Frequently asked questions about thinking, epistemology, and cognitive tools. 567 answers
Pick one metric you currently use to judge your own progress — at work, in a personal project, or in a habit. Ask three questions: (1) What behavior does this metric actually reward? (2) Is that behavior still aligned with the outcome I care about? (3) If I were gaming this metric, what would I do.
Conduct a Feedback Loop Audit of your life across four domains: work, learning, health, and relationships. For each domain: (1) Identify the feedback loops that currently exist — what signals do you actually collect, how often, and what do you do with them? (2) Rate each loop's latency — how long.
Pick one system you operate regularly — a workflow, a habit, a weekly process. Run it exactly as designed for three consecutive iterations (three days, three sessions, three cycles — whatever one iteration means for that system). After each iteration, write down every point where the system.
Pick three errors you have made in the past month — professional or personal. For each one, classify it: Was it an execution error (you knew what to do but failed in the doing)? A knowledge error (you lacked critical information)? A judgment error (you had the information but assessed it.
Identify one project or commitment you are currently in the middle of — something you have been working on for at least two weeks without external validation. Write down the three riskiest assumptions embedded in that project: the things that, if wrong, would invalidate the most work. For each.
Identify one error in your life that has happened at least three times in the past six months — a repeated conflict, a missed commitment, a recurring frustration, a process that keeps breaking. Write down every instance you can remember. For each instance, write the explanation you gave yourself.
Identify one recurring process in your life where you have made the same mistake more than once — a weekly report you submit, a deployment procedure, a packing routine before travel, a meeting you facilitate. Write a checklist of 5-10 items that captures every step you already know but sometimes.
Pick one decision you made in the past month that led to further downstream decisions — a commitment, a purchase, a delegation, a plan. Trace the chain forward: what subsequent actions depended on that initial choice? Now ask one question about the original decision: what assumption did it rest.
Recall the last error, failure, or missed expectation you were involved in — at work, in a personal project, or a habit that broke down. Write two columns on a page. In the left column, write the 'who' story: who was responsible, what they should have done differently, why they failed. In the.
Identify two commitments, habits, or rules you currently follow that have produced a conflict in the last month. Write each one as an explicit instruction — an if/then rule that an agent would follow. Now identify the exact situation where both rules applied simultaneously. Define the overlap:.
List three to five cognitive agents you currently run — recurring behavioral policies like 'stay healthy,' 'advance my career,' 'be a good parent,' 'protect my creative time,' 'maintain my social network.' Now identify two pairs where these agents regularly conflict. For each pair, write a single.
Identify a recurring multi-step cognitive process in your life — your weekly review, your project kickoff routine, your content creation workflow, your decision-making process for purchases over $500. List every distinct evaluation or judgment you make during that process. These are your agents..
Pick a complex project you are currently working on or planning — a product launch, a career transition, a home renovation, a research paper. List every task involved. For each task, answer one question: 'Does this task require the output of another task before it can begin?' Draw arrows from each.
Identify two or three agents — cognitive routines, tools, or processes — that you run regularly and that should inform each other but currently do not. Write down what each agent produces as output and what each agent would need as input to perform better. Then design a shared state artifact: a.
Identify two agents in your cognitive system that must hand off work to each other — for example, your research process handing off to your writing process, or your brainstorming agent handing off to your decision-making agent. Write down the current 'protocol' between them: what information does.
Identify a transition you make regularly — between deep work and meetings, between planning and execution, between research and writing, between your professional role and your personal life. For the next five days, insert a two-minute hand-off protocol at this transition point. Before you leave.
List every cognitive agent you currently operate — every recurring process, routine, habit, or subsystem that runs on a regular cycle. Aim for at least eight. Now, for each agent, answer two questions: (1) What does this agent need as input before it can run effectively? (2) What does this agent.
Identify a multi-step project you are currently working on — a content pipeline, a product launch, a home renovation, a course of study. Map the actual collaboration pattern in use. For each handoff between people or between your own cognitive agents, label it: is this a pipeline (sequential.
List every active cognitive agent you currently operate — every recurring commitment, routine, rule, habit, or automated behavior that runs with some regularity. For each one, rate three dimensions on a 1-to-5 scale: vigor (is it producing meaningful output?), organization (does it connect cleanly.
Identify one agent — a tool, habit, practice, or automated process — that you have been considering adding to your current system. Before adding it, write down: (1) every existing agent it will interact with, (2) the specific interaction channel for each (shared time, shared attention, shared.
Identify one cognitive agent — a habit, routine, process, or tool — that you have stopped using in the past year, or that you are considering retiring. Map its dependencies: list every other process, habit, or system that consumed its output, relied on its side effects, or assumed its existence..
Set a timer for thirty minutes. List every cognitive agent you currently operate — every recurring habit, routine, automated process, delegation, or structured practice. For each one, write down what it produces and what it consumes. Then draw the connections: which agent's output feeds into which.
Identify one domain where you perform with apparent ease — cooking a meal, running a meeting, writing a first draft, debugging code. Spend ten minutes decomposing that performance into its component agents: what sub-skills, heuristics, routines, and knowledge systems are active simultaneously?.
Make a list of every task you performed yesterday, from the moment you started working until you stopped. Next to each task, write one of three labels: ONLY ME (this genuinely requires my unique judgment or skill), COULD DELEGATE (someone or something else could do this at 80% or better quality),.