Mental Model
Deliberate Practice
Structured, individualized practice designed to improve specific performance components through appropriate challenge and informative feedback.
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Mental Model
Deliberate Practice Coaching
Deliberate practice coaching applies Ericsson's framework to mentoring: identify specific sub-skills at the learner's competence edge, design focused practice targeting those sub-skills, provide immediate feedback, and a…
Mental Model
Deliberate Practice Coaching Framework (Designing Expert Performance)
This operationalizes Ericsson's research into practical methodology: well-defined tasks just beyond current capability, full concentration, immediate informative feedback, and repetition with progressive refinement
Mental Model
Deliberate Rest (Pang)
Deliberate rest treats rest as a skill to be developed and a strategic activity to be scheduled, not merely the absence of work
Mental Model
Deliberative Democracy Model
Deliberative democracy theory (Habermas, Fishkin) argues legitimate political decisions require substantive deliberation where citizens exchange reasons, consider opposing viewpoints, and potentially revise positions—not…
Mental Model
Demand-Withdraw Pattern (Christensen & Heavey)
The most common destructive interaction cycle in intimate relationships: one partner demands change, engagement, or emotional connection while the other withdraws, avoids, or shuts down
Cognitive Move
dendrogram
The tree is discovered rather than declared. Leaves are the items, and two of them join at a height that says how different they were. Low joins are things you have been treating as separate that are really one. The height where joins suddenly get tall is where the natural groups stop.
Mental Model
Denial
A psychological defense mechanism where the mind refuses to acknowledge an uncomfortable reality—not as a deliberate lie but as an unconscious protective process that shields the ego from threatening information
Mental Model
Denomination Bias (Raghubir & Srivastava)
The cognitive bias where the denomination of money affects spending behavior: people spend small denominations more freely than equivalent large denominations
Mental Model
Denominator Neglect
The tendency to focus on the numerator (the number of events) while ignoring the denominator (the total number of opportunities)—making large numbers of events seem alarming regardless of the base rate
Cognitive Move
Dependency
Draws what must happen before what, so the one chain that owns your finish date separates from everything with slack.
Cognitive Move
dependency graph
Nodes and arrows only, with no time axis. An arrow means the target cannot begin until the source is finished. The finding is usually structural: one node with several arrows leaving it is a bottleneck, and a node with no incoming arrows is something you could start right now.
Mental Model
Dependency Theory (Prebisch-Frank)
Dependency theory, developed by Raul Prebisch and Andre Gunder Frank, argues that global poverty is not a stage on the road to development but a structural condition actively produced by the international economic system
Mental Model
Dependent Origination (Everything Arises in Relation)
Dependent origination is a Buddhist teaching on conditional arising and cessation, centrally the conditions sustaining suffering
Mental Model
Deprival Syndrome
The intense, disproportionate reaction to losing something—or being threatened with losing something—you already possess
Mental Model
Deprival-Superreaction Tendency
Munger's term for the disproportionately intense reaction people have to LOSING something they already possess—a reaction that exceeds the pleasure of acquiring the same thing
Mental Model
Derating (Conservative Design Practice)
Derating is the practice of operating a component well below its rated maximum capacity to extend its life, increase reliability, and provide margin for unexpected conditions
Mental Model
Design for Manufacturability (DFM)
Design for Manufacturability is the practice of designing products so they can be efficiently manufactured, assembled, tested, and maintained — not just so they function correctly
Mental Model
Design Pattern
A reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem in a specific context—originally from architecture (Christopher Alexander) and famously applied to software (Gang of Four)
Mental Model
Design Review Gates
Design review gates are formal checkpoints in the development process where a project must demonstrate specific maturity criteria before advancing to the next phase
Mental Model
Desirable Difficulties Framework (Bjork)
Robert Bjork identifies learning conditions that feel harder during practice but produce superior long-term retention
Mental Model
Desirable Difficulty
Robert Bjork's counterintuitive finding that learning conditions that make initial performance worse often produce better long-term retention and transfer
Mental Model
Desirable Difficulty in Teaching
Robert Bjork's desirable difficulties principle states that learning conditions which make initial acquisition harder often produce stronger long-term retention and transfer
Mental Model
Desire Discrepancy Navigation
Desire discrepancy—when partners have different levels or types of sexual desire—is the single most common sexual complaint among couples, affecting an estimated 80% of couples at some point