Frequently asked questions about thinking, epistemology, and cognitive tools. 1490 answers
Surprise indicates a gap between your model and reality — always worth noting.
Place capture tools where you will see and use them without having to remember. The best capture system is one your environment triggers automatically — not one that depends on willpower or recall.
You wake each day with a limited reservoir of focused attention — roughly three to four hours of genuine deep work — that depletes with every act of sustained concentration and cannot be refilled by willpower alone.
Identify when you are sharpest and guard those hours for your most demanding work.
Without deliberate structure your attention will scatter to whatever is most stimulating.
Every notification you allow is an attention tax — audit ruthlessly.
Boredom is not the absence of stimulation — it is a self-regulatory signal that your attention is misallocated relative to your current skill level, values, or goals.
For the next five days, every time you notice boredom — restlessness, the urge to check your phone, mental wandering during a task — pause and log three things: (1) what you were doing, (2) your skill level for that task on a 1-10 scale, and (3) the challenge level of the task on a 1-10 scale. At.
Treating every instance of boredom as a sign you need more stimulation — switching to your phone, opening a new browser tab, seeking novelty. This is the most common misread. Boredom is a diagnostic signal, not a prescription for distraction. If you reflexively reach for stimulation every time.
Boredom is not the absence of stimulation — it is a self-regulatory signal that your attention is misallocated relative to your current skill level, values, or goals.
When genuinely curious you focus effortlessly — use this as a task design principle.
Most people are wrong about how they spend their attention — measure it.
Practice describing facts before applying labels like good bad right or wrong.
Practice describing facts before applying labels like good bad right or wrong.
Facts are observable events — stories are the narratives you construct around them.
Facts are observable events — stories are the narratives you construct around them.
Evaluation has its place — after you have thoroughly observed.
Evaluation has its place — after you have thoroughly observed.
Evaluations you make so often that you no longer notice them are the most dangerous.
Every pattern has a trigger — identifying the trigger is the key to changing the pattern.
Patterns in how your patterns form and dissolve — meta-patterns — are especially valuable.
Your past successes share common elements that you can deliberately replicate.
Your past successes share common elements that you can deliberately replicate.
Your past successes share common elements that you can deliberately replicate.