Frequently asked questions about thinking, epistemology, and cognitive tools. 194 answers
Pick one area of your work or life where you currently maintain direct, hands-on control. Write down: (1) What outcome does this control protect? (2) What signals would tell me the outcome is being achieved, even without my direct involvement? (3) What system — checklist, automation, trained.
Map your current leverage ratio. List every active delegation you maintain — to people, tools, habits, systems, and AI. For each, estimate the hours per week it produces in output versus the minutes per week you spend managing it. Calculate the ratio. Now identify one area where you're still doing.
Conduct a Delegation Architecture Audit of your current life. List every recurring responsibility you hold — professional, personal, cognitive, administrative. For each one, classify it into one of four categories: (1) I do this and only I can, (2) I do this but someone or something else could,.
Pick one cognitive agent you've already delegated to — a habit, a checklist, a recurring automation, a journaling practice, or a decision rule. For the next seven days, track two things about it: (1) whether it fired as expected, and (2) whether the outcome it produced moved you toward your stated.
Pick one cognitive agent you currently run — a decision-making heuristic, a weekly review process, a reading protocol, anything. Write down three metrics that would tell you whether it is succeeding: one measuring whether it fires at all (reliability), one measuring whether it produces the.
Build a monitoring dashboard for your active cognitive agents. Use a single page — paper, spreadsheet, or digital note. List every agent you currently run (habits, routines, processes, decision protocols). For each one, define: (1) the expected firing frequency, (2) one health indicator you can.
Select three cognitive agents you rely on regularly — your daily planning agent, your emotional regulation agent during conflict, your focused-work agent, your active-listening agent, or any others you have identified in earlier phases. For each agent, define: (1) The trigger condition — what.
Select one cognitive agent you have been developing — a habit, a decision rule, a boundary, or any if-then pattern you have installed. For the next three days, track its activation latency using this method. Each time the trigger occurs, notice two moments: when the trigger appeared and when you.
Pick three things you currently monitor about yourself — habits, metrics, dashboards, journal prompts, app notifications, anything that requires your attention to observe your own performance. For each one, estimate: (a) how many minutes per day or week the monitoring consumes, (b) the last time.
Identify three agents or systems in your life that you currently monitor manually — checking in on them through memory, intuition, or periodic effort. For each one, answer: (1) What specific signal would tell me this agent is drifting or failing? (2) Does a tool, app, or automated system exist.
Start a 7-day agent monitoring journal. Choose one cognitive agent — a habit, routine, or behavioral pattern you rely on regularly (examples: your morning routine, your email processing habit, your exercise practice, your reading habit). Each day, spend 5 minutes recording three things about that.
Pick one cognitive agent you are currently running — a habit, a routine, a decision rule, anything you have delegated to a repeatable process. For the next seven days, track three things about it each day: (1) did you execute it (yes/no), (2) how long did it take, and (3) rate its quality from 1.
Pick one cognitive agent you are currently monitoring — a habit, a workflow, a recurring decision process. Collect or reconstruct its performance data for the last thirty days. Plot it on a simple line chart (a hand-drawn graph on paper works fine). Now draw a trend line through the data — you do.
List every metric, dashboard, notification, and check-in you currently use to monitor your cognitive agents (habits, systems, workflows, goals). Count them. Now force-rank them: which three, if they turned red, would demand immediate action? Move those three to a single surface you see daily..
Pick two agents (habits, routines, or decision rules) that serve similar goals. Define 2-3 shared metrics. Track both for one week under comparable conditions. At the end, place the results side by side: which agent performed better on which metric? Did one dominate across the board, or did they.
Select one agent you are currently monitoring — a habit, a tool, an automated process, a recurring decision. Pull up whatever data you have collected on its performance over the past two to four weeks. Now answer three questions in writing. First: what does the data suggest you should change? Be.
Select your most important cognitive agent — the one whose performance matters most to your daily functioning. Conduct a full monitoring audit using the Phase 28 toolkit: (1) Map the complete feedback loop: what action does the agent take, what do you observe about its output, what standard do you.
Select one agent — a habit, routine, or system — that you have been monitoring for at least two weeks. Pull up whatever data you have: a habit tracker, journal entries, a spreadsheet, even your memory of how it has been performing. Now run a single optimization cycle. (1) STATE THE CURRENT.
Map a system you operate — a workflow, a daily routine, a project pipeline, a learning process. List every sequential step. For each step, estimate the time it takes and whether downstream steps must wait for it. Identify which step most frequently causes the rest of the system to wait. This is.
Choose one system you interact with daily — a workflow, a codebase, a communication process, a personal routine. For the next seven days, make exactly one small, measurable improvement to it each day. The improvement must be specific enough to describe in a single sentence: 'Reduced the number of.
Select a system, habit, or process you have been actively trying to improve. Draw a simple chart: X-axis is total effort invested (hours, iterations, dollars), Y-axis is total improvement gained. Plot your best estimates for each round of optimization. Identify the inflection point — the moment.
Identify one thing in your life you are currently optimizing — a workflow, a habit, a project, a skill, a system. Write down the specific threshold at which it would be 'good enough' for its actual purpose. Then honestly assess: are you above or below that threshold? If you are above it, write a.
Choose one agent, automation, or recurring process in your life — a morning routine, a writing workflow, an AI prompt you use regularly, a decision-making checklist. Design an A/B test for it. Write down: (1) The current version (A) and what you suspect could be improved. (2) A specific, single.
Identify something you are currently trying to improve — an AI agent, a workflow, a habit, a creative process, a system. List every change you are considering making. Now rank them by your best guess of impact. Take only the top-ranked change and implement it in isolation. Define your measurement:.