Frequently asked questions about thinking, epistemology, and cognitive tools. 190 answers
Pick a belief you hold about someone you work with or live with — a simple character judgment. Write it down. Now deliberately search for three pieces of evidence that contradict it. Not weak evidence — strong evidence. Notice how your mind resists: it will want to explain away each piece,.
Choose a recent disagreement — professional or personal — where you and another person reached different conclusions from similar information. Instead of rehearsing your own argument, write down the other person's schema: What inputs did they weight heavily? What did they ignore or discount? What.
Conduct a schema rigidity audit. Identify three beliefs that guide significant decisions in your life — about your career strategy, your health approach, your relationship assumptions, or your understanding of a domain you depend on. For each belief, answer: (1) When did I first adopt this belief,.
Write down three sentences that complete the prompt: 'I am the kind of person who...' Don't overthink it — write whatever comes first. Now examine each one. Where did this schema come from? Is it based on evidence from the last two years, or is it inherited from an earlier version of you? For each.
Identify a situation where you recently acted on instinct. Write down the schema that drove your response. Now generate two alternative schemas that could have applied to the same situation. For each, write the action it would have produced. Compare. Did the schema that won deserve to win? Or did.
Pick three mental models you currently rely on — about your work, your industry, or your decision-making. For each one, write down: (1) When did this model form? (2) What evidence originally justified it? (3) What has changed in the environment since then? (4) What signals would indicate this.
Choose a concept you are currently thinking about — a problem, a project, an idea. Write it in the center of a blank page or document. Now perform three different traversals. First, go deep: pick one connection from that concept and follow it as far as you can, writing each hop as you go. Do not.
Select a domain you know well — your team structure, your daily workflow, your learning curriculum, your decision-making process. Spend 15 minutes drawing a relationship map from memory, placing entities as nodes and drawing labeled, directed edges between them. Do not consult any existing.
Map one feedback loop operating in your life right now. Pick something concrete: your energy level, your spending habits, your productivity rhythm, your relationship with a colleague. Draw a circle with at least three nodes showing how A affects B, B affects C, and C affects A. Label each arrow.
Pick five schemas you currently operate on — beliefs about your career, your health, your relationships, your productivity, your identity. For each one, write down where you acquired it: a specific person, a book, a cultural norm, direct experience, or unknown. Then rate each source on three.
Identify a belief you hold with high confidence about your work, a relationship, or a skill. Write it as a concrete prediction: 'If I do X, Y will happen.' Now actively search for one piece of evidence that contradicts or complicates that prediction. Write down what you find. Notice the emotional.
Choose a domain you work in daily — your job, a creative project, a personal system. Write three descriptions of the same thing at three different levels of abstraction. First, write a one-sentence description so abstract that it could apply to many different domains (the superordinate level)..
Open a note in your knowledge system that you consider a 'hub' — a concept you reference often. Check its backlinks or incoming references. Count how many notes link to it that you had forgotten about. Pick three of those incoming links and read them. Notice what patterns or clusters emerge from.
Select a prediction you made in the last six months that turned out wrong. Write it down with as much specificity as you can: what you predicted, what actually happened, and the gap between the two. Now perform a schema autopsy. Do not ask "what did I do wrong?" Ask "what does this prediction.
Choose five concepts you have been studying or thinking about recently — from any domain. Write each one on a separate card or sticky note. These are your nodes. Now draw lines between every pair that has a meaningful relationship. Label each line with the nature of the relationship: "causes,".
Find a belief you hold now that contradicts something you believed three or more years ago. Write both versions down with dates: 'In [year], I believed [X]' and 'Now, in 2026, I believe [Y].' Then answer three questions: (1) What changed in the environment between then and now? (2) What changed in.
Choose a domain you organize — your notes, your project files, your reading list, your skill inventory. Pick five items and ask: does each item have exactly one parent, or does it genuinely belong in multiple categories? For each item with multiple natural parents, write down all the parents it.
Identify one contradiction you've been trying to resolve for months or years. Write it as two poles: 'I value X' and 'I value Y.' Now ask: is this a problem to solve, or a polarity to manage? If no amount of new information would make one side permanently win, you're looking at an irresolvable.
Pick two ideas in your knowledge system that seem unrelated — one from your professional domain, one from a personal interest. Write both down. Now try to connect them in as few intermediate concepts as possible. Write each intermediate concept as a node. If you get stuck, try a different.
Identify one paradox in your own work or thinking — a place where two things you believe are both true and seem to contradict each other. Write both sides down as explicit statements. Then ask: is this a contradiction that can be resolved with more information, or is it a stable tension that.
Pick three domains of your life: one professional, one relational, one about yourself. For each, write down the operating assumptions you bring to that domain — not what you think you *should* believe, but what your behavior reveals you *actually* believe. For example: 'In meetings, I assume the.
Open a knowledge base, project folder, or bookmarks collection you actually use. Identify the top level (the broadest categories) and the leaf level (the individual items). Now look at the middle: are there intermediate levels that help you navigate from broad to specific? If the middle is missing.
Pick one belief or mental model you've updated in the last year. Write it down as 'Old schema: X → New schema: Y.' Then list every decision, habit, relationship, or system that was built on the old schema. For each one, mark it: already migrated, needs migration, or can't migrate yet. You now have.
Choose a project or recurring collaboration where you and at least one other person must coordinate. Together, write down the shared schema that governs how you work: What are the key terms you both use? What is the implicit process flow? Where do you agree on definitions, and where have you been.