Frequently asked questions about thinking, epistemology, and cognitive tools. 1490 answers
A failure you analyze in writing becomes data. A failure you only remember becomes shame.
Record not just what you decided but why — because your future self will rewrite the reasoning after the fact, and you will never notice it happening.
Pick one decision you made in the last week — what to work on, which tool to use, whether to attend a meeting, anything. Write a five-line decision record: (1) What you decided. (2) What alternatives you considered. (3) What information you had. (4) What you were optimizing for. (5) What would.
Documenting only the conclusion without the context. Writing 'We chose React' tells future-you nothing. Writing 'We chose React because the team already knows it, the timeline was six weeks, and we valued shipping speed over long-term performance' tells future-you everything. The decision without.
The most valuable thing to capture is why you chose what you chose. Decisions decay faster than facts — and unlike facts, they cannot be reconstructed after the outcome is known.
The act of writing generates new thoughts rather than merely documenting existing ones. Writing is not transcription — it is the primary mechanism through which vague intuitions become precise understanding.
If processing an item takes less than two minutes, do it immediately — deferring it costs more than completing it.
Process your current inbox — email, notes app, physical papers, whatever contains unprocessed items. For each item, ask one question: 'Can I complete this in under two minutes?' If yes, do it immediately and move to the next item. If no, defer it (add it to your task list, calendar, or reference.
Using the two-minute rule as a license for reactivity — doing every small thing that crosses your path all day long, instead of applying the rule during dedicated processing sessions. David Allen was explicit: the rule applies when you are processing your inbox, not when you are doing focused.
If processing an item takes less than two minutes, do it immediately — deferring it costs more than completing it.
New captures go to a hot inbox — only processed items move to permanent storage. The separation protects both speed of capture and integrity of storage.
Audit your current system. Open whatever tool you use for notes, tasks, or ideas. Can you identify a clear boundary between unprocessed captures and permanent storage? If everything lives in one undifferentiated space, create a separation right now: make an 'Inbox' note, folder, or tag. For the.
Mixing hot and cold in one container. Your permanent notes become polluted with half-formed fragments. Your inbox accumulates hundreds of items that were supposed to be temporary but became permanent by neglect. You stop trusting your system because you cannot tell what has been processed and what.
New captures go to a hot inbox — only processed items move to permanent storage. The separation protects both speed of capture and integrity of storage.
You overestimate the likelihood of events you can easily recall examples of. The availability heuristic substitutes the question "how frequent is this?" with the question "how easily can I think of an example?" — and the substitution happens below conscious awareness, which means you feel like you.
The most valuable thing to capture is why you chose what you chose. Decisions decay faster than facts — and unlike facts, they cannot be reconstructed after the outcome is known.
An unnamed pattern is invisible — naming it makes it manipulable.
Regularly audit what you consume and cut sources that produce more noise than signal. Without scheduled review, your information environment silently degrades — and you adapt to the noise without noticing.
Every pattern has a trigger — identifying the trigger is the key to changing the pattern.
Pick one pattern you want to change. Over the next three days, every time the behavior fires, immediately write down: (1) what time it is, (2) where you are, (3) who is around you, (4) what you were doing right before, (5) what emotion you were feeling. After three days, look at your logs. The.
Trying to change the behavior without identifying the trigger first. You white-knuckle through willpower for a week, then the trigger fires when you're tired and the pattern returns at full strength. The pattern isn't the enemy. The unidentified trigger is.
Every pattern has a trigger — identifying the trigger is the key to changing the pattern.
A note that captures exactly one idea can be understood without its original context, linked to any argument, and recombined indefinitely — a note that captures two ideas can do none of these things reliably.
Open your notes app and find a note you wrote more than three months ago. Read it cold, as if someone else wrote it. Can you understand what it means, why you wrote it, and what you were supposed to do with it — without opening any other document? If not, rewrite it right now: add the source, the.