Concepts
The irreducible epistemic atoms underlying the curriculum. 4,828 atoms across 8 types
Context
a frame — a set of assumptions, rules, and interpretive lenses that determine how you process information and what counts as relevant
Context design
the practice of engineering environmental cues, defaults, and friction points to make desired behaviors more likely and undesired behaviors less likely, operating through the principle that behavior is a function of person and environment.
Decision documentation
the practice of recording the full reasoning context around a decision including alternatives considered, information available, optimization criteria, and conditions for revisiting before the outcome overwrites the reasoning
Cognitive defusion
the process of creating psychological distance between the self and internal experiences (thoughts, emotions, sensations) such that the experiencer can observe these states as objects rather than being fused with them as identity or environment
Affect labeling
the specific cognitive act of assigning precise linguistic categories to emotional experiences, which recruits prefrontal regulatory circuits and reduces amygdala activity through the process of classification and differentiation
Goal
a cognitive object that exists as a written commitment with specific action, measurable outcome, and deadline, as opposed to an unexternalized mental impression that lacks specificity and is subject to cognitive limitations of working memory
Assumption
a cognitive premise that underlies a plan, decision, or belief, which exists implicitly in working memory until externalized and which, when left unexamined, can cause plan failure
Load-bearing assumption
an assumption that, if false, would cause a plan or decision to fail catastrophically, distinguished by both high importance and high vulnerability to being wrong
Assumption register
a written, persistent document that records all significant assumptions underlying a plan or decision, including their importance, uncertainty, validation status, and next actions for testing or monitoring
Identity-level goal
a goal that describes the kind of person one is becoming rather than just the outcome to be achieved, functioning as a self-concept model that serves as a decision filter
Commitment
a specific promise or agreement that, when unwritten, exists only in biological working memory and is vulnerable to structural failure from cognitive overload, while when externalized becomes a binding infrastructure visible, trackable, and resistant to drift between intention and action
Priority
a rank-ordered list of what matters most to an individual, which when internal exists only in fluctuating moods and contexts and is vulnerable to urgency bias, decision fatigue, and context-dependent retrieval, but when externalized becomes a stable reference point for decision-making and time allocation
Mental model
an internal representation of reality that mirrors the structure of external events and allows for anticipation of future outcomes, constructed through small-scale simulations that govern decision-making and filter perception
Externalized mental model
a mental model that has been rendered visible through spatial representation, making its entities, relationships, boundaries, and gaps explicit and inspectable rather than residing solely within consciousness
Blocker
an unnamed, unstructured obstacle that operates below the surface as a vague feeling of resistance, consuming cognitive resources, generating rumination loops, and preventing clear problem identification until it is explicitly named and externalized
Self-explanation
the cognitive process of actively generating explanations, connections, and questions about new information in your own words rather than passively consuming it, which leads to deeper understanding and mental model construction through the generation effect and elaborative interrogation mechanisms
Learning journal
a structured daily practice of writing about one thing you learned using a specific framework (claim, evidence, connection, question) that produces generative cognitive work rather than archival transcription, creating a compounding asset of durable knowledge through consistent externalization
Progress externalization
the practice of recording cognitive activities and outcomes in external systems to make invisible progress visible, reliable, and actionable, thereby countering internal cognitive distortions that make progress seem stagnant or insignificant
System documentation
the explicit, written description of the decisions, triggers, cadences, and routing rules that determine how information flows through a personal knowledge management system, distinguishing it from mere tool inventory or implicit habits
Extended mind
a cognitive system where external artifacts, tools, and social structures functionally distribute cognitive processes and constitute genuine parts of cognition itself when they play the same functional role as internal processes, rather than merely containing or storing information
A schema
a mental model that has been externalized, named, and structured so it can be examined, tested, and improved — turning invisible cognitive habit into visible cognitive infrastructure
Schema inspection
the process of surfacing, naming, writing down, and evaluating mental models to determine whether they actually serve you, requiring externalization through writing to make invisible schemas visible and subject to evaluation
Map-territory relation
the structural relationship where schemas are compressed representations of reality that necessarily discard information, with the compressed representation being structurally similar to the territory (making it useful) but never identical to it (making it incomplete)
Epistemic humility
the operational stance of actively calibrating confidence to evidence strength, acknowledging the limits of one's knowledge, and maintaining awareness of schema boundaries and specific wrongness