Mental Model
Desire Line (Path of Least Resistance)
Desire lines are informal routes emerging through repeated use
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Mental Model
Desire Paths (Let Users Show You the Way)
A design approach that studies actual activity and informal workarounds before committing to or revising a structure
Cognitive Move
Deskilling
Deskilling is when a tool makes your results better while your own ability to do the thing without it quietly gets worse.
Cognitive Move
detail on demand
Hovering or tapping a mark reveals the exact figure, label, or note behind it. The rule that governs it is simple: assume no one ever opens it. Precision that only a hover can supply belongs here, and anything the argument depends on belongs in the view that loads.
Cognitive Move
Development and dependence
Ask what leaning on this component costs the people around it: skills that atrophy, judgment nobody practices anymore, relationships that thin out, and options you lose. Then protect those deliberately, so you stay able and free to work without it.
Mental Model
Developmental vs. Instrumental Mentoring
Mentoring serves two fundamentally different purposes requiring different approaches
Cognitive Move
deviation chart
Everything measured against one chosen reference, drawn as signed distance from a baseline instead of as raw height. The choice of reference is the argument. Your own average, last year, the plan, the person you envy: each one produces a different picture from identical data, so the baseline gets a label and stays visible.
Cognitive Move
Deviations
Write down the gap between what you said would happen and what did, including any place you measured differently than planned. Not the result itself, and not your revised belief. Just the mismatch, stated plainly, before anyone explains it away.
Mental Model
Devil's Advocate
The structured practice of assigning someone the explicit role of arguing AGAINST a proposed plan, decision, or consensus—deliberately introducing opposition to improve decision quality
Mental Model
Dharma (Right Action in Context)
Dharma encompasses cosmic order, moral law, duty, and right action
Mental Model
Dharmic Business Ethics (Artha within Dharma)
Classical Indian thought organized pursuits into four purusharthas: Dharma (right conduct), Artha (wealth), Kama (pleasure), and Moksha (liberation)
Mental Model
Diagnose problems to get at their root causes.
A principle of investigating the mechanisms and contributing conditions behind a problem before choosing a lasting response
Mental Model
Diagnostic Parsimony (Occam's Razor in Medicine)
Diagnostic parsimony is the clinical principle that a single diagnosis should be sought to explain all of a patient's symptoms before invoking multiple diagnoses
Mental Model
Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Framework
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), created by Marsha Linehan, teaches four skill modules designed to address the core deficits in emotion regulation that drive self-destructive behavior
Mental Model
Dialectical Thinking (Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis)
Dialectical inquiry examines tensions and limitations through which a position may be revised
Cognitive Move
dialogue
Two voices taking turns, where the second voice holds the objection. The reader's resistance gets spoken at the moment it arrives, and the answer stays attached to the question that provoked it, which is hard to arrange in prose. The cost is length. Every point now takes a turn and a reply, and a weak objection wastes both.
Mental Model
Dialogue vs Discussion
David Bohm and Peter Senge's distinction between two modes of group conversation
Cognitive Move
Difference / association
Find out what actually differs or moves together with the outcome you care about.
Mental Model
Differential Diagnosis Algorithm
Differential diagnosis is the systematic process of distinguishing a particular disease or condition from others that present with similar clinical features
Mental Model
Differentiated Instruction
Carol Ann Tomlinson's approach modifies instruction to meet varied readiness, interests, and learning profiles within the same classroom
Mental Model
Differentiation (Schnarch): Growing Up in Relationship
Schnarch’s differentiation framework concerns sustaining an individual sense of self while remaining capable of close relationship and thoughtful responsiveness.
Mental Model
Differentiation in Intimacy (Schnarch): Holding Yourself Together
David Schnarch's framework where the capacity for genuine intimacy requires DIFFERENTIATION: the ability to maintain your own identity, values, and emotional equilibrium while in close emotional contact with a partner—es…
Mental Model
Difficult Conversation Framework (Stone/Patton/Heen)
A three-conversation protocol from the Harvard Negotiation Project for handling high-stakes interpersonal discussions
Mental Model
Difficult Conversations Framework
Every difficult conversation is actually three simultaneous conversations: the 'What Happened' conversation (disagreeing about facts, blame, and what's right), the Feelings conversation (the emotions each party is experi…