What is if-then planning psychology?

If-then planning psychology is a concept in personal epistemology: Cognitive agents are repeatable processes you design to handle recurring decisions.

Example: A product manager designs a meeting triage agent: "If I receive a meeting invite that has no agenda and no clear decision to be made, I decline with a one-line request for context." She did not decide this in the moment each time. She decided it once, encoded the trigger-condition-action pattern, and let the agent execute. Within two months, her calendar has twelve fewer hours of unproductive meetings per week — not because she became more assertive, but because she delegated the recurring decision to a designed process.

This concept is part of Phase 21 (Agent Fundamentals) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for agent fundamentals.