Frequently asked questions about thinking, epistemology, and cognitive tools. 1668 answers
Audit your current digital triggers by opening your phone's notification settings and your calendar. Count every recurring alert, alarm, and notification that is supposed to prompt a specific behavior (not just inform you of something). For each one, answer: (1) Does this trigger fire at the right.
Identify one behavior you've been trying to trigger consistently but keep failing at. Choose one person — a friend, partner, colleague, or peer — and make a specific social agreement: 'I will do X at Y time, and I will report to you by Z.' Make the report format concrete (a text, a photo, a shared.
Open your phone's notification settings right now. Count the total number of apps with notifications enabled. Then count how many you actually acted on in the last 48 hours — not glanced at, acted on. Calculate your personal signal-to-noise ratio. If fewer than 20% of your notification sources.
List every trigger you currently rely on — alarms, environmental cues, habit stacks, calendar prompts, digital notifications. For each one, answer three questions: (1) How many times did it fire in the last two weeks? (2) When it fired, did I actually execute the intended behavior? (3) Is the.
Choose one trigger you currently rely on — a habit cue, a reminder, or an environmental prompt. Conduct a UX audit of this trigger using Norman's seven fundamental principles. (1) Discoverability: Can you reliably notice this trigger when it occurs, or does it blend into the background? (2).
Pick one trigger you currently use (or want to use) for a behavior you're building. Write it down exactly as it stands. Now run it for three days, logging every time it fires and whether the activation felt useful or wasted. At the end of three days, rewrite the trigger to be more specific based.
Conduct a trigger coverage audit for one domain of your life (work, health, relationships, finances). List every important recurring situation in that domain — every condition that, if you failed to respond appropriately, would produce meaningful negative consequences. For each situation, answer:.
Over the next five days, keep a decision log. Every time you face a decision — large or small — write down what it is, then classify it by type. Do not invent categories in advance. Let them emerge from the data. By the end of five days, count how many distinct types you have logged and how many.
List every decision you made in the past two weeks. Group them by type: hiring, purchasing, architectural, scheduling, prioritization, relationship. For each type, write down the process you actually used. Now compare: did the process match the stakes? Pick the one type where the mismatch is.
Pick a real decision you're facing that involves at least three options and at least four criteria. Build a weighted decision matrix on paper or in a spreadsheet. First, list your criteria without assigning weights — just get them all down. Second, assign weights from 1 to 5 based on how much each.
List your five most recent decisions that took more than a day to make. For each one, answer: if this decision turns out badly, can I reverse it within a week at low cost? Mark each as a one-way door or a two-way door. Count how many two-way doors consumed disproportionate deliberation time. For.
Pick a decision you've been delaying. Write down three to five criteria that define 'good enough' — the minimum threshold an option must clear. Now evaluate your options against only those criteria. The first option that passes all of them is your answer. Commit to it for 30 days before.
Identify one decision you repeatedly make poorly under pressure — snacking, doom-scrolling, saying yes to meetings that should be emails. Write a pre-commitment rule in if-then format: 'If [trigger], then [pre-decided action].' Make it concrete enough that you'll know whether you followed it. Put.
Identify one decision you've been delaying for more than a week. Set a timer for 25 minutes. Write down the two or three realistic options, the single most important criterion for each, and your choice. When the timer rings, commit. Notice what happened: the time constraint didn't prevent you from.
Identify one recurring decision in your work or life where you regularly make the same choice. Write down: (1) the current default — what happens if you do nothing, (2) the choice you actually want to make most of the time, and (3) how you could restructure the environment so that your preferred.
Pick one commitment you made this week — a meeting you accepted, a project you started, a purchase you made. Write down three specific things that time or money could have gone toward instead. Now honestly assess: did you consider any of those alternatives before committing? If not, you've just.
List every decision you made or participated in over the past five working days. Be comprehensive — include the trivial ones. For each decision, answer four questions: (1) Was this irreversible or easily reversible? (2) Did this require knowledge or context that only I possess? (3) What would.
Identify a group decision your team made in the last month. Write down: (1) What framework was actually used — majority vote, loudest voice, consensus, delegation, or something else? (2) Was the framework chosen deliberately or did it emerge by default? (3) What information was lost because of the.
Identify one decision you're currently stuck on. Write down both options. Now project yourself forward to age 80. Write a paragraph from the perspective of your 80-year-old self, looking back at each choice. Which version of the story produces a wince — a flash of 'I wish I had...'? That wince is.
Pick one active project, commitment, or investment you're currently pursuing. Write down three specific, measurable conditions under which you would abandon it. Be concrete: a date, a number, a threshold. Now show them to someone else and ask: 'Would you hold me to these?' The discomfort you feel.
Pick one significant decision you made in the last 90 days where you now know the outcome. Write down: (1) what you decided and why, (2) what actually happened, (3) whether the outcome was due to your process or to factors you could not have known. Separate the verdict on your process from the.
Select a real decision you are currently facing — something with at least moderate stakes. Write it down in one sentence. Now list every decision framework from Phase 23 that could plausibly apply: decision matrix, reversibility test, satisficing versus maximizing, regret minimization, opportunity.
Audit your last work week. List every decision you made — large and small. Categorize each as either 'routine' (you've made a similar decision before and could have used a framework) or 'novel' (genuinely required fresh thinking). Count the ratio. For most people, 70-85% of decisions are routine..
Pick one habit, project, or process you are actively running. Map it onto the four-part loop: What action are you taking? What are you observing about the results? How are you evaluating whether it is working? What adjustment have you made (or failed to make) based on that evaluation? If any.