The irreducible epistemic atoms underlying the curriculum. 4,828 atoms across 8 types and 2 molecules
Deploy 5-minute cyclic sighing (prolonged exhalations at ~6 breaths per minute) before difficult meetings or after stressful news to reverse stress-induced perceptual narrowing.
When using AI during high stress, prompt with 'I am stressed and may be experiencing tunnel vision—what am I likely not seeing?' rather than 'prove my interpretation is right.'
When making frequency or probability estimates, pause and ask: 'Am I estimating actual frequency, or how easily I can picture this?' then look up the base rate before deciding.
Before any consequential decision, populate two mandatory fields: the recent event driving current feeling, and the base rate/historical trend across the full relevant time window.
When a vivid individual case makes you feel certain about probability, explicitly ask 'what is the actual frequency of this event in the relevant population?' before forming any judgment.
Frame pre-mortem prompts as 'It is [future date]. This has failed completely. Write why.' rather than 'What could go wrong?' to shift cognition from speculation to explanation.
When searching for disconfirming evidence, if your search could not have actually changed your mind, you performed a ritual not genuine disconfirmation—redesign the search until failure is possible.
Frame feedback requests as specific behavioral questions ('What do I consistently do that I probably don't realize?') rather than character evaluations to keep feedback at task level instead of identity level.
When new evidence arrives, classify it by diagnostic value before updating—ask whether you'd see this evidence regardless of belief truth versus only if belief were true/false.
After accumulating 15-20 judgments in the same domain, analyze whether errors cluster directionally (bias requiring correction factor) or scatter randomly (noise requiring aggregation).
Conduct a two-week bias journal recording significant judgments with confidence levels, then categorize errors by direction and type to build your personal bias profile.
For each identified bias in your profile, write a specific pre-correction question or procedure to execute before acting on judgments in that domain.
After identifying that you are systematically overconfident on timelines by X%, multiply your initial timeline estimates by (1 + X/100) before stating them publicly.
After four weeks of belief tracking, examine whether beliefs barely moved despite evidence (conservatism) or swung dramatically on single data points (base rate neglect) to identify domain-specific updating patterns.
Before interpreting any piece of information—a message, a metric, a statement, a data point—run a five-question context scan: What environment am I in? What role am I occupying? What just happened that might color my perception? What are the goals (mine and others')? What assumptions am I importing from a different context?
When switching between cognitive contexts, implement a three-step loading protocol: (1) close the current context by writing a one-sentence summary and noting open loops (30 seconds), (2) create a transition gap of deliberate non-engagement (60 seconds), (3) load the new context by reviewing relevant notes and orienting before producing (60 seconds).
Record decision context at the moment of commitment using five elements: (1) decision statement, (2) forces/constraints/emotions active at choice point, (3) expected consequences with timeline, (4) confidence level 1-10, (5) review trigger date—before hindsight bias can rewrite your reasoning.
When reviewing a past decision, read the original context record before evaluating the outcome, because evaluating outcome first allows hindsight bias to contaminate your assessment of whether the reasoning was sound.
When you experience confusion, friction, or judgment in a cross-cultural interaction, document three elements before reacting: (1) what you expected, (2) what actually happened, (3) what cultural assumption might explain the gap—treating the collision as diagnostic data about invisible defaults.
Set the threshold for decision context documentation at any choice where you deliberated between options for more than sixty seconds, because if you considered alternatives consciously, the reasoning is worth preserving against memory reconstruction.
During context loading for complex cognitive work (coding, writing, design), spend the first 60-90 seconds orienting through review of previous state before attempting to produce output, as the cognitive system requires initialization time before it can operate at full capacity in that domain.
Distinguish domain-specific facts (treatment protocols, software frameworks, market conditions) requiring aggressive temporal updating from structural principles (logic, mathematics, core psychological mechanisms) where age indicates Lindy-tested robustness, applying opposite update strategies to each type.
When importing best practices or frameworks from another era or scale, explicitly verify that the contextual conditions (organizational size, technological infrastructure, market maturity) that made the practice optimal still hold before adopting it.
For each high-stakes word in decisions or commitments (quality, ownership, alignment, done, strategy), require independent operational definitions from each stakeholder before proceeding, then compare and reconcile the definitions explicitly.