Frequently asked questions about thinking, epistemology, and cognitive tools. 190 answers
Identify one schema you currently hold that feels slightly wrong — not catastrophically broken, just a little off. Perhaps your model of what motivates a colleague, or your assumption about how long creative work takes you, or your belief about what makes a productive morning. Write down the.
Map your current worldview. Pick a decision you recently made and trace backward: what schemas did you draw on? Write each one down (e.g., 'people respond to incentives,' 'complex systems fail at boundaries,' 'first impressions are unreliable'). Now draw the connections — which schemas reinforce.
Identify one belief you've recently updated. Write down three situations where your old belief gave you a correct prediction. Now test: does your new belief also give correct predictions for those same situations? If not, your new schema isn't backwards compatible — it's just different, not.
Conduct a "cognitive extension audit." First, identify one complex decision or problem you solved recently. Reconstruct the process: what information did you access, where was it stored, and how did you navigate between pieces? Map the information flow — what lived in your head, what lived in.
Set a 30-minute timer. List every schema you can identify that governs how you make decisions in your primary domain — career, relationships, health, money, or craft. For each one, write: (1) the schema as a single sentence, (2) where you acquired it, (3) when you last tested or updated it, and.
Pick one of your strongest held beliefs — about work, relationships, or how you learn. Write it down as a schema: 'I believe X because Y.' Now write the meta-schema: 'The way I arrived at this belief was by Z.' Then write the meta-meta-schema: 'I trust method Z because...' Stop when you either hit.
Open your knowledge system and pick two domains you work in that feel separate — say, management and biology, or cooking and systems design. Spend 15 minutes looking for a concept that maps cleanly from one to the other. Write it as an explicit bridge node with typed links to both domains. If you.
List five schemas you actively use — beliefs, decision rules, heuristics, values. Write each on a separate line. Now draw connections between each pair: does schema A support, contradict, or ignore schema B? Mark every contradiction. For each contradiction, write one sentence that resolves the.
Pick three people you interact with regularly — a colleague, a family member, a friend. For each, write down your default assumption about their motivation. Not what they do, but why you assume they do it. ('She argues because she needs to be right.' 'He's quiet because he doesn't care.' 'They.
Pick one decision you've been avoiding or delaying. Write down the risk as you currently perceive it — what could go wrong, how bad it would be, how likely it is. Now rewrite the same risk through three different lenses: (1) What is the cost of inaction — what happens if you do nothing for another.
Open your note system and find two notes you believe are related but haven't explicitly linked. Before creating the link, write one sentence describing the relationship: what exactly connects these two ideas? Now create the link with that sentence as the anchor text or annotation. You've just.
Open your knowledge system — Obsidian, Notion, a folder of text files, whatever you use. Find every note with zero links in either direction. Sort them into three piles: (1) connect — the idea is valuable and you can link it to at least two existing notes right now, (2) incubate — the idea might.
Choose three domains of knowledge you have studied or practiced — they could be professional skills, academic subjects, philosophical frameworks, or practical disciplines. Write each one on a separate card or page. Now attempt integration in explicit stages. Stage 1: Pick any two domains and.
List three to five schemas you are currently trying to integrate into a coherent framework — beliefs about work, relationships, learning, or any domain where you are actively building understanding. For each schema, rate on a scale of 1 to 5 how easily it connects to the others (1 = constant.
Identify one recurring decision you make at work or in life — how you choose what to work on first, how you evaluate whether a meeting was productive, how you decide what to read. Write down the rule you actually follow (not the rule you think you should follow). Name it: 'My [domain] schema.'.
Pick a domain you know well — your profession, a hobby, a subject you've studied deeply. Now find someone who knows nothing about it and show them the same stimulus you'd evaluate (a code review, a wine, a financial statement, a piece of music). Ask them what they notice. Write down their.
Pick one belief that strongly influences your daily behavior — about money, success, relationships, health, or work. Write it down as a single declarative sentence. Then answer three questions: (1) Where did this belief come from? Can you trace it to a specific person, institution, or cultural.
Pick one recurring decision you make — how you prioritize your morning tasks, how you evaluate whether a meeting is worth attending, or how you decide which emails to answer first. Write down the rule you're actually following (not the one you think you should follow). Then ask three questions:.
Pick one schema you use daily — an org chart, a system diagram, a mental model of how a colleague makes decisions, or your understanding of a market. Write down three things you know are true about the real territory that the schema does not capture. Then write down one decision you've made.
Pick one schema you use daily — a mental model, a planning framework, a personality type system, an architectural pattern. Write down three things it gets wrong or leaves out. Then write down three situations where it remains the most useful tool available despite those flaws. You now have a.
Choose a routine situation — your morning email triage, a weekly team meeting, or your commute. The next time you enter it, pause at the start and write down three predictions: what you expect to happen, who you expect to pay attention to, and what you expect to ignore. Then, after the situation.
Pick a domain you think about frequently — your career, a relationship, a technical system, your health. Write down the five words or phrases you use most when discussing it. For each one, ask: what does this word assume? What does it make easy to say, and what does it make hard to say? Identify.
Pick a decision you made recently on instinct — a hire, a design choice, a conversation you steered a certain way. Write down what you did and why it felt right. Now try to formalize the intuitive schema behind it: what pattern did you recognize? What prior experience generated that recognition?.
Pick a schema you rely on daily — how you evaluate people, how you assess risk, how you decide what to read. Write down the domain where you built it (the industry, relationships, or context where you learned it). Then list two domains where you've applied it without adjustment. For each, write.