Mental Model
Erotic-Domestic Tension (The Mating in Captivity Paradox)
Perel’s framework explores tensions that can arise between domestic familiarity and the autonomy, curiosity, and novelty associated with desire
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Mental Model
Error Correction Codes (Detecting and Fixing Errors)
Error-correcting codes add structured redundancy that permits recovery from specified patterns of corruption
Cognitive Move
Escalate
Send a predefined red flag straight to whoever is actually authorized to handle it.
Cognitive Move
Escalate the Red Flag
Predefine the danger signals, their authorized destination, and the immediate safe action, so the ordinary workflow ends the moment one fires.
Cognitive Move
Escalates
Some state, like debt, conflict, or confidence, keeps compounding because each turn makes the next turn bigger.
Cognitive Move
escalating panels
Three or four stacked slots where each one is more extreme than the one above. The stack asserts a direction: further down is further along, and the last rung is where the clever people are. That claim about direction is never argued, only drawn. Useful when the escalation is real and each rung genuinely subsumes the one before. Misleading when the rungs are just four options and you have quietly sorted them by how much you like them.
Mental Model
Escalation Archetype
A system archetype where two parties respond to each other's actions with escalating competitive responses—each side's action is the stimulus for the other's reaction, producing a self-reinforcing spiral
Mental Model
Escalation of Commitment (Staw's Model)
Barry Staw's research on why decision-makers increase investment in failing courses of action rather than cutting losses
Cognitive Move
Establish
Before touching the work, fix three numbers: how much you'll do, how long you'll spend, and what help or aid you'll use. Make the dose small enough that failing costs almost nothing. Restating named the task; this sizes it.
Mental Model
Estate Planning Frameworks
Estate planning structures asset ownership, beneficiary designations, legal documents, and tax strategies to ensure wealth transfers with minimum friction
Mental Model
Ethical Fading
Ethical fading occurs when the moral dimensions of a decision gradually become invisible, typically through psychological mechanisms that reframe ethical choices as purely business, technical, or pragmatic ones
Mental Model
Ethical Journalism Decision Tree (Navigating Gray Areas)
The ethical journalism decision tree is a structured question sequence for ethically ambiguous situations: Is it newsworthy? Is it true? What harm could publication cause? Can harm be minimized while preserving truth? Ha…
Mental Model
Ethical Leadership Model
Ethical leadership combines moral person (individual character—integrity, honesty, caring about people, fairness in decisions) with moral manager (actively promoting ethical behavior through communication, reinforcement,…
Mental Model
Ethical Will Framework
An ethical will (distinct from a legal will) is a document that transmits moral and spiritual legacy — values, beliefs, life lessons, hopes, apologies, and blessings — rather than material assets
Mental Model
Ethics of Care (Gilligan & Noddings)
The ethics of care argues that moral reasoning is fundamentally relational, not abstract
Mental Model
Eudaimonia (Flourishing vs Hedonic Happiness)
Eudaimonia concerns flourishing or living well; Aristotle connects it to virtuous activity across a life and relevant external conditions
Cognitive Move
Euler
Draws only the regions that have members. If nothing belongs to both sets, the circles do not touch. If one set sits wholly inside another, it is drawn inside. The shape of the picture is itself a claim, so an Euler says more than a Venn and can be wrong in ways a Venn cannot.
Mental Model
Euphemism Treadmill
The euphemism treadmill describes a pattern in which replacement terms acquire negative associations connected to what they name
Mental Model
Euphemism Treadmill in Organizations
Steven Pinker's linguistic concept applied to organizational communication: the pattern where terms are repeatedly replaced with softer alternatives, each new term eventually acquiring the negative associations of the ol…
Mental Model
Evaluate the Options
The structured practice of systematically comparing decision options against explicit criteria before choosing—rather than defaulting to the first plausible option or the most emotionally appealing one
Mental Model
Evening Shutdown Ritual Protocol
A protocol for ending the workday with a structured ritual that creates a clear psychological boundary between work and rest, based on Cal Newport's deep work methodology
Cognitive Move
Event
Recast the thing as a stream of dated happenings instead of a standing entity. You get a timeline you can count, order, and timestamp, so the questions become when, how often, and what preceded it, rather than what it is.
Cognitive Move
Event to Loop
When a fix works briefly and the problem returns, trace one consequence back to an earlier cause and mark its sign and delay.
Mental Model
Evidence (Evaluating What's True)
A hierarchy for evaluating the reliability of evidence: randomized controlled experiments provide the strongest evidence, followed by large observational studies, small studies, case reports, expert opinion, and finally…