Frequently asked questions about thinking, epistemology, and cognitive tools. 1431 answers
Your model of how change happens determines how you approach change.
Your model of how change happens determines how you approach change.
Write down how you believe personal change works. Not how you think it should work — how you actually operate when you try to change a habit, a belief, or a pattern. Do you assume change happens in a single decision? Gradually through repetition? Only through crisis? Through deliberate practice?.
Holding a single schema about change and applying it to every domain. Believing all change is gradual leads to passivity when decisive action is required. Believing all change is sudden leads to impatience with processes that genuinely require sustained iteration. The failure is not having the.
Your model of how change happens determines how you approach change.
Your default assumptions about human nature shape every interaction.
Your default assumptions about human nature shape every interaction.
Your self-model is the most consequential schema you maintain.
Your self-model is the most consequential schema you maintain.
Your self-model is the most consequential schema you maintain.
How you model time determines how you plan and prioritize.
How you model time determines how you plan and prioritize.
How you model time determines how you plan and prioritize.
Write down three major decisions you made in the last six months. For each one, identify the time schema that drove it. Were you optimizing for a deadline (linear/chronos)? Waiting for the right moment (cyclical/kairos)? Avoiding a future you feared (past-negative projection)? Chasing a reward.
Believing you think about time objectively while actually running a single inherited schema on autopilot. The most common version: treating all tasks as linear-deadline problems ('when is this due?') while never asking the kairos question ('when is this ripe?'). You optimize for on-time delivery.
How you model time determines how you plan and prioritize.
Your risk model determines what you attempt and what you avoid.
Your risk model determines what you attempt and what you avoid.
Your epistemology — your theory of knowledge — is the meta-schema that governs all others.
Write down your answers to these four questions: (1) Can knowledge be certain, or is all knowledge provisional? (2) Is knowledge something you receive from authorities or something you construct through experience? (3) Is the world fundamentally simple and knowable, or complex and partially.
Treating your epistemology as invisible — assuming you're just 'seeing the world as it is' rather than seeing it through a specific theory of what counts as knowledge. This is the most dangerous meta-schema to leave unexamined because it's the one deciding what evidence you accept, what arguments.
Your epistemology — your theory of knowledge — is the meta-schema that governs all others.
Not all sources of schemas are equally reliable — evaluate where your models come from.
Not all sources of schemas are equally reliable — evaluate where your models come from.