Cognitive Move
State and transition
Draws the conditions you can be in as boxes and the moves between them as labeled arrows, so what is open now is visible.
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Cognitive Move
State board
A single visible surface showing where every live item stands right now: not started, waiting on someone, done. Unlike a checklist of tasks or a log of past decisions, it tracks changing status and stays public so anyone can read it without asking you.
Cognitive Move
State Ledger
When work keeps restarting after interruptions, keep one persistent page holding current state, open questions, decisions, and the next action.
Cognitive Move
state machine
The plain version. One box per condition you can be in, one arrow per move that actually happens, and the trigger written on every arrow. A single marker for where you are today. The shape carries the finding. A box with no arrow out is a trap. A box with no arrow in is unreachable. A state you can only leave the long way round explains a lot of stuck months, and you see that before you read a word of the labels.
Cognitive Move
State trajectory frozen
Commit a dated prediction on paper before you touch anything: which direction things move, when they turn or repeat, over what time window, the slowest delay that still matters, the conditions under which the prediction holds, and what happens if you do nothing.
Cognitive Move
statechart
A state machine with nesting. Related states sit inside a larger box, and a trigger that applies to all of them is drawn once on the boundary of the group rather than repeated on every member. It can also say that leaving a group and coming back puts you where you were inside it. The cost is that it takes more reading, so reach for it once the repetition in a flat drawing has itself become the noise.
Cognitive Move
Static
Fixes the whole view on one surface, so the only thing that moves is the reader's eye.
Mental Model
Status Quo Bias
The preference for the current state of affairs over change, even when change would be objectively beneficial
Mental Model
Status Quo Bias and Do-Nothing Syndrome
The powerful preference for the current state of affairs—where the default option has an enormous psychological advantage over any alternative, regardless of merit
Mental Model
Statute of Limitations Logic
Every legal claim has an expiration date—a window of time during which you must bring your complaint or lose the right to do so forever
Mental Model
Steel Man Argument (Opposite of Straw Man)
Steel manning reconstructs a strong reasonable version of an argument so its best challenge can be examined
Mental Model
Steel Manning vs Straw Manning
Straw manning makes an opposing argument easier to attack by distorting it
Cognitive Move
step-through in time
One tick at a time, with the state visible at every step and you deciding when to advance. The point is the intermediate states, not the ending. A model that finishes in one second hides the ordering, the delay, and the moment a value first crosses a line. Stepping puts a pause exactly where the interesting thing happens, so you can name it before the rest of the run buries it.
Mental Model
Stochastic Processes (Poisson, Markov, Random Walk)
Stochastic processes model collections of random variables across time or another index
Cognitive Move
stock and flow
Boxes for the things that hold a level, pipes with valves for the rates that fill and drain them. The split is the whole point: you never move a stock directly, only the rates on either side of it. Pipe width can carry the rate, so a slow leak becomes visible before anyone adds it up. A stock keeps its level when every rate goes to zero, which is what makes it different from a flow.
Cognitive Move
Stocks
Name the places where the scarce thing sits still and piles up between movements. Unlike the arrows, these are the containers you can photograph at a single moment and read a level off. Every flow you draw has to start or end in one.
Mental Model
Stocks and Flows
A fundamental systems thinking concept: stocks are accumulations (inventory, money, knowledge, trust) and flows are the rates of change (inflows adding to stocks, outflows depleting them)
Mental Model
Stonewalling Dynamics (Gottman's Fourth Horseman)
Emotional and communicative shutdown during conflict—going blank, refusing to engage, leaving the room, or giving monosyllabic non-responses
Cognitive Move
Stop
Written in advance, this is the condition that ends the inquiry: the date, sample size, or spend at which you quit collecting and decide with what you have. It also names what would reopen the question later.
Cognitive Move
Stop
Can you pause an impulse or action at a line you named in advance, when pausing is safe?
Cognitive Move
Stop conditions
Write down, before you begin, the result or event that ends the trial early and means no. It is the kill switch, not the pass mark, and it exists so you cannot rationalize a bad reading into another round.
Mental Model
Stop-Doing List Protocol
A structured protocol for identifying and eliminating activities, commitments, and habits that drain time and energy without producing meaningful results
Cognitive Move
story
The same run, shaped. A story picks a starting state, raises a complication, marks a turn, and pays a cost. The shaping is not decoration. It is a claim about which beat carried the change, and because the claim is visible, a listener can point at a different beat and say the turn was there. Disagreeing about the turn is more useful than disagreeing about the conclusion.
Mental Model
Story as Theory (Narrative as Analytical Framework)
In many Indigenous traditions, stories serve the function that theories and models serve in Western academia -- explaining why things happen, predicting outcomes, and guiding action