Frequently asked questions about thinking, epistemology, and cognitive tools. 190 answers
Choose a belief you hold about how two things in your life are connected — for example, 'reading before bed helps me sleep' or 'team standups improve collaboration.' Write down the connection, then classify it: is it causal, associative, temporal, hierarchical, compositional, or something else?.
Choose a system you participate in — your team, your family, your professional network, a project you manage. List ten relationships within that system. For each one, ask: does this relationship have a direction? Write an arrow (A -> B) for directed relationships and a line (A -- B) for undirected.
Pick a domain where you maintain relationships — your professional network, your knowledge base, your project dependencies, your personal contacts. List ten relationships in that domain. Now assign each one a strength score from 1 (weakest) to 5 (strongest) based on explicit criteria you define..
Choose a skill you are currently trying to learn or recently struggled with. Write it at the top of a page. Now work backward: what must you be able to do in order to perform this skill? For each sub-skill, ask the same question — what must come before this? Keep going until you reach things you.
Choose a goal you are currently pursuing — a project, a habit, a skill, a life change. Write it at the top of a page. Below it, list every condition you can think of that would make progress on this goal easier, more natural, or more likely. Don't filter — list environmental conditions, skills,.
Identify two beliefs you currently hold that pull in opposite directions. They might be about your career (stability vs. growth), your relationships (independence vs. intimacy), your daily habits (discipline vs. spontaneity), or your worldview (optimism vs. realism). Write each belief as a clear.
Pick one belief you hold with high confidence — a belief about your health, your career, your relationships, or how some system works. Write it as a single declarative sentence. Now list every independent line of evidence that supports it. Be rigorous: each line must come from a genuinely.
Choose one abstract concept you use regularly but struggle to explain clearly — something like 'systems thinking,' 'cognitive load,' 'opportunity cost,' or 'feedback loop.' Now generate five concrete examples that ground it, using this progression: (1) A physical, sensory example you have.
Pick a significant outcome in your life from the past six months — a project that succeeded, a habit that collapsed, a relationship that shifted. Now trace the causal chain backward using exactly five links. Start with the outcome and ask 'What directly caused this?' for each link. Write each link.
Open the most developed map you have — your note system, project plan, team org chart, or personal knowledge graph. Pick any five nodes (concepts, people, tasks, whatever your map contains). For each node, list its current connections. Then ask: what is conspicuously absent? What should this node.
Choose a system you participate in — your team at work, your family, a community you belong to, even the tools in your daily workflow. List every element (person, tool, process, concept) on a blank page. Now draw every relationship you can identify. Use arrows to show direction: who influences.
Select a relationship map you already maintain — your professional network, your project dependency diagram, your personal knowledge graph, or even your mental model of your team. Now perform a temporal audit. Pick five relationships (edges) in that map and for each one, answer three questions:.
Map one transitive chain in your own life. Pick a relationship that matters to you — professional, personal, or intellectual — and trace how you arrived at it. Write down the intermediary: who introduced you, what event connected you, or what piece of knowledge led to the next. Now extend the.
Map one critical dependency in your life — a skill, a relationship, a tool, an income source, or an information channel that, if it disappeared tomorrow, would cause serious disruption. Now identify your current redundancy level for that dependency. Do you have zero backup paths (single point of.
Map one system you participate in — your team, your household, your project workflow, your social circle. Identify every node (person, tool, process) and draw the connections between them. Now ask: if I removed this one node or this one connection, what breaks? Find the single point whose removal.
Pick a system you navigate regularly — your team's reporting structure, your personal knowledge domains, the tools in your workflow. On paper or a whiteboard, draw each entity as a node (circle with a label). Then draw a line between any two nodes that have a direct relationship (reports to,.
Choose a domain you work in daily — your job responsibilities, a project you manage, a field you study, or even the contents of your home. Write down 20-30 items that belong to this domain, each on a separate line, in whatever order they come to mind. Now organize them into a hierarchy: group.
Pick any concept you work with regularly -- a skill, a project, a domain of knowledge. Write it in the center of a page. Above it, write two super-concepts it belongs to (the larger wholes it is part of). Below it, write three sub-concepts it contains (the smaller parts that compose it). Then pick.
Pick a problem you are currently working on. Write it down at three levels of abstraction: (1) the broadest framing — what is the category of problem this belongs to? (2) your current working framing — the level where you have been spending most of your time, (3) the most granular version — what.
Pick one project or goal you are currently working on. Write it at the top of a page. Decompose it into 2-3 sub-components. Then decompose each sub-component until you reach items that are concrete enough to do in a single sitting without further clarification. Circle those leaf nodes. Count how.
Pick one domain of your life — career, health, a side project, a relationship. Write down the single deepest assumption that everything else rests on. Not a tactic or a preference — the foundational belief. Now ask: if this root concept were wrong, what would collapse? What would suddenly make.
Take a hierarchy you use daily — your file system, your task manager, your note-taking structure, your email folders, your team org chart. Count the maximum depth: how many levels exist between the root and the deepest leaf? Now ask two questions for each intermediate level: (1) Does this level.
Pick one active project in your knowledge system. List five items nested inside it. For each, ask: what context does this item inherit from its container that would be lost if I moved it to the root level? Write down the invisible context that nesting provides. You will likely find that the.
Choose a hierarchy you operate within — your organization, your note-taking system, your file structure, or your belief system. Identify three properties that propagate from a higher level to a lower level. For each one, answer: (1) Is this property explicitly stated or implicitly assumed? (2).