Xunzi, the third great Confucian thinker — the one most Western readers skip — argued that human nature isn't good or bad by default, but plastic: we become what we repeatedly enact. He called this the doctrine of wei, deliberate artifice, and insisted that ritual practice doesn't express a pre-existing character; it constructs one. The mental model implication is strange and uncomfortable: the frameworks you use most fluently aren't revealing your thinking — they're shaping it. A PM who reaches for the jobs-to-be-done lens on every ambiguous problem isn't deploying a tool; they're undergoing a gradual perceptual surgery. Xunzi's corrective wasn't to abandon ritual — it was to choose your rituals with the same care you'd choose a teacher, because you'll become what you rehearse. The practical move: before you open your next miro board or sprint template, notice which lens you're about to pick up automatically — and ask whether you chose it or whether it chose you.

What is the opposite of the mental model you reach for first — and when did you last actually use that opposite as your starting point?

Drawing from Confucian Philosophy (Xunzi) — Xunzi (荀子, Xunzi, c. 3rd century BCE)