Frequently asked questions about thinking, epistemology, and cognitive tools. 193 answers
Process your current inbox — email, notes app, physical papers, whatever contains unprocessed items. For each item, ask one question: 'Can I complete this in under two minutes?' If yes, do it immediately and move to the next item. If no, defer it (add it to your task list, calendar, or reference.
Audit your current system. Open whatever tool you use for notes, tasks, or ideas. Can you identify a clear boundary between unprocessed captures and permanent storage? If everything lives in one undifferentiated space, create a separation right now: make an 'Inbox' note, folder, or tag. For the.
Pick one pattern you want to change. Over the next three days, every time the behavior fires, immediately write down: (1) what time it is, (2) where you are, (3) who is around you, (4) what you were doing right before, (5) what emotion you were feeling. After three days, look at your logs. The.
Open your notes app and find a note you wrote more than three months ago. Read it cold, as if someone else wrote it. Can you understand what it means, why you wrote it, and what you were supposed to do with it — without opening any other document? If not, rewrite it right now: add the source, the.
Take 10 minutes. List every context where thoughts regularly arise: commute, shower, meeting, bed, workout, cooking, walking the dog. Next to each, write what capture tool you currently have available. Circle every context with no tool. Pick the biggest gap — the context where you most often have.
For the next 48 hours, run a split experiment. Keep two columns on a sheet of paper: LEFT column is 'Capture' (write thoughts the instant they arrive, no formatting, no categorization). RIGHT column is 'Organize' (once per day, spend 10 minutes reviewing left-column items and deciding where each.
Do a full brain dump. Set a timer for 15 minutes. Write down every open loop, task, commitment, worry, idea, and half-formed plan. Don't organize — just dump. Count the items. Wait 24 hours and do it again. Compare the lists. Items that appear on one but not the other were always there — just not.
Today, capture three things as photographs that you would normally try to describe in text: a whiteboard, a physical arrangement, a diagram, a book passage with margin notes, or an environment that triggered an idea. For each photo, add one line of text context (date, why it matters, what you were.
In your next conversation — a meeting, a phone call, a coffee chat — keep a capture tool visible (phone, notebook, index card). Every time something lands as useful, surprising, or decision-relevant, write a 3-to-7-word fragment. Don't explain it. Don't polish it. Just anchor it. After the.
Walk through your home and workspace with fresh eyes. Identify three locations where you regularly have thoughts worth capturing but currently have no capture tool within arm's reach — the kitchen counter, your nightstand, the car dashboard, your walking route. For each location, place a capture.
For the next five workdays, set an hourly alarm during waking hours. Each time it fires, rate three things on a 1-5 scale: mental clarity, motivation, and physical energy. Log the ratings in a simple spreadsheet or notebook. At the end of five days, look for the pattern. Where do the peaks.
Run a five-day attention debt audit. Each evening, rate three things on a 1-to-5 scale: (1) Decision quality — how confident and clear were your decisions today? (2) Comprehension speed — how quickly could you absorb new information? (3) Emotional regulation — how much patience and equanimity did.
Choose a domain where you have genuine expertise — your profession, a deep hobby, a subject you have studied for years. Now choose a domain where you are a novice — something you started recently or know little about. For each domain, spend ten minutes consuming new information (an article, a.
Run a seven-day sleep-perception audit. Each morning before checking any device, rate three things on a 1-10 scale: (1) How rested do you feel? (2) How confident are you in your ability to make good decisions today? (3) How many hours did you actually sleep? Track these alongside one objective.
For one full work week, log your meals and your major decisions in the same document. Record: (1) what you ate and when, (2) every decision you made that involved evaluating tradeoffs or exercising judgment, and (3) your subjective energy level on a 1-5 scale at the time of each decision. At the.
Pick three domains where you make predictions: your professional work, a hobby, and personal finance. For each, write down five predictions with confidence levels (e.g., '80% confident this will ship by Friday'). Track outcomes over two weeks. Compare your calibration across domains. You will.
For the next five days, every time you notice boredom — restlessness, the urge to check your phone, mental wandering during a task — pause and log three things: (1) what you were doing, (2) your skill level for that task on a 1-10 scale, and (3) the challenge level of the task on a 1-10 scale. At.
Map every context where you regularly think: desk, commute, walking, shower, bed, meetings, gym, cooking. For each one, write down your current capture tool and how many seconds it takes to go from thought to externalized text (or voice). Any context over 10 seconds is a leak. Any context with no.
Take a decision you're currently stuck on. Write out every consideration, option, and fear — one per line. Don't organize. Just dump. Then read it back as if a colleague wrote it. Notice what you see that you couldn't see when it was all in your head. The gaps, contradictions, and missing pieces.
Choose one anchor moment from your existing routine — finishing your morning coffee, closing your laptop lid, stepping out of a meeting. Attach one capture behavior: 'After I [anchor], I will open my capture tool and write one thought.' Do this for five consecutive days. Do not organize what you.
Pick one thing you believe you understand well — a process at work, a technology you use daily, a decision you recently made. Set a 10-minute timer and write a step-by-step decomposition: break it into every sub-part, dependency, and assumption you can identify. When you hit a step you cannot.
Take your most recent set of meeting notes or reading highlights. Find one entry that contains more than one idea. Split it into the smallest pieces that still make sense on their own — where each piece could stand as a complete thought without needing the others for context. If you split too far.
Find three notes in your system (or three beliefs you hold strongly) where a claim and its evidence are fused into a single statement. For each one, split it into two separate objects: (1) the claim, stated as a declarative sentence, and (2) the evidence, stated as a factual observation with its.
Take one note or document you've already written. Decompose it at three different levels of granularity: (1) a single-sentence summary, (2) three to five key claims each as a separate note, and (3) a fine-grained breakdown where every distinct assertion gets its own card. Compare the three.