Mental Model
Enmeshment Trap (Minuchin)
Salvador Minuchin's family therapy concept describing relationships where boundaries between individuals are so blurred that they lose separate identity, autonomy, and the capacity for independent functioning
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Cognitive Move
Enough or stop condition for the present cycle
Decide in advance what would let you stop pushing on this: a level that counts as good enough for now, or a date the push expires. Without it, improving stays open forever and quietly outranks everything else you value.
Cognitive Move
Ensemble
Step up from the single instance to the whole set it belongs to. Instead of studying one case, study the population or system of like cases and ask what the distribution shows: how often, how much spread, which outliers, what the group does that no single case reveals.
Cognitive Move
Ensemble / Distribute
Several genuinely different carriers work independently or complementarily, and someone adjudicates afterward.
Mental Model
Entropy
The second law of thermodynamics applied broadly: closed systems tend toward disorder, and maintaining order requires continuous energy input
Cognitive Move
Entrust Ownership and Control
Name who owns the decision and convert outcomes you can't control into contributions you can.
Cognitive Move
Enumeration
Cuts a vague mass into discrete items on their own lines, so the set can be counted, worked, ordered, and closed.
Cognitive Move
Environment
Ask what ambient conditions the whole system sits in: rules, incentives, tooling, budgets, physical setting, market pressure. These aren't people or handoffs, they're the background that shapes every actor's behavior at once and usually goes unnamed because it never changes during the analysis.
Mental Model
Environmental Ethics Framework
Environmental ethics asks whether moral consideration extends beyond humans to animals, ecosystems, and the natural world itself
Mental Model
Envy and Jealousy
The tendency to evaluate well-being in relative rather than absolute terms—measuring yourself against others rather than against your own prior state or intrinsic goals
Mental Model
Envy/Jealousy Tendency
Munger's inclusion of envy and jealousy as among the most powerful and destructive psychological forces—powerful because they motivate enormous amounts of behavior, and destructive because they're corrosive to the person…
Mental Model
Epigenetic Clock
The epigenetic clock, pioneered by Steve Horvath, measures biological age through DNA methylation patterns at specific CpG sites across the genome
Cognitive Move
equation
The relationship stated in symbols with an equals sign, and this period's values written directly underneath each symbol. The substitution row is what makes it checkable: a reader can see which number went where, and object to one term without rejecting the whole rule.
Cognitive Move
Equation
Write the situation as named variables and a relation between them, so you can compute an answer and watch it move when one input changes. Fits when the quantities are real and measurable; fails when the deciding factors resist measurement.
Mental Model
Equilibrium
The state of a system where opposing forces BALANCE, producing stability—the system has no net tendency to change
Mental Model
Equivalence
Different representations are equivalent only with respect to a specified property and domain, such as equal values, the same solution set, or matching observable behavior
Cognitive Move
ER/UML
Entities as boxes with their fields listed inside, and each connection marked with how many of one attach to how many of another. The counts are the point. One account has many transactions, and each transaction sits in exactly one category. Writing those counts down is usually where you discover that your categories cannot hold what you have been trying to put in them.
Mental Model
Ergodicity
Ergodicity concerns the equivalence of suitable time and ensemble averages for a specified process and observable under appropriate conditions
Mental Model
Ergonomic Workspace Setup Protocol
A step-by-step protocol for setting up an ergonomic workspace that prevents the musculoskeletal problems caused by prolonged desk work
Mental Model
Erikson's Generativity vs. Stagnation Framework
Erik Erikson identified the seventh psychosocial stage (roughly ages 40-65) as the tension between generativity — contributing to the next generation through mentoring, creating, or nurturing — and stagnation, where adul…
Mental Model
Erikson's Psychosocial Stages
Erik Erikson's eight-stage model of lifelong psychological development, each defined by a central crisis: Trust vs
Mental Model
Eroding Goals Archetype
A system archetype where gaps between goals and performance are closed by LOWERING THE GOAL rather than by IMPROVING PERFORMANCE—producing a gradually declining standard that feels acceptable at each step because the gap…
Mental Model
Erotic Blueprints Framework
The Erotic Blueprints, developed by somatic sexologist Jaiya, identify five primary erotic types based on what turns people on at the most fundamental level: Energetic (aroused by anticipation, tease, space, breath, and…
Mental Model
Erotic Intelligence (Perel)
Esther Perel's concept of erotic intelligence describes the capacity to maintain desire within the security of committed relationships—a paradox because desire thrives on mystery, novelty, and separateness while commitme…