Concepts
The irreducible epistemic atoms underlying the curriculum. 4,828 atoms across 8 types
Four elements only for constraint displays
Display bottleneck metrics using only four elements—constraint name, current value, target value, and trend direction—eliminating all decoration to maximize signal-to-noise ratio.
Kanban column with a growing queue IS the bottleneck — no…
When cards accumulate in one column of a kanban board creating a visible queue, treat that column as the current bottleneck without requiring separate cycle time analysis.
Place 20% time buffers around your constraint step…
Add 20% time buffers around constraint activities that fail or degrade most frequently under pressure, rather than distributing slack evenly across all workflow steps.
Keep one completed output in reserve after the constraint…
Maintain one completed output in reserve after your constraint step (stock buffer) to decouple production cadence from delivery cadence when the constraint step has high variability.
Have one backup for your constraint step at 80% quality…
Document one alternative method or backup person who can execute your constraint step at 80% quality to serve as capacity buffer during disruptions, rather than pursuing redundancy everywhere.
When improvement stalls despite effort, the bottleneck…
When throughput improvement stalls despite continued effort at the current constraint location, immediately re-run constraint identification to detect whether the bottleneck has migrated.
Bottleneck journal
Record bottleneck journal entries in under two minutes using six fields only (date, constraint name, severity 1-5, type, intervention, result) to maintain practice sustainability.
Exploit the constraint fully before investing in expanding…
Before investing in constraint elevation, verify that constraint capacity is being used at 100% for highest-value work rather than dissipated across low-priority tasks.
Keep commitments at 70-85% of capacity — the 15-30% slack…
Maintain commitment-to-capacity ratio between 0.70 and 0.85 to preserve system stability, keeping 15-30% of capacity uncommitted as structural buffer for variance absorption.
On depleted days (capacity 1-2), cap deep work at 1 hour…
When daily capacity rating is 1-2 (depleted/foggy), limit focused work to 1 hour maximum and allocate remaining time to administrative tasks, recovery, or maintenance rather than forcing deep work.
Rate capacity 1-5 in your first 30 minutes — then select…
Rate your daily capacity on a 1-5 scale within the first 30 minutes of your workday before starting any tasks, using the rating to select which tier of work plan to execute that day.
When commitments exceed capacity, only three fixes work
When commitment-to-capacity ratio exceeds 1.0, intervene only through cut (remove commitment entirely), defer (move to future period with capacity), or delegate (transfer to someone else)—productivity techniques cannot solve overcommitment caused by arithmetic mismatch.
Normal daily capacity variation is not a problem — only…
Treat common-cause capacity variation (daily fluctuations within your normal 2-5 hour range) as system-inherent rather than problems requiring intervention; investigate and respond only to special-cause variation (events falling outside normal range).
Distribute work unevenly across the week — load…
Allocate weekly focused work hours unevenly based on predicted daily capacity levels (more hours to high-capacity days, fewer to low-capacity days) rather than distributing work uniformly across all days.
Plan from your average capacity, not your best day — five…
After measuring five days of actual focused work time, use the daily average (not the best day or hoped-for number) as your baseline planning capacity for all future scheduling decisions.
Two weeks at sprint pace creates recovery debt — expect…
When sprint pace (exceeding sustainable pace) is maintained for more than two consecutive weeks, expect proportional recovery debt requiring at least one week of reduced output to repay accumulated cognitive deficit.
Decompose peak-day tasks and pre-load early components…
Decompose tasks due on peak-load days into components that can start independently, then pre-load early components into low-load days to smooth temporal distribution.
Front-load highest-priority work — end-of-week…
Place most important committed work early in the week and early in the day so that end-of-week and end-of-day buffers can absorb delays without threatening highest-priority deliverables.
Calibrate buffers by consumption rate — above 80% means…
Track weekly buffer consumption rate—if consistently consuming more than 80% of buffer, increase buffer size; if consistently consuming less than 20%, buffer can be tightened.
When one-third of commitments are failing, stop accepting…
When more than one-third of your active commitments are late, incomplete, or lower quality than promised, stop accepting new commitments until the ratio improves to preserve remaining trust accounts.
Alternate between cognitive pools — creative, then…
Sequence work blocks across different cognitive pools (creative, then analytical, then social, then administrative) rather than stacking same-type work, to allow depleted pools to recover while fresh pools carry the load.
When you see repetition, forced output, or errors — switch…
When a cognitive pool (creative, analytical, social) shows degradation markers—repetition, forced output, errors, disengagement—switch to a different pool type rather than pushing through, even if scheduled time remains.
Increase capacity target by 10% per week only if quality…
When capacity building, increase target output by 10% per week only if quality metrics held steady or improved AND you met target on at least 4 of 5 days in the previous week.
Two weeks without progression = deload 10% — you overshot…
When capacity building fails to meet progression criteria for two consecutive weeks, reduce target by 10% to deload—you have overshot sustainable progression rate and need to consolidate at a lower level.