S · SYSTEM
Quick Recipes
Short methods that combine cognitive moves. Explore situations, examples, and related possibilities.
How does it fit my situation?
Choose a named move in this branch to open its working page and checks.
- One Home for State
Give every important piece of information one canonical home with a named owner, and point everything else to it.
- Capture at the Transition
At every boundary between sessions, people, or places, record done, next, blocker, and risk in under a minute.
- Cue in Context
Put one exact prompt at the place and time of the intended action, and delete cues that don't change behavior.
- Retire the Stale
Name and date the current version, then remove old copies so no one can mistake them for the live one.
- Checklist the Repeat
When a repeated process fails by omission, build the shortest checklist that catches the misses.
- Sharp Handoff
State the current state, requested output, owner, deadline, check, and exception path, then ask for confirmation.
- One Owner per Outcome
Name exactly one person who owns the outcome and give them matching authority and resources.
- Count the Handoffs
Map every transfer in a workflow, rank them by delay and error, and remove or redesign the worst one.
- Machine the Mechanical
Give exact, repetitive, rule-bound work to a tool, but keep interpretation and novel cases with a human.
- Pilot Before Plumbing
Run a process manually for 5 to 10 cycles and automate only the part that stays stable.
- Exception Basket
Define ordinary bounds and route everything outside them to a visible human review queue.
- Offline Fallback
For every dependency that can fail at the moment of need, create the smallest backup path and rehearse it once.
- Automate the Chore, Keep the Choice
Automate the gathering and formatting, but keep the final decision and its rationale human-owned.
- Ask the Missing Expert
Name the competence your system lacks and ask one scoped question of a qualified source.
- Two Independent Eyes
Get separate assessments before reviewers see each other's conclusions, with real independence in data or method.
- Warm Work Stays Human
When presence, apology, consent, or care is part of the outcome, the delivery must stay human.
- Teach-Back Before Trust
Before trusting a handoff, ask the receiver to explain the result, assumptions, and exceptions in their own words.
- 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.
- Make Right Easy, Wrong Hard
Remove one friction from the good path and add one reversible friction to the bad one.
- Precommit in the Calm Time
Choose your boundary, trigger, and escape clause before the hot state that will impair your judgment arrives.
- Rearrange Before Resolve
Change the layout and availability of things before demanding more motivation from yourself or others.
- Minimum Necessary Context
Share only the information a helper or tool actually needs for the task, and strip the rest.
- Scaffold, Then Fade
Move from demonstration to guided work to unaided work, reducing support as real mastery appears.
- Total-System Receipt
Before adopting an improvement, list every burden it removes and creates for every actor, now and later.