Recognize how context shapes what you perceive and how you interpret it.
Information has no inherent meaning. Meaning is constructed at the intersection of information and context. Change the context, and the same data, sentence, or signal means something entirely different.
Before interpreting any information, identify the relevant context. The same data, the same words, the same event will mean completely different things depending on where you are, who you are with, what you are trying to accomplish, and what just happened. If you do not ask "what context am I in?" before you interpret, you are letting your default context — the one your brain loaded automatically — do the interpreting for you. That default is often wrong.
When you change contexts you must deliberately load the relevant frame of reference.
Recording the context of a decision prevents future confusion about why you made it. Without a written record of the forces, constraints, and reasoning at the moment of choice, your future self — and everyone else — will reconstruct a fiction and call it memory.
Your cultural assumptions are invisible to you until you encounter a different culture.
What was true in one time period may not be true in another — always note the when.
Your emotional state when you perceive something becomes part of what you perceive.
Shared vocabulary does not guarantee shared meaning.
Online messages strip context that face-to-face communication provides automatically.
The structures and incentives of an organization determine individual action more than personality does.
Where you work physically changes how you think.
Who you are with when you process information influences what you conclude.
Understanding how you got here prevents you from making the same errors again.
You remember things better in the context where you learned them.
Always give your audience the context they need to interpret your message correctly.
When multiple contexts are active simultaneously identify which one is primary.
Information separated from its context becomes ambiguous or misleading.
When evaluating past decisions reconstruct the context that existed at the time.
Rather than relying on willpower create contexts that make desired behavior natural.
Practical wisdom — phronesis — is not the accumulation of knowledge or the mastery of rules. It is the ability to perceive what a situation demands and respond appropriately. Context sensitivity is not a component of wisdom. It is the mechanism through which wisdom operates.