Frequently asked questions about thinking, epistemology, and cognitive tools. 567 answers
For the next seven days, carry a feedback log (digital note, physical notebook, or dedicated document). Every time someone gives you feedback — formal or informal, positive or negative, verbal or written — capture it within 60 minutes using five fields: (1) Date, (2) Source, (3) What they said (as.
Pick one failure from the last 90 days — a project that missed its goal, a conversation that went sideways, a decision you'd reverse. Write a structured post-mortem using the Five-Column Protocol described in this lesson. Time-box it to 30 minutes. When you're done, read it back and circle the one.
Choose one area where you are actively trying to improve — a skill, a habit, a project. Create a single document or spreadsheet with three columns: date, what you did, and what changed. Fill in the last seven days from memory (you will notice gaps — that is the point). From today forward, spend.
Audit your current thinking environment — both physical and digital. List every object within arm's reach and every application visible on your screen right now. For each item, answer: does this support the cognitive work I need to do, or does it compete for my attention? Remove or hide three.
Open a blank document titled 'How My System Works.' Write answers to these five questions: (1) Where does new information enter my system? (2) How do I decide what to keep versus discard? (3) What does my review cadence look like — daily, weekly, monthly? (4) How do I find something I captured.
Conduct the Phase 10 Integration Audit. For each of the twenty domains covered in this phase, answer the question: Is this domain currently externalized in my system? Use a three-point scale: (0) not externalized at all, (1) partially externalized or inconsistently captured, (2) systematically.
Identify one recurring decision you make at work or in life — how you choose what to work on first, how you evaluate whether a meeting was productive, how you decide what to read. Write down the rule you actually follow (not the rule you think you should follow). Name it: 'My [domain] schema.'.
Pick a domain you know well — your profession, a hobby, a subject you've studied deeply. Now find someone who knows nothing about it and show them the same stimulus you'd evaluate (a code review, a wine, a financial statement, a piece of music). Ask them what they notice. Write down their.
Pick one belief that strongly influences your daily behavior — about money, success, relationships, health, or work. Write it down as a single declarative sentence. Then answer three questions: (1) Where did this belief come from? Can you trace it to a specific person, institution, or cultural.
Pick one recurring decision you make — how you prioritize your morning tasks, how you evaluate whether a meeting is worth attending, or how you decide which emails to answer first. Write down the rule you're actually following (not the one you think you should follow). Then ask three questions:.
Pick one schema you use daily — an org chart, a system diagram, a mental model of how a colleague makes decisions, or your understanding of a market. Write down three things you know are true about the real territory that the schema does not capture. Then write down one decision you've made.
Pick one schema you use daily — a mental model, a planning framework, a personality type system, an architectural pattern. Write down three things it gets wrong or leaves out. Then write down three situations where it remains the most useful tool available despite those flaws. You now have a.
Choose a routine situation — your morning email triage, a weekly team meeting, or your commute. The next time you enter it, pause at the start and write down three predictions: what you expect to happen, who you expect to pay attention to, and what you expect to ignore. Then, after the situation.
Pick a domain you think about frequently — your career, a relationship, a technical system, your health. Write down the five words or phrases you use most when discussing it. For each one, ask: what does this word assume? What does it make easy to say, and what does it make hard to say? Identify.
Pick a decision you made recently on instinct — a hire, a design choice, a conversation you steered a certain way. Write down what you did and why it felt right. Now try to formalize the intuitive schema behind it: what pattern did you recognize? What prior experience generated that recognition?.
Pick a schema you rely on daily — how you evaluate people, how you assess risk, how you decide what to read. Write down the domain where you built it (the industry, relationships, or context where you learned it). Then list two domains where you've applied it without adjustment. For each, write.
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.
Review the schemas you have built or encountered across Phase 11. Choose three — one you constructed from scratch, one you inherited and inspected, and one you discovered was flawed. For each, write a one-paragraph retrospective: What did it organize? What did it reveal that was previously.
Pick one domain of your life you actively manage — your task list, your bookshelf, your notes, your contacts. Write down the categories you currently use. Then invent a completely different classification system for the same items — organize by urgency instead of project, by emotional weight.
Pick a category you use frequently — in your work, your note system, your daily language. It might be 'urgent,' 'technical debt,' 'A-player,' or 'healthy food.' Write down three things: (1) Who created this category? (2) What purpose does it serve? (3) What does it make invisible? If you struggle.
Pick one domain where you currently sort things without written criteria — your email folders, your project labels, your bookmarks, your reading list. Write down the actual categories you use. Then, for each category, write a one-sentence definition that would let someone else sort items the same.
Find a decision you recently made using binary framing — approved/rejected, good/bad, yes/no. Write down the actual factors that influenced your judgment. How many distinct dimensions did you compress into two buckets? Rewrite the decision using a scale (1-5 or 1-10) for each dimension. Notice.
Pick one area where you currently use a binary classification — a decision is good or bad, a project is on track or off track, a colleague is reliable or unreliable. Replace the binary with a 5-point scale. Write out what a 1, 3, and 5 look like. Notice what becomes visible at positions 2 and 4.
Pick one area of your knowledge system (notes, bookmarks, project files) that currently uses a flat list of categories. Restructure it into a three-level hierarchy: superordinate (broadest grouping), basic (the level you naturally think at), and subordinate (the most specific). Notice which level.