Cognitive Move
Constraint
Recast the thing as a set of requirements plus the space of options that satisfy them. You stop asking what it is and start asking what must hold, what is merely preferred, and which options survive both.
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Mental Model
Constraint (Theory of Constraints)
Goldratt's insight that every system's output is limited by its most constrained element—the bottleneck that determines overall throughput
Cognitive Move
Constraint and feasibility
Draws the hard limits as lines, so the space of plans that satisfy all of them at once becomes a visible region.
Cognitive Move
Constraint Sandwich
When optimization is damaging something important, write 'improve X, while preserving Y, under Z' and map what's actually feasible.
Cognitive Move
constraint table
Options down the side, hard requirements across the top, a yes or no in every cell. Reading across a row tells you whether that option survives; reading down a column tells you which requirement is doing the killing. No geometry needed, so it scales to more than two constraints.
Cognitive Move
Constraints
The written terms that bind the action while it runs: what each party may do, must do, is forbidden to do, and how much they can be on the hook for. Not what the action is paired with, and not how you exit.
Cognitive Move
Construct
Write, in plain words, the real thing you care about, before naming anything countable. It is the value or state that would matter even if no system logged it. Stating it separately keeps the stand-in from quietly becoming the goal.
Mental Model
Constructed vs. Inherited Meaning (Post-Traditional Meaning-Making)
The distinction between meaning systems inherited from tradition (religion, culture, family, community) and meaning systems deliberately constructed by the individual
Mental Model
Constructive Ambiguity
Constructive Ambiguity is a deliberate diplomatic technique where agreement language is crafted to be intentionally vague on contested points, allowing each party to interpret the text in ways consistent with their own p…
Mental Model
Constructivism (Piaget/Vygotsky)
Constructivism holds that knowledge is actively constructed by learners, not transmitted from teacher
Cognitive Move
Consult
Ask a qualified source one scoped question while keeping the decision yourself.
Cognitive Move
Consumer
Ask who actually takes something in and depends on it to act. The real receiver is often not the official recipient, and once you name them, their needs set the format, timing, and level of detail.
Mental Model
Contagion Models 1 Diffusion
Diffusion models describe state changes through specified contacts and transmission rules
Mental Model
Contagion Models 2 SIS Model
SIS models include recovery that returns an infected unit to susceptibility
Cognitive Move
container metaphor
An object with an inside, an outside, and usually a line across it. Jar, tank, iceberg, vessel, bucket. You pour a proportion into it: what is filled against what is free, what shows above the line against what sits below. The container is the workhorse of this treatment because so many structures are really one quantity split in two. What it adds for free is walls. A jar's walls do not move, so the reader reads your limit as fixed even when the limit is a decision.
Mental Model
Container Theory of Groups
Container Theory, drawing on Wilfred Bion's group dynamics work and Parker Palmer's circle of trust model, proposes that groups function well only when they have a strong 'container' — a set of agreements, practices, and…
Mental Model
Containment
George Kennan's Cold War strategy of preventing the expansion of a threat without attempting to eliminate it directly—accepting that the adversary exists but limiting its spread through consistent, patient counter-pressu…
Mental Model
Contemplative Inquiry
Contemplative inquiry is a structured practice of holding a question in awareness without rushing to answer it — allowing insight to emerge from sustained attention rather than analytical forcing
Mental Model
Contemplative Science
Contemplative science is the interdisciplinary field that studies contemplative practices (meditation, prayer, yoga, mindfulness) using the tools of modern science—neuroscience, psychology, physiology, and phenomenology
Mental Model
Contempt Spiral (Gottman's Terminal Pattern)
John Gottman's research identifies contempt—the expression of superiority and disgust toward a partner—as the single most reliable predictor of relationship dissolution, with 93% accuracy
Mental Model
Content Farm
Organizations that produce massive volumes of low-quality content optimized for search engine traffic rather than human value
Cognitive Move
Context collapse
When work moves to a new person or tool, the unwritten details that made it work get left behind, and private details that should have stayed put get carried along.
Mental Model
Contingent Contracts
When parties disagree about future facts—will the product hit sales targets, will the market grow, will the project finish on time—a contingent contract resolves the impasse by making terms depend on what actually happen…
Cognitive Move
Contingent policy
Pre-decide an if-then rule so the action fires automatically when a condition occurs.