Mental Model
Titration and Pendulation (Gradual Exposure to Activation)
Terms used in Somatic Experiencing: titration concerns small amounts of activation, and pendulation concerns movement between activation and more settled experience
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Mental Model
Tocqueville Effect (Rising Expectations)
Alexis de Tocqueville's observation that revolutions happen not when conditions are worst but when conditions are improving—because improvement raises expectations faster than reality can satisfy them
Mental Model
Tolerance Stack-Up Analysis
Tolerance stack-up analysis examines how individual component variations combine in an assembly
Mental Model
Tolerance Stacking in Assembly
Tolerance stacking is the phenomenon where small dimensional variations in individual parts compound when assembled, potentially causing the final assembly to fail specification even though each part passes inspection
Mental Model
Tone Policing as Deflection
The communication pattern where the emotional delivery of a message is criticized as a way of avoiding engagement with its content
Cognitive Move
Too little
The deficiency zone below the workable range. You name the observable sign that says you have genuinely dropped too low, so the lower edge marks real harm starting rather than an arbitrary number you happened to miss this week.
Cognitive Move
Too much
The zone above the workable range, where adding more starts costing you something. Name the observable sign that you have crossed the top edge, so overshooting registers as a real problem rather than as extra credit.
Mental Model
Tool Audit Protocol (Regular Evaluation Cadence)
A systematic practice of regularly evaluating which tools, systems, and processes you use against which ones you should be using—killing tools that no longer serve, adopting tools that would improve effectiveness, and re…
Mental Model
Tool Lifecycle Management (Adopt, Adapt, Abandon)
The framework for managing tools through their natural lifecycle: adoption (evaluating and onboarding), adaptation (customizing and integrating into workflows), and abandonment (recognizing when a tool has been supersede…
Mental Model
Tool-Task Fit (Matching Tool Capability to Actual Need)
The principle that tool selection should be driven by the specific task requirements rather than by tool sophistication, popularity, or personal familiarity—matching the CAPABILITY of the tool to the ACTUAL NEED of the t…
Mental Model
Topophilia (Love of Place as Cognitive Anchor)
Yi-Fu Tuan's concept of topophilia describes the affective bond between people and their physical environment—not just liking a place, but forming a deep emotional and cognitive relationship with specific landscapes that…
Mental Model
Tort Thinking: Harm and Remedy
Tort law addresses civil wrongs—situations where one party's actions cause harm to another outside of any contractual relationship
Cognitive Move
Total-system gain
Add up the benefit, then subtract every cost the benefit is usually credited against: setup, coordination, checking outputs, upkeep, the damage when it breaks, and what you gave up elsewhere. If the remainder is negative, the system is losing to no system.
Cognitive Move
Total-System Receipt
Before adopting an improvement, list every burden it removes and creates for every actor, now and later.
Cognitive Move
Toulmin layout
Data on one side, claim on the other, and everything between them made explicit. The warrant is the rule that lets the data count as a reason for the claim. The backing is what supports that rule. The qualifier is how strongly the claim is being made, and the rebuttal is the condition under which the whole structure fails. Most real arguments carry all five parts and write down two of them.
Cognitive Move
Trace
The physical mark reality leaves behind: a click, a filled form, a log line, a receipt. Ask whether the thing you care about leaves any mark at all, and whether the mark you have came from that thing rather than something else.
Cognitive Move
Trace
Attach a short record to anything that matters, saying where it came from, which version it is, why you decided that, and what changed since.
Cognitive Move
Trace to Value
Keep asking why the result matters until you hit the value that makes it worth pursuing at all.
Mental Model
Track-Two Diplomacy
Track-Two Diplomacy refers to unofficial interactions between non-governmental actors—academics, retired officials, think tank members—who de-escalate conflicts and generate creative solutions outside official channels
Cognitive Move
trade-off curve
One line for one pair of goals, showing the exchange rate along its whole length. The useful feature is the knee, the point after which each extra unit of one goal costs far more of the other than it did a moment ago.
Mental Model
Trademarks, Patents, and Copyrights
Trademarks identify the source of goods or services; patents can protect qualifying inventions through defined exclusion rights; copyrights protect qualifying original expression
Cognitive Move
Tradeoff worth it
The other four checks ask whether the new frame is true and useful. This one prices it. Add up four costs: building the frame, the effort of others reading it, switching over, and maintaining it. The gain has to beat that total.
Mental Model
Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK)
TEK is the cumulative body of knowledge, practice, and belief about living beings and their environment, evolved by adaptive processes and transmitted through generations