Frequently asked questions about thinking, epistemology, and cognitive tools. 1647 answers
Too many agents create coordination overhead that can exceed their collective value.
Your habits and automatic reactions are agents that were installed without your conscious input.
Every agent has a trigger that activates it, a condition that validates it, and an action it takes.
Pick one recurring decision you make on autopilot — what to eat for lunch, whether to check your phone when it buzzes, how to respond when a meeting runs over. Decompose it into its three components: (1) What triggers it? Name the specific situational cue. (2) What condition validates it? What.
Building agents with missing components. A trigger without a condition fires indiscriminately — you respond to every notification regardless of context. A condition without a trigger never activates — you have a brilliant rule that waits forever for a cue you never specified. An action without a.
Every agent has a trigger that activates it, a condition that validates it, and an action it takes.
Agents for sleep exercise nutrition and stress management decisions.
Agents for sleep exercise nutrition and stress management decisions.
Designing agents for your own cognition is applying systems design to the most important system you manage.
Linking an agent to a specific event like arriving at work or opening your laptop.
Linking an agent to a specific event like arriving at work or opening your laptop.
Linking an agent to a specific event like arriving at work or opening your laptop.
Too sensitive and the agent fires too often — too insensitive and it never fires.
Combining multiple trigger conditions for higher-specificity activation.
Position trigger cues where you will encounter them at the right moment.
Alarms, notifications, and calendar events as systematic trigger mechanisms.
Regularly review your triggers to ensure they are still relevant and well-calibrated.
Most decisions you face are variations of types you have encountered before.
Most decisions you face are variations of types you have encountered before.
Most decisions you face are variations of types you have encountered before.
Weight your criteria and score options systematically when multiple factors matter.
Spend minimal time on easily reversible decisions and maximum time on irreversible ones.
Audit the last ten decisions you spent significant time on. For each one, classify it: Was the decision reversible (you could undo it within days or weeks at low cost), partially reversible (you could undo it but with meaningful cost or friction), or irreversible (once done, the path back is.
Treating every decision as irreversible. You research restaurant choices for an hour. You agonize over which color to paint the guest bedroom. You build a spreadsheet comparing five nearly identical software subscriptions. Meanwhile, the actually irreversible decisions — career changes, long-term.