The irreducible epistemic atoms underlying the curriculum. 4,828 atoms across 8 types and 2 molecules
Include failed experiments prominently in reviews because they reveal consistent blind spots and structural constraints that successes mask.
Commit to the experimental process itself rather than to specific behavioral configurations to build antifragility against contextual change.
Treat disruptions to established behaviors as unplanned experiments that reveal which elements were robust versus fragile.
Create pre-commitments with sufficient irreversibility or friction that reversal costs more willpower than compliance.
When your body signals conflict with your intellectual conclusion, investigate the conflict rather than dismissing either source—the divergence indicates unmapped territory.
Deliberately cultivate positive emotional experiences during recovery periods because positive emotions broaden cognition and restore the psychological resources that self-regulation depletes.
Design environments and cognitive framings that prevent competing impulses from arising, rather than developing stronger resistance to present impulses, because prevention eliminates the self-regulatory cost entirely while resistance merely manages it.
Classify every willpower expenditure as either irreducible (requiring genuine judgment) or operational (automatable) — systematically eliminate operational expenditures.
Design interventions at the earliest possible point in the desire-behavior cascade — situation selection is cheaper than response inhibition.
Under stress, downgrade to simplified behavioral protocols with lower cognitive demands rather than attempting to maintain full systems through willpower.
Identity-level behavioral anchors eliminate decision-making costs by converting 'should I?' questions into 'is this who I am?' consistency checks.
Temptation proximity creates continuous willpower drain through repeated micro-resistances even when resistance succeeds — removal eliminates the drain entirely.
Stress both increases willpower demand and decreases willpower supply simultaneously, creating a multiplicative deficit that breaks willpower-dependent systems.
Design behavioral systems to function at 50% of normal willpower capacity to ensure stress-resilience.
Use noun-based framing ('be a helper') rather than verb-based framing ('help') to activate consistency mechanisms and increase behavioral stability.
Before responding to challenges, take five seconds to name your defensive urge ('I notice I want to protect my solution') to create a gap between observation and conclusion.
Treat each behavior as contributing evidence to a statistical distribution of identity rather than as a pass/fail identity test.
Engineer situations to cast identity votes automatically rather than relying on conscious choice at each decision point.
Craft identity statements at the edge of plausibility - aspirational enough to pull behavior forward, close enough to current reality that the brain accepts the claim as directionally true.
Pair identity statements with minimal but consistent behavioral evidence to create self-reinforcing feedback loops between claim and action.
Trace identity narratives to their origin evidence to reveal how thin the evidentiary foundation often is beneath long-held characterological conclusions.
Apply the double-standard test to identity narratives by imagining a friend held the same story - standards you would reject for others often govern your own self-concept.
When obstacles arise, frame them as identity-consistency tests ('people like me do hard things') rather than cost-benefit calculations to shift the decision criterion.
During identity transitions, construct and inhabit provisional selves experimentally rather than waiting to discover your 'true identity' before acting, allowing identity to emerge from behavior rather than dictating behavior from identity.