Frequently asked questions about thinking, epistemology, and cognitive tools. 604 answers
Choose one workflow you perform regularly. Write down, explicitly, the complete input specification: every piece of information, every material, every precondition that must be true before the first step can execute. Then write the complete output specification: the concrete deliverable, its.
Choose a workflow that involves at least one handoff — work passing from you to another person, from one tool to another, or from your present self to your future self (a project you set down and pick up later). Map every handoff point in that workflow. For each handoff, answer four questions: (1).
Pick one workflow you execute at least weekly. For the next three executions, record four numbers: (1) cycle time — wall-clock minutes from start to finish, (2) touch time — minutes you were actively working versus waiting, (3) error count — how many times you had to redo, correct, or recover from.
Pick a workflow you executed this week — a meeting you ran, a document you produced, a deployment you shipped. Write down three sentences: what the workflow is, how long it took, and one specific friction point you noticed. Now write one change you will make next time to address that friction. Do.
Pick one recurring task type in your life — writing, exercise, cooking, problem-solving, or decision-making. List three to five different contexts in which you perform that task (varying by urgency, stakes, energy level, environment, or audience). For each context, write a one-paragraph.
Open a new document or note and title it 'Workflow Library v1.' Create three sections: Daily (workflows you run every day or almost every day), Recurring (weekly, monthly, quarterly), and Situational (triggered by specific events or contexts). Under each section, list every workflow you can recall.
Choose one complex process you perform regularly — something that takes more than an hour and involves multiple distinct phases. Decompose it into the smallest independent workflows you can identify. For each sub-workflow, write its input specification and its output specification. Then verify the.
Make a list of every workflow you currently run — formal or informal, work or personal, daily or quarterly. For each one, answer three questions: When did I last execute this? Is there a step that no longer makes sense? Is there a recurring task I do that has no workflow at all? Based on your.
Select one workflow you have refined through repeated practice — something you do well enough that it feels automatic. Write it out as if you were handing it to a competent colleague who has never done this task before. Include every step, every tool, every decision point, and — critically — the.
This is the capstone exercise. It is larger than any single exercise in this phase, because it synthesizes the entire arc. First, inventory every workflow you created, documented, or improved during Phase 41. List them. For each one, note its current state: is it still active? Has it been.
This is the first exercise in Phase 42, and it establishes the diagnostic baseline for everything that follows. For three consecutive workdays this week, track every thirty-minute block of your waking hours. Do not change your behavior — simply observe and record. For each block, note what you.
Build your first ideal week template. Use a blank weekly grid — seven columns, waking hours as rows, each cell representing roughly one hour. Begin by placing the immovable commitments: the meetings you cannot move, the obligations that are genuinely fixed. These are your geological features — the.
For one full work week, conduct a maker-time audit. Each day, identify your longest intended block of uninterrupted creative or analytical work. At the start of that block, note the time. Each time you are interrupted — by a notification, a message, a person, or your own impulse to check something.
Audit your last five workdays. For each day, mark every hour as M (manager mode — meetings, coordination, emails, decisions) or K (maker mode — deep work, writing, coding, designing). Then count your longest unbroken K-streak each day. If it's under three hours on most days, your schedule is.
Audit your calendar for the past week. Identify every point where one activity ended and a different type of activity began with zero transition time — meeting into deep work, deep work into a call, creative work into administrative work. Count these back-to-back transitions. For each one,.
For the next five working days, keep a simple energy log. Set three alarms — at 10 AM, 2 PM, and 7 PM — and when each one fires, rate your mental sharpness on a scale of one to five and note what type of work you are doing. At the end of the five days, lay the fifteen data points side by side. You.
Choose five tasks you plan to complete this week. Before starting each one, write down three estimates: your optimistic time (everything goes perfectly), your realistic time (normal conditions), and your pessimistic time (things go wrong). Use the PERT formula to calculate a weighted estimate:.
Pick a project or task you are currently planning. Write down your gut estimate for how long it will take. Now find three to five comparable past projects — yours or others' — and record how long each actually took from start to finish. Calculate the average actual duration and compare it to your.
Open your current task list, project board, or backlog. Go through every item and estimate — honestly, without rounding up — how long each one would actually take to complete. Mark every item that falls under two minutes. Now set a timer and dispatch them all, one after another, without pausing to.
Identify three to five categories of small, recurring tasks that you currently handle as they arrive — email, Slack messages, administrative approvals, filing, errands, phone calls, social media responses. For one full week, instead of handling them on arrival, capture each one into a simple list.
Select three meetings from your calendar this week. For each one, answer four questions before the meeting starts: What is the specific purpose of this meeting — what decision needs to be made or what problem needs to be solved? What is the agenda — the ordered list of topics with time.
Run a seven-day time audit starting tomorrow. Use thirty-minute intervals from the time you wake up until the time you go to sleep. For each block, record two things: what you actually did (not what you planned to do), and whether that activity serves one of your top three stated priorities for.
Return to the time audit data you gathered in L-0833. If you have not completed that audit, do so first — this exercise requires real data, not estimates. Review every activity from your audit week and assign each one to exactly one of five categories: eliminate (stop doing this entirely — it.
Identify the single activity in your life where consistent daily output would produce the most cumulative value over the next twelve months — writing, practicing an instrument, exercising, coding a side project, studying a subject, whatever it is. Now design a routine container for that activity.