How do I practice cognitive inertia?

The most direct way to practice cognitive inertia is through a focused exercise: Identify one schema you currently operate on that you've never explicitly tested. Write it down as a single declarative sentence (e.g., 'My team values autonomy over guidance' or 'Our customers buy on price'). Now list three decisions you've made in the last month that this schema influenced. For each decision, ask: if the schema were wrong, what would I have done differently? If the answers diverge significantly from what you actually did, you've found a schema worth auditing.

Common pitfall: Treating this lesson as an indictment of other people's schemas while exempting your own. The most expensive bad schemas are the ones you've held so long they feel like reality rather than interpretation. If you finish this lesson thinking 'I see how others fall into this trap,' you've demonstrated the exact cognitive inertia this lesson describes.

This practice connects to Phase 11 (Schema Foundations) — building it as a repeatable habit compounds over time.