Mental Model
Explore Possible Solutions
The creative and analytical phase of generating MULTIPLE possible solutions to a well-defined problem before committing to one—deliberately expanding the solution space before contracting it
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Mental Model
Explore/Exploit Tradeoff
The fundamental tension between exploiting what you already know works (refinement, optimization, execution) and exploring new possibilities (experimentation, innovation, learning)
Mental Model
Exponential Growth
A quantity changes by a constant proportion per equal interval, so successive absolute changes depend on a changing base.
Mental Model
Exponential Growth Bias (Failure to Grasp)
A tendency to underestimate compounding or extrapolate proportional change too much like linear change.
Mental Model
Exposure Hierarchy (Graduated Exposure Therapy)
An exposure hierarchy is a systematic ranking of feared situations from least to most anxiety-provoking, used to guide gradual, therapeutic confrontation with feared stimuli
Cognitive Move
External Reality Check
Include an observation you cannot easily manufacture, so self-deception gets exposed.
Mental Model
Externalities
Externalities are costs or benefits of an activity that affect others and are not fully reflected in the relevant decision-maker's incentives or compensation arrangements
Cognitive Move
Externalities
Ask who absorbs the costs your current frame does not bill anyone for. Not who feeds or consumes the work, but who quietly pays for it in overtime, rework, or damaged trust while sitting outside the box you drew.
Cognitive Move
Externalize
Move state you keep re-remembering out of your head and into a persistent artifact like a ledger, checklist, or state board.
Cognitive Move
Externalize
Move state or structure into a durable artifact while you still do the acting and deciding.
Cognitive Move
F - Fallout or forbidden loss hidden
The headline goal omits the costs and red lines that could make achieving it a victory not worth having.
Mental Model
Face (Mianzi) Management
In Chinese social psychology, 'face' is social currency of public reputation
Cognitive Move
Fact / state
Find out what is actually true, present, absent, or currently configured right now.
Mental Model
Factor of Safety (Safety Margin in Engineering)
The factor of safety (FoS) is the ratio between a structure's actual strength and the maximum stress it's designed to bear
Cognitive Move
Fade
Once someone can reliably do the thing on their own, take the help away, keeping only a small safety net where a slip would be costly.
Mental Model
Fail-Safe
A design principle where system failure defaults to a safe state rather than a dangerous one
Mental Model
Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA)
FMEA is a systematic method for identifying all the ways a system, process, or product can fail, assessing the consequences of each failure mode, and prioritizing actions to prevent the most dangerous ones
Cognitive Move
Failure path
Decide in advance what happens when the normal route breaks. Name the deadline that counts as a stall, the person or backup process that takes over, how to undo a wrong move, and the emergency route when nobody answers.
Mental Model
Failure to Account for Base Rates
The persistent tendency to ignore the prior probability (base rate) of an event when evaluating new evidence—focusing on how well the evidence matches a scenario rather than how common the scenario is
Mental Model
Failure to See False Conjunctions
The broader cognitive failure of not noticing when detailed, specific stories are being treated as more probable than their component parts warrant—an extension of the conjunction fallacy into everyday reasoning
Mental Model
Fair Fighting Rules Protocol
A research-based protocol establishing ground rules for productive conflict in intimate relationships, focusing on the specific behaviors that predict whether a conflict strengthens or damages the relationship
Mental Model
Fallacy of the Single Cause
The cognitive error of attributing an outcome to one cause when it actually results from multiple interacting causes—oversimplifying complex causation into a simple story
Mental Model
False Cause
False-cause reasoning infers a causal relationship from association or sequence without adequate support for the causal step