Hi, I'm Christian

Everything I do is built on one insight: there’s only one skill that truly matters—problem-solving. Every other skill is just applied problem-solving with different tools.

This changes how you approach learning and work. Instead of collecting tools and technologies, you hunt for fundamentals —the 80/20 concepts that everything else is built upon. Once you have the fundamentals of a field and strong meta-problem-solving skills, you can tackle basically any problem in that domain.

Most people don’t touch enough fields to recognize how much transfers between them. But those who do—Feynman across physics and biology, Musk across physics and engineering and business—leverage it systematically. The patterns repeat. The mental models compound.

This requires building what Charlie Munger called a “latticework of mental models.” As he put it: “You can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ‘em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form.”

Mental models are reusable patterns of thinking—algorithms for solving categories of problems. Systems thinking. First principles reasoning. Probabilistic thinking. Incentive structures. The Pareto principle. These transcend any single domain. When you have the right models, experience compounds instead of just accumulating.

But mental models alone aren’t enough. As Feynman said: “What I cannot create, I do not understand.” I don’t just use tools—I understand what’s happening under the hood. Not to show off, but because deeper understanding is a force multiplier. It enables better debugging, more creative solutions, and the ability to build new tools when existing ones fall short.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Each new domain you explore doesn’t just add knowledge—it adds perspective . This is information arbitrage: leveraging knowledge from one context to create value in another. The most powerful innovations often come from applying principles from one domain to problems in another, precisely because most specialists never make that connection.

This approach compounds exponentially. Each mental model you build makes the next one easier to grasp. Each domain you explore reveals patterns in previous domains. Each problem you solve expands your toolkit for future problems. After a decade of this, you’re not just ten years more experienced—you’re operating with a fundamentally different capacity to see and solve problems.

The goal isn’t to know every language or framework. It’s to understand fundamentals, recognize patterns, grasp principles, and master the meta-skills of learning, thinking, and problem-solving. That’s what creates unique value.