Frequently asked questions about thinking, epistemology, and cognitive tools. 604 answers
Identify one relationship where you hold back — where you censor yourself, manage the other person's emotions, or avoid difficult topics to keep the peace. Write down: (1) What am I not saying? (2) What boundary would I need in place to say it safely? (3) What does the boundary protect — in me,.
Pick one commitment you've made and broken in the last 90 days. Write down what happened the first time you skipped it. Identify the situational trigger: Was it fatigue? Competing demands? An environment that made the wrong choice easier than the right one? Now design one structural change — a.
Identify one commitment you've repeatedly failed to keep. Write down the specific moment where you break it — the trigger, the context, the emotional state. Now design a commitment device that makes that specific failure mode structurally impossible or costly. It could be financial (give a friend.
Choose one commitment you are actively working on — ideally one you have struggled to maintain. Tell one specific person about it today: what you will do, how often, and for how long. Ask them to check in with you at a defined interval (weekly is a good starting point). Write down the exact words.
Choose one commitment you've been carrying only in your head — a behavior change, a project deadline, a promise to yourself. Write it down on paper in specific, concrete terms: what you will do, when you will do it, and what counts as completion. Sign it and date it. Place it somewhere you'll see.
Map your five most reliable daily behaviors — the things you do every day without fail, without thinking, without any structural support. These are your anchors. Now identify one commitment you have been struggling to keep. Write a commitment stack in this format: 'After I [reliable anchor.
Take your single most important active commitment — the one you most want to follow through on. Write it down exactly as it currently lives in your head. Now score it on the five dimensions of scope: Does it specify when? Where? How much? How long? What counts as done? For every missing dimension,.
Conduct a full commitment audit. List every active commitment you are currently holding — professional, personal, creative, health, social, domestic. Include the ones you have been quietly failing at. For each commitment, estimate the weekly time cost (in hours) and the weekly cognitive cost (rate.
Conduct an overcommitment autopsy. List your last five instances of overcommitment — times you took on more than you could handle and either dropped something, delivered poorly, or burned yourself out to meet every obligation. For each instance, write down: (1) what you said yes to, (2) what you.
Identify one commitment you are currently maintaining primarily because of what you have already invested in it — time, money, reputation, emotional energy. Write down two lists side by side. List A: everything you have already put into this commitment (the sunk costs). List B: what continuing.
Choose one active commitment that you suspect may have already passed its expiration — a project, a relationship, a habit, a role, a subscription, a recurring obligation. Write down three conditions under which you would release this commitment. Be specific: use numbers, dates, or observable.
List every active commitment in your life — professional, personal, relational, creative, health, financial. For each one, answer this question honestly: 'If I were not already doing this, knowing what I know now, would I start it today?' Mark each commitment as RENEW (yes, with fresh energy),.
Write down the three commitments you have kept most consistently over the past year — the ones you rarely skip, the ones that feel non-negotiable. Now complete this sentence for each: 'I keep this commitment because I am the kind of person who ___.' Notice how naturally the identity statement.
Choose a goal you have been stalling on — one that feels too large to start or too complex to sustain. Write it down in its current form. Now decompose it into the smallest daily action that would constitute genuine progress. The micro-commitment must pass three tests: (1) it takes less than.
Choose one commitment that matters deeply to you but that you struggle to execute consistently. Design a commitment ritual for it using four elements: (1) a trigger — a specific time, event, or environmental cue that initiates the ritual; (2) a preparation sequence — two to four physical actions.
Identify one commitment you have broken or abandoned in the last six months. Write a brief failure analysis using four questions: (1) What specifically broke — the behavior, the conditions, or the commitment design itself? (2) What was the triggering event that caused the first lapse? (3) What was.
Build and execute your first commitment review right now. Step one: create a single document listing every active commitment you are currently holding — professional, personal, creative, health, relational, financial, domestic. Include commitments you are keeping and commitments you are failing.
Create a two-column document. In the left column, list your five to seven deepest values — not goals, not aspirations, but the qualities and directions that matter to you regardless of outcome. Use Schwartz's value domains as prompts if needed: self-direction, stimulation, hedonism, achievement,.
Map your complete commitment architecture. For each active commitment, fill in this diagnostic: (1) What commitment device supports it? (L-0663) (2) What implementation intention triggers it? (L-0666) (3) What is it stacked onto? (L-0667) (4) Is the scope defined with all five dimensions? (L-0668).
Track your next full workday in two columns. In the left column, log every task you work on and when you started it. In the right column, note what triggered you to start: was it a notification, an email, a request from someone, an internal feeling of anxiety, or a deliberate decision based on.
Open your task list, calendar, or inbox. Pick the ten most recent items you acted on. For each one, answer two questions independently: (1) Did this have a real deadline or time constraint? (2) Does this directly advance a goal I care about in six months? Mark each item U for urgent, I for.
List every task, commitment, and open loop you are carrying right now — aim for at least fifteen items. Draw a 2x2 grid. Label the axes Urgent/Not Urgent and Important/Not Important. Place each item in a quadrant. Then count: how many items landed in Q2 (important but not urgent)? How many hours.
Write down every commitment, project, or goal you are currently treating as a priority. Do not filter — capture everything that occupies your attention and energy. Now force-rank the entire list from most important to least important. No ties. No categories. No 'these are all equally important.'.
Identify your current top five priorities — the ones you ranked in L-0684. Now apply the focusing question to that list: 'What is the ONE thing I can do today such that by doing it everything else becomes easier or unnecessary?' Write down the answer. Then ask the question again for this week. And.