Cognitive Move
Split by mechanism
Take one crowded bucket and cut it along the different processes that actually produce its cases. You ask what causes each case, not what it looks like on the surface, then give each distinct cause its own group.
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Mental Model
Sponsor vs. Mentor in Career Advancement
Mentors give advice; sponsors give opportunities
Mental Model
Sponsorship vs. Mentorship Distinction
Mentorship is guidance—sharing advice, knowledge, and perspective
Mental Model
Spoon Theory (Miserandino)
Christine Miserandino's Spoon Theory, originally created to explain the experience of living with lupus, uses a metaphor of spoons representing finite daily energy units
Cognitive Move
Spot
Name the observable cue that triggered you and the exact mental function it blocked, before doing anything else.
Mental Model
Spotlight Effect
The tendency to overestimate how much other people notice and evaluate your appearance, behavior, and performance—believing you're in a 'spotlight' that doesn't actually exist
Cognitive Move
spread of many runs
The same model run hundreds of times with the uncertain inputs redrawn each time, and all the outcomes shown at once as a band with a few sample paths inside it. The band answers a different question than any single run. Not what happens, but how wide the range of what happens is. It is the one sub-mode that shows the bad tail, which is often the number the decision turns on.
Cognitive Move
spreadsheet
The rule lives in a cell rather than in your head, and the grid holds the inputs beside it. Change one input and every dependent cell moves, so the question shifts from what is the answer to which input the answer is most sensitive to.
Cognitive Move
Spreadsheet
Lay the quantities out as cells and wire the relationships as formulas, so changing one number pushes the change through every dependent number at once. Best when the question is about amounts moving over time, not about which branch to take.
Mental Model
Spring-loading
A strategic pattern of building up potential energy—resources, capabilities, relationships, or advantages—before releasing it for maximum impact
Cognitive Move
Stable names
Pick one fixed word for each recurring thing and use only that word, everywhere, forever. No synonyms, no drifting phrasing, no renaming the same thing on page four. Later parts add symbols and arrows; this one just freezes the vocabulary.
Mental Model
Stag Hunt (Cooperation vs Safety)
A coordination game where mutual cooperation is preferable but unilateral cooperation is risky relative to a safer individual action.
Cognitive Move
Staged alternative
Turns "X or Y" into "Y first, then X, once a named condition is met." You are not splitting the difference or leaving the pair; you are putting both poles on a timeline and writing down the trigger that flips you from one to the other.
Cognitive Move
Staged commitment
Break one big irreversible bet into a sequence of smaller ones, and let each stage buy information that decides whether the next stage happens. You pay for the plan in installments instead of writing the whole check on day one.
Mental Model
Stages of Change Model (Prochaska & DiClemente)
The Transtheoretical Model identifies five stages of behavior change: Precontemplation (unaware of need), Contemplation (considering change within 6 months), Preparation (planning to act within 30 days), Action (actively…
Mental Model
Stages of Change Model (Transtheoretical Model)
The Transtheoretical Model, developed by James Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente from studying how smokers successfully quit, identifies five stages of intentional behavior change: Precontemplation (not yet considering chan…
Mental Model
Stages of Faith (Fowler) — Applied Framework
James Fowler's faith development theory describes six stages of meaning-making that apply regardless of religious belief or non-belief: Stage 1 (Intuitive-Projective, childhood imagination), Stage 2 (Mythic-Literal, conc…
Mental Model
Stakeholder Ethics Model
Stakeholder ethics argues that organizations have moral obligations not just to shareholders but to all parties significantly affected by their decisions—employees, customers, suppliers, communities, and the environment
Mental Model
Stand-Up Meeting Protocol (Daily Sync)
A rapid daily alignment protocol limiting each participant to three statements, completed standing up to enforce brevity
Mental Model
Standard of Review Hierarchy
Courts apply different levels of scrutiny depending on what is being reviewed
Mental Model
Standard Operating Procedure
A documented procedure for performing a recurring activity under specified conditions
Mental Model
Stanford Prison Experiment
Zimbardo's 1971 study demonstrating how rapidly normal people adopt abusive behaviors when placed in positions of authority within certain institutional structures
Cognitive Move
Starts but will not sustain
A good habit or flywheel begins but fades because its rewards arrive too weakly or too late to fuel the next turn.