Concepts
The irreducible epistemic atoms underlying the curriculum. 4,828 atoms across 8 types
Cognitive agent system
a self-regulating, self-producing cognitive system composed of interconnected agents with explicit triggers, conditions, and actions, operating through feedback loops, schemas, and self-monitoring mechanisms that maintain and evolve the system over time
Environmental triggers
physical cues in your environment that activate behavior more reliably than mental intentions because they operate through perception rather than memory retrieval and do not compete for cognitive bandwidth
Implementation intentions
pre-committed if-then plans that bind specific environmental situations or temporal moments to desired behaviors, creating heightened perceptual readiness for the specified cue and shifting processing from top-down to bottom-up execution
Event-based trigger
a behavioral cue that fires when a specific, observable event occurs rather than when a particular time is reached, leveraging environmental signals to automatically retrieve stored intentions without requiring self-monitoring or external reminders
Emotional trigger
a specific, detectable emotional state that serves as the activation signal for a pre-designed agent, where the emotion itself (not an external event) initiates the response sequence
Interoception
the perceptual skill of detecting and interpreting internal bodily signals, which enables the recognition of emotional states as they arise and forms the foundation for using emotions as reliable triggers in behavioral design
Chained trigger
a sequence of behavioral links where the completion of one agent becomes the trigger for the next agent in the sequence, creating a self-sustaining behavioral cascade that converts multiple decisions into a single initial activation
Trigger
a contextual cue placed in an environment that intercepts a behavioral decision point at the moment a behavior needs to begin, requiring no retrieval effort and appearing without conscious seeking to initiate automatic behavior execution
Social trigger
a person or relationship that serves as an activation mechanism for behavior through social presence, physiological arousal, and reputational cost, operating through fundamentally different mechanisms than digital or environmental triggers
Trigger fatigue
the state where a trigger system produces so many signals that the brain stops distinguishing between them, leading to reflexive dismissal, desensitization, and ultimately systemic numbness to all triggers as a category
Trigger audit
a periodic, systematic review of every trigger in one's behavioral infrastructure to determine which are still firing, which are stale, which need recalibration, and which should be retired entirely
Progressive trigger refinement
the iterative process of starting with broad, general triggers and gradually narrowing them based on observed performance data to produce high-precision behavioral activation cues
Decision framework
a pre-computed resolution for a recurring decision type that eliminates unnecessary re-deliberation and reduces cognitive cost by automating routine decisions, allowing full cognitive capacity to be preserved for genuinely novel or high-stakes choices
Decision type
a recurring structural pattern in decision-making that can be recognized and categorized based on shared variables, constraints, and optimal processes, enabling the application of pre-designed frameworks rather than ad hoc reasoning
Weighted decision matrix
a structured decision-making framework that externalizes priorities by systematically weighting criteria and scoring options across those criteria to make visible the structure of judgment and enable examination of trade-offs rather than replacing intuitive evaluation
Satisficing
the decision-making strategy of searching until finding an option that meets a minimum acceptable threshold and then stopping, rather than exhaustively searching for the optimal solution
Pre-commitment
a decision framework that involves deciding in advance what you will do in a specific situation to remove in-the-moment temptation and structural constraint, where the future self's decision-making capacity is compromised by different neurochemistry, time horizons, and emotional pressures
Hindsight bias
the systematic distortion of memory where people overestimate how predictable an outcome was from the start once they know what happened, causing them to reconstruct their past beliefs and reasoning in light of new information
Decision delegation criteria
explicit structural filters that sort decisions into three categories: those you must make yourself, those you should delegate to others, and those that should be automated or defaulted
Consent-based decision making
a group decision framework where a proposal passes when no one can articulate a principled objection to it, rather than requiring unanimous agreement or majority vote
Regret minimization framework
a decision-making approach that resolves uncertainty by asking which choice would produce the least regret when evaluated from a future self's perspective, rather than optimizing for expected value or other analytical criteria
Kill criterion
a specific, pre-committed condition under which you will abandon a course of action — defined when you're calm, clear-eyed, and not yet invested, serving as the epistemic equivalent of a circuit breaker that trips automatically when conditions exceed safe thresholds, regardless of how you feel when it fires
Decision speed as a variable
the deliberate choice of how quickly to make a decision, determined by the reversibility, stakes, and cost of delay for that specific decision, rather than applying uniform deliberation time to all decisions
Leading indicator
a measurable input, behavior, or condition that predicts an outcome before that outcome materializes, enabling real-time intervention and action