Concepts
The irreducible epistemic atoms underlying the curriculum. 4,828 atoms across 8 types
Directed Attention as Depletable Resource
Human focused attention and deliberate cognitive processing draw from a finite biological resource that depletes with sustained use across all acts of executive function (decision-making, self-control, effortful processing) and cannot be restored through willpower alone, requiring specific recovery conditions including rest, nature exposure, or low-demand automatic processing.
Attention as Gate to Conscious Perception
Attention is capacity-limited such that focus on selected stimuli creates perceptual blindness to unattended information, even when that information is salient and within the sensory field; conscious perception requires directed attention as a necessary precondition.
Goals as Perceptual Filters
Goals function as perceptual filters that determine relevance by defining signal-detection criteria before information reaches conscious awareness, making relevance a goal-relative property rather than an intrinsic feature of information.
Global-to-Local Perceptual Processing
Human visual perception processes global structure before local details.
Filter thoughts by 'which is newest?' not 'which…
Replace emotional intensity as your thought-filtering criterion with informational value by asking 'which thought is newest?' and 'which thought changes what I should do?' rather than 'which thought is loudest?'
Track which inbox items truly needed real-time response…
Track which inbox items actually required real-time response rather than batch-window response to gather evidence about whether continuous processing is truly necessary for your role.
Batch shallow work outside your peak hours, not throughout…
Batch all shallow work—email, Slack, administrative tasks, routine meetings—into time blocks outside your measured biological prime time rather than distributing them throughout the day.
Write a one-minute ready-to-resume note before every task…
Before switching from any unfinished task, write a one-minute ready-to-resume note specifying: where you stopped, what remains unresolved, and the next concrete action you will take when returning.
Put your phone in another room during deep work…
Place your phone in a different room, drawer, or timed lockbox during deep work blocks, not merely flipped over on your desk, to eliminate both visual cues and immediate retrieval affordances.
Disable app notifications that produced no valuable action…
For every app on every device, apply the 30-day action criterion: if no notification in the past month caused an action you're glad you took, disable notifications for that app immediately.
Limit immediate notifications to 5 sources — batch…
Classify notification sources into three tiers—Tier 1 immediate (5 or fewer total), Tier 2 batched (checked on schedule), Tier 3 eliminated (disabled entirely)—and configure each source according to its tier within 24 hours of classification.
Remove badge counters from all apps except your top 5…
Remove notification badge counters for all apps except Tier 1 immediate-response sources to eliminate visual triggers that create psychological open loops independent of notification content.
Insert 5-minute transition buffers between all calendar…
Insert five-minute transition buffers between all calendar blocks—meetings, deep work sessions, any context shifts—using those minutes to close the previous context and orient to the next rather than scheduling back-to-back commitments.
Write for three minutes after charged interactions before…
After emotionally charged interactions—difficult conversations, stressful emails, frustrating exchanges—take three minutes to write what happened, what you felt, and what (if anything) needs to happen next before switching to analytical work.
Take soft-fascination breaks (walking, nature)…
Structure breaks between time-boxes with activities providing soft fascination (nature, walking, distant gaze) rather than hard stimulation (social media, news, email) to enable genuine deactivation of the attentional goal and prevent false breaks that drain the same resource you're trying to restore.
Measure meditation success by detection speed, not drift…
Begin focused-attention meditation with 10-minute daily sessions targeting detection speed (time between drift and noticing) rather than drift frequency (number of wanderings), because faster noticing is the trainable skill while reduced wandering is a late-stage outcome requiring months of practice.
Note, release, return — treat each wandering-catch cycle…
When your mind wanders during meditation, execute a three-step micro-protocol: (1) mentally note what pulled attention away without elaborating, (2) release it without judgment, and (3) return to the chosen anchor, treating each completed cycle as one successful repetition of attention training rather than recovery from failure.
End deep work sessions with a 2-5 minute shutdown ritual…
End every deep work session with a 2-5 minute shutdown ritual that reviews accomplishments, documents next steps, and closes all open cognitive loops before transitioning to other activities.
Multi-domain cognitive difficulty signals attention debt…
When experiencing chronic difficulty with complex cognitive tasks across multiple domains simultaneously, diagnose for attention debt rather than domain-specific skill gaps, because attentional degradation produces domain-general impairment that mimics multiple independent deficiencies.
Apply the two-hour test to urgency
When something arrives marked urgent, apply the two-hour test by asking what happens if you address it in two hours instead of immediately—if the answer is 'nothing changes,' defer it.
Tier your information sources
Create a three-tier source hierarchy—5-10 daily sources (Tier 1), 10-20 weekly sources (Tier 2), everything else checked only on specific need (Tier 3)—and review monthly, demoting sources that haven't changed your thinking.
Track every urgent-feeling demand for a week — your false…
Run a daily urgency log for one week, recording every urgent-feeling demand with timestamp, then scoring each on actual time-sensitivity and impact-if-delayed-two-hours to build calibration data on false urgency rates.
Filter messages by 'does this serve my goal?' — skip…
When scanning incoming messages with a defined goal, ask whether each item directly serves that goal—if yes process it, if no skip/archive/batch it—and do not evaluate whether it's 'interesting' or 'might be useful someday.'
Delegate peripheral scanning to AI, reserve deep attention…
Use AI to scan peripheral domains weekly and deliver filtered summaries, while reserving human attention for 2-3 deep engagements per week in your core signal domains.