Cognitive Move
Floor or threshold
A minimum that must be met before an outcome counts as acceptable or the next action is permitted.
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Cognitive Move
floor plan
One building or one room, seen from above, with the furniture in it. At this scale adjacency does nearly all of the work: what is beside the door, what is on the path between two things you use, how many steps a trip takes. Add the routes people actually walk as lines and the plan stops being architecture and becomes an account of behavior.
Cognitive Move
Floors and anti-goals
Names the hard limits the push must not breach and the outcomes that would count as failure even if the trend line rises. Floors are minimums you refuse to drop below. Anti-goals are wins you would not accept. Cap only severe, plausible losses, not every imaginable one.
Cognitive Move
Floors then optimization
Set a minimum threshold on the objectives you refuse to trade away, treat those as pass or fail gates, then maximize the remaining goods only among options that clear them. Unlike strict ranking, clearing a floor earns no extra credit above it.
Cognitive Move
Floors, ceilings, and override rules
Set the hard limits that hold no matter which branch fires, plus who may suspend the rule by hand. Branches tell you what changes with conditions; these say what never changes and when a human takes the wheel.
Cognitive Move
Flow and transfer
Draws a quantity moving from source to destination with width as amount, so the losses along the way become visible.
Cognitive Move
flow map
Nodes placed where the things actually are, on a court, a floor plan, a route, a map, with weighted arrows between them. Position carries the spatial fact and width carries the amount, so an empty corner of the layout reads as a place nothing goes rather than a category you forgot.
Mental Model
Flow Model (Csikszentmihalyi)
Csikszentmihalyi's psychological model identifying the conditions for optimal experience: flow occurs when challenge level closely matches skill level, goals are clear, feedback is immediate, and the activity demands ful…
Mental Model
Flow State
Csikszentmihalyi's concept of optimal experience: a state of complete absorption where time distorts, self-consciousness dissolves, and performance peaks
Mental Model
Flow State Model (Csikszentmihalyi) Applied to Work
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's flow model describes a state of complete absorption where self-consciousness dissolves, time perception alters, and performance peaks
Cognitive Move
flowchart
Boxes for steps, diamonds for conditions, arrows for what follows what, and exactly one start. The value hides in the arrows that go backward. A loop that returns you to the beginning without changing anything is nearly invisible while you are living it and obvious once it is on the page. Keep one question per diamond and two arms out of it.
Mental Model
Flypaper Theory
The military strategy of deliberately engaging the enemy in one location to fix them in place—drawing their resources and attention to a chosen battleground so they can't deploy elsewhere
Mental Model
Flywheel
A business metaphor for cumulative, reinforcing progress through repeated aligned effort
Mental Model
Focus on High-leverage Activities
The discipline of consistently identifying and prioritizing the small number of activities that produce disproportionate results
Mental Model
Focused Attention Meditation
Focused Attention (FA) meditation involves sustaining attention on a chosen object — typically the breath, a mantra, a visual image, or a bodily sensation — and repeatedly returning attention to that object when the mind…
Mental Model
Focused Attention vs. Open Awareness (Two Modes of Meditation)
Focused attention and open monitoring are two broad research categories for some meditation practices
Mental Model
Fog of War Principle (Clausewitz's Friction)
Clausewitz's 'fog of war' describes the fundamental uncertainty pervading all military operations: incomplete intelligence, unreliable reports, communication breakdowns, equipment failures, weather, terrain, and the cumu…
Mental Model
Folk Psychology
Folk psychology is everyday explanation and prediction using beliefs, desires, intentions, emotions, and related concepts
Mental Model
Follow the Child (Montessori)
Following the child means observing individual activity and development and responding within a prepared environment with appropriate choices, presentations, support, and limits
Mental Model
Food as Medicine Framework
The 'food as medicine' framework treats dietary intervention as a primary therapeutic tool
Mental Model
Food Reward Hypothesis (Guyenet)
Stephan Guyenet's food reward hypothesis proposes that obesity is primarily driven by the brain's reward system responding to hyper-palatable, calorie-dense foods rather than conscious overeating
Cognitive Move
Forbidden state or minimum floor
Name the one line that must never be crossed, or the number that must never drop below a set level. State it as a hard threshold with a value, not a direction like "stay safe" or "keep enough cash on hand."
Mental Model
Force Majeure and Impossibility Doctrine
What happens when circumstances make contractual performance impossible, impracticable, or radically different from what the parties contemplated? Force majeure clauses excuse performance when extraordinary events (pande…
Cognitive Move
force metaphor
A mechanical arrangement where a small input moves a large load. Lever, spring, pulley, wedge, domino. You pour a dependency or a leverage claim into it: this small thing, applied here, moves that big thing. It draws asymmetry better than any chart, because the eye reads the long arm and the short arm at once. What it adds for free is a fixed exchange rate. A lever's ratio is a property of the bar, and your ratio almost never is.