My summary: To become productive, get in the habit of doing things. More specifically, get in the habit of immediately doing what needs doing. Don't spend a lot of time learning in preparation for some future grand work when there is useful work that you could be doing right away. When faced with a new situation, quickly learn enough so that you can start doing useful work. Avoid the temptation to spend a lot of time learning before contributing. Hence the advice: "Acquire as little information as possible."<p>This meshes well with Sam Altman's advice to: "Have a good operational cadence where projects are short and you’re releasing something new on a regular basis." (<a href="http://blog.samaltman.com/startup-advice" rel="nofollow">http://blog.samaltman.com/startup-advice</a>)
<i>Acquire as little information as possible</i><p>This is an often overlooked opportunity. Learn as little as you absolutely need so you don't get mired in the dogma. Some of the best solutions for problems come from people who have not yet become indoctrinated in the "standard" methodology. They approach problems with a fresh perspective and can come up with new solutions that everyone else who's been there a while missed. This opportunity is short lived, since everyone inevitably learns all the standard ways, so it is very apt for when you join a new company.
In my last job, I hired a guy who was pretty impressive, in the morning he got the code on his machine with the help of a co-worker next to him and got accounts in the dev tools, after lunch he sat alone, he put on his headphones and started killing bugs moving his head to the music. He corrected maybe 3 or 4 bugs on his first day. His code respected all the conventions we had set (it's consistent so he gathered them from the existing code).
I'm not wild about the labels "implicit" and "explicit" for mental models. "Explicit" is not bad, but "implicit" is less intuitive. IMHO, "behavioral model" is a better label.<p>With simulations (e.g. CPUs), what the OP referred to as an "implicit model" is a "behavioral model" (the results are right, but the simulation takes shortcuts). An "explicit model" is a "cycle accurate model" because the simulation goes through all the actual motions that the real target (CPU) would do.<p>Behavioral models are much faster but less detailed and sometimes less accurate. For instance, in a CPU simulator, you get estimated execution times for the code whereas for a cycle accurate model you will get actual (simulated) clock cycles that the instructions took to execute the code.
Thanks for the detailed explanation of how your brain works - I found it a fascinating read and insightful for my own thought processes as well, also having one of those brains that "won't shut up" as you so aptly put it.