.

Recommended by: Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Daniel Burka and 3 others

The Phoenix ProjectThe Phoenix Project
T2 The Phoenix Project
Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford · 2013
Open LibraryGoodreads

A novel in which an IT manager rescues a failing project using lessons from The Goal.

Theory of ConstraintsTheory of Constraints
T3 Theory of Constraints
Eliyahu M. Goldratt · 1990
Open LibraryGoodreads

Every system has one constraint; find it, exploit it, and subordinate all else to it.

Critical ChainCritical Chain
T3 Critical Chain
Eliyahu M. Goldratt · 1997
Open LibraryGoodreads

A novel applying the theory of constraints to finishing projects on time.

More mental models

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