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How to ThinkIn the Age of AI
Principlev1PR-542

Maintain a revision queue where you capture schema anomalies

Maintain a revision queue where you capture schema anomalies as they occur rather than trying to fix everything immediately, enabling prioritized processing.

Why This Is a Principle

This principle derives from working memory limits (Working Memory Capacity Limit), cognitive load from open loops (Open-Loop Cognitive Cost (Zeigarnik)), and unreliable memory under load (Human memory under stress and cognitive load is unreliable…). It prescribes an external queue system to manage cognitive debt.

Source Lessons

Small frequent updates beat large rare updates

Incremental schema revision is less disruptive and more accurate than complete overhauls. Small, frequent updates preserve continuity with what already works while correcting what does not. Large, rare overhauls destroy functional structure alongside dysfunctional structure, overwhelm working memory, and introduce more errors than they fix.

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