The map is not the territory
Why every model you trust is wrong in a way you haven't noticed yet — and why that's fine.
Alfred Korzybski's famous warning — the map is not the territory — is usually quoted as a caution against bad models. That misses the sharper point: it applies to your good models too.
A map is useful precisely because it leaves things out. A 1:1 map of a city would be the city, and exactly as hard to navigate. Compression is the feature. The danger arrives at the moment you forget the compression happened — when the simplification becomes invisible and you start defending the map against the territory itself.
Practically, this suggests a habit: for every model you rely on, keep one sentence attached to it that names what it throws away. Supply and demand throws away psychology. The org chart throws away friendship. The calendar throws away energy.
You don't need better maps as much as you need to remember that you're holding one.