What Works Wait... what?!
Feb 12, 2026
Short surprises that force you to rethink assumptions about ads, business models, and how systems work. A parent-child chat turns into a lesson on venture capital and why companies make baffling choices. Naming emotions like schadenfreude helps make confusion feel normal. The conversation shows how sharing mental models and collaborative sensemaking makes unexpected moments clearer and compelling.
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Chat With Daughter Sparks Sensemaking
- Tara McMullin describes a conversation with her daughter about ads in ChatGPT that sparked curiosity about venture capital.
- The chat shifted to schadenfreude and became a teaching moment about naming emotions and systems.
Treat Surprise As A System Signal
- A 'wait-what' moment happens when expectations conflict with reality and signals a system to investigate.
- Tara McMullin uses this heuristic to trigger curiosity about underlying mechanics rather than fatalism.
Sensemaking Works Across Domains
- Sensemaking applies beyond technical topics to emotions, social interactions, and habits.
- Pooling mental models with others multiplies our ability to understand unexpected events.