Cognitive Move
Source and provenance
Pick the source closest to the original event and collapse copies of the same origin into one voice.
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Cognitive Move
Source and sensor integrity
Check whether the source is primary, competent, properly calibrated, and free of incentive contamination before trusting its output.
Cognitive Move
Source or sensor
Ask what actually did the catching: which instrument, person, or system picked up the trace and passed it along. Check that it was running, calibrated, aimed at the right thing, and free of its own incentives.
Mental Model
Source Triangulation (Multi-Source Verification)
Source triangulation verifies information by obtaining independent confirmation from at least three sources of different types—ideally human, documentary, and observational
Mental Model
Sources of Randomness
Unpredictability can reflect event variability, sampling, measurement limits, incomplete models, changing conditions, or sensitive deterministic dynamics
Cognitive Move
Space and place
Puts things where they actually are, so distance, adjacency, and whatever sits between two points can do the explaining.
Mental Model
Spaced Repetition Science
Spaced repetition exploits the spacing effect: information is better retained when review sessions spread over increasing intervals rather than massed together
Cognitive Move
Spaces
Choose which kind of carrier each work packet should live in, from your own body to tools to environments.
Mental Model
Spacing Effect
Distributing learning episodes over time often improves later retention relative to comparable massed practice, with benefits dependent on material and timing.
Mental Model
Spamming
Flooding a communication channel with low-quality, unsolicited content to exploit attention at near-zero marginal cost to the sender but significant cost to receivers
Mental Model
Span of Control
The number of direct reports attached to a manager, considered alongside the work needed to coordinate, support, and lead them
Mental Model
Spatial Choice Models-Model Thinking
Spatial choice models represent alternatives and preferences using positions and a defined notion of distance
Mental Model
Specialization
Specialization concentrates work or learning on particular tasks or capabilities
Mental Model
Specificity
In statistics and diagnostics: the proportion of TRUE NEGATIVES correctly identified—the ability of a test to correctly identify those who DO NOT have the condition
Cognitive Move
spectrum
Two poles named in plain words, a line between them, and a mark for everything you are placing. No units and no zero, so the only claims it makes are order and rough distance. That is a feature. A spectrum can hold qualities nobody has ever measured, as long as you can describe both ends concretely enough that two people would place the same item in the same neighborhood.
Mental Model
Sphere of Influence
A sphere or circle of influence describes outcomes a person may affect through available actions, relationships, or authority, distinguished from everything they care about
Mental Model
Sphexishness
Sphexishness names rigid continuation of a routine despite a change that makes the routine ineffective
Mental Model
Spillover Effects
The systemic phenomenon where an action or change in one part of a system produces UNINTENDED EFFECTS in other parts—effects that weren't part of the original intention and may not be immediately visible
Cognitive Move
spiral
The same circuit walked more than once, drawn as a path that moves outward or inward on every turn. A circle says the loop repeats. A spiral says the loop repeats and something is different each time around, with the radius carrying the quantity that changed. It is the cleanest way to show that a repeating process is not going in circles after all.
Mental Model
Spiral Dynamics (Graves/Beck/Cowan): Value Memes
Spiral Dynamics, developed by Beck and Cowan from Graves's work, describes proposed value-system patterns in relation to life conditions
Mental Model
Spiral Dynamics (Value Memes)
Spiral Dynamics is Beck and Cowan's development of Clare Graves's proposed framework of changing value orientations
Mental Model
Spiritual Bypassing
Spiritual bypassing, a term coined by psychotherapist John Welwood, describes the use of spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid confronting painful emotions, unresolved psychological wounds, and developmental challenge…
Mental Model
Spiritual Intelligence
Spiritual intelligence (SQ), conceptualized by Danah Zohar, Robert Emmons, and others, describes the intelligence used to address and solve problems of meaning and value—the intelligence by which we place our actions and…
Cognitive Move
Split
When one task secretly contains several different kinds of work, cut it into separate pieces so each piece can go to whoever or whatever is actually right for it.