Cognitive Move
Rules
Generate a new option by changing the constraints, dependencies, or exit conditions attached to it.
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Mental Model
Rules and Filters
Pre-established criteria for filtering information, opportunities, and decisions—created when calm and rational so they're available when stress, emotion, or urgency impairs judgment
Mental Model
Rumsfeld Matrix (Known/Unknown)
The epistemological framework distinguishing four categories of knowledge: known knowns (things we know we know), known unknowns (things we know we don't know), unknown unknowns (things we don't know we don't know), and…
Mental Model
Rumsfeld’s Rule
The epistemological framework distinguishing four categories of knowledge: known knowns (things we know we know), known unknowns (things we know we don't know), unknown unknowns (things we don't know we don't know), and…
Cognitive Move
Runway
Time bought with money or reduced obligations, so you can wait for a better offer, refuse a bad one, or test something unpaid. It adds no new capability. It buys freedom to use the capability you already have.
Mental Model
Rupture and Repair Cycle
Rupture and repair describes recognizing a disruption in connection or collaboration and attempting to address its impact through acknowledgment, responsibility, and changed behavior.
Mental Model
Rupture and Repair Cycle in Relationships
Every close relationship — romantic, parental, professional, therapeutic — involves inevitable ruptures: moments of misattunement, disconnection, hurt, or failure
Mental Model
Rupture and Repair in Therapeutic Relationships
Rupture and repair is the process whereby a breakdown in the therapeutic alliance — a misunderstanding, a moment of disconnection, a therapist's error, or a client's withdrawal — is recognized, addressed, and resolved, o…
Cognitive Move
S — Same-shaped
You may think you have many options, but if they all work through the same underlying mechanism, you really only have one.
Cognitive Move
S-curve
One line that starts slow, steepens, then flattens against a ceiling. The value is in naming which of the three stretches you are standing in. A flat early stretch and a flat late stretch look identical week to week and mean opposite things, and the ceiling line is what tells them apart.
Mental Model
S-Curve
The characteristic shape of growth in most natural and business systems: slow initial growth (struggling for traction), rapid exponential growth (hitting product-market fit), then gradual deceleration and plateau (market…
Mental Model
S-Curve of Innovation / Technology
An S-curve is a pattern of initial slow change, acceleration, and later slowing that can describe some technology-performance or adoption histories
Cognitive Move
S.MISCAST.A — Authority ambiguity
Nobody knows who may recommend, act, approve, override, or answer for the result.
Cognitive Move
S.MISCAST.C — Control/verification gap
Outputs turn into action without any test, limit, or way to catch a bad one before it causes harm.
Cognitive Move
S.MISCAST.I — Interface failure
Every part works fine on its own, but meaning, ownership, or quality dies in the gaps between them.
Cognitive Move
S.MISCAST.M — Memory/state failure
Your system breaks because important information lives in one person's head, or is scattered, stale, or lost.
Cognitive Move
S.MISCAST.S₁ — Substrate–role mismatch
A person, tool, or artifact is carrying work it is badly suited to carry.
Cognitive Move
S.MISCAST.S₂ — Sustainability fragility
The arrangement quietly consumes skill, agency, privacy, or resilience even while it works.
Cognitive Move
S.MISCAST.T — Total-system overhead
One part got faster but the whole got slower once transfer, coordination, and upkeep costs are counted.
Mental Model
Sabbath Practice Model
The Sabbath practice prescribes a regular, non-negotiable period of complete disengagement from productive activity—historically one day per week, but applicable at multiple time scales (daily shutdown rituals, weekly re…
Cognitive Move
Sacred Activity Check
Ask whether measuring an intrinsically valuable activity would improve it or replace its point, and protect what shouldn't be scored.
Mental Model
Sacred Canopy Theory (Berger)
Peter Berger's sacred canopy theory, from his sociology of knowledge, describes how human societies construct overarching meaning systems—'sacred canopies'—that provide cosmic order, explain suffering, legitimate social…
Cognitive Move
Safe and sustainable trajectory
Look past this quarter's output at what the arrangement is doing to people and to your future room to move. Ask whether anyone is losing skill, privacy, autonomy, or standing, whether the setup survives a bad week, and whether you can still change course.
Cognitive Move
Safeguard
Protect the invariants while you act: consent, real danger and medical boundaries, essential constraints, and the strongest rival explanation.