Mental Model
Home Maintenance Lifecycle
Every home component has a predictable lifecycle—reliable function followed by increasing maintenance and eventual replacement
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Mental Model
Home Office Design for Productivity
Five evidence-based domains for home office design: (1) Ergonomics—monitor at eye level, arms at 90 degrees, alternating sit-stand every 30-60 minutes; (2) Lighting—natural light as primary source (reduces eyestrain 51%)…
Mental Model
Honne and Tatemae (Private vs. Public Self)
Honne (true feelings, genuine thoughts) and tatemae (public facade, socially expected behavior) represent the Japanese recognition that humans always operate with two distinct layers of expression
Cognitive Move
Hook / trigger
Name the specific event that fires the transfer, and name the person who will see that event happen. Without both, work waits for someone to notice, and a handoff that nobody sees start never actually starts.
Mental Model
Hook Model (Habit Loop)
Nir Eyal’s product-design framework describing a cycle of trigger, action, variable reward, and investment
Cognitive Move
Horizon and tolerance
Pin the date you expect to arrive, then say how much slack still counts as arriving. Name the wiggle room in both timing and level, so a near miss reads as success and a real miss reads as failure.
Mental Model
Horizontal Integration
Growth by acquiring or merging with competitors at the same stage of production
Mental Model
Hormesis (Beneficial Stress Response)
Hormesis describes a dose-response relationship where low-dose exposure to a stressor that is harmful at high doses actually produces beneficial adaptive responses
Mental Model
Hormesis (Low-Dose Stimulation, High-Dose Inhibition)
Hormesis is a biphasic dose-response pattern involving differing responses at lower and higher exposure levels for a specified endpoint
Mental Model
Horror Vacui vs Minimalism
Horror vacui and minimalism draw attention to contrasting treatments of space and detail
Mental Model
Hoshin (True North Direction)
Distinct from hoshin kanri (the planning methodology), hoshin as a standalone concept means 'compass needle' or 'true north' -- the unwavering directional purpose that guides all organizational and personal decisions
Mental Model
Hoshin Kanri (Strategy Deployment)
Hoshin kanri ('compass management' or 'policy deployment') is the Japanese strategic planning methodology that aligns an entire organization around a few critical breakthrough objectives while maintaining daily operation…
Mental Model
Hospitality as Social Architecture
Hospitality as Social Architecture reframes hosting and gathering not as a personality trait ('I'm not a host') but as a design skill that creates the conditions for social connection
Mental Model
House Money Effect
The tendency to take excessive risks with money or resources perceived as 'gains' or 'winnings' rather than 'earned' income—as if house money (casino profits) is less real than your own money
Mental Model
House Money Effect (Extended Thaler)
Richard Thaler's finding that people take greater risks with money perceived as 'winnings' rather than 'original capital,' treating them as if they're playing with 'house money' rather than their own
Mental Model
How to Explain Stotting
Stotting is an animal display whose function can be investigated through competing behavioral predictions
Mental Model
How to Handle Mistakes
A meta-strategic framework for converting mistakes into learning assets rather than sunk costs
Cognitive Move
hub and spoke
One node pinned in the middle and the rest fanned around it, each joined to the center and to nothing else. The claim it makes is strong: everything here reaches everything else only by passing through the middle. The useful reading is per spoke. A spoke you cannot describe in a sentence is a part that is attached by assumption rather than by anything real.
Mental Model
Hub and Spoke Model
A network architecture where all connections pass through a central hub—used in airline routing (connecting flights through hubs), organizational structure (all decisions through a central authority), and information sys…
Cognitive Move
Hubs
Find the nodes carrying far more connections than anyone else, then ask what happens if one goes quiet. Unlike a bridge, which joins two separate clusters, a hub sits inside a cluster and routes most of its traffic, so it concentrates both influence and risk.
Mental Model
Human Capital as Asset
Human capital—your capacity to earn through skills, knowledge, health, and reputation—is typically the largest asset in your portfolio, especially early in career