Frameworks

TLDR

A curated index of the frameworks gathered across this vault. Each entry summarizes the framework in numbered steps (where applicable), names the source, and links to the original note for full context. Browse to pick the right framework for the moment — habit building, decision making, forecasting, learning, negotiating, prioritizing, shipping.

How to Use

  • Identify the domain of the problem in front of you (habits? decisions? learning? building?)
  • Pick the framework in that section whose shape matches your situation
  • Open the linked source note for the depth behind the summary

Table of Contents

Habits & Behavior

Atomic Habits — The Four Laws of Behavior Change

James Clear

When to use: Designing or breaking any habit loop — cravings, routines, workouts, bad phone usage.

The habit loop: Cue → Craving → Response → Reward. To build a good habit, satisfy all four laws. To break a bad habit, invert them.

  1. Make it obvious (cue) — design your environment so good cues are visible; use implementation intentions (“I will [X] at [TIME] in [LOCATION]”) and habit stacking (“After I [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT]”)
  2. Make it attractive (craving) — temptation-bundle; join a culture where the habit is normal
  3. Make it easy (response) — reduce friction; apply the Two-Minute Rule; standardize before optimizing
  4. Make it satisfying (reward) — immediate reward; habit tracker; “never miss twice”

Inversions to break bad habits: invisible → unattractive → difficult → unsatisfying.

Learning & Skill Acquisition

Ultralearning — Nine Principles

Scott Young

When to use: Acquiring a hard skill quickly through self-directed, intense study (languages, programming, professional certs).

  1. Metalearning — first draw the map of the subject before studying it
  2. Focus — sharpen your knife; carve out blocks where you can concentrate
  3. Directness — learn by doing the actual thing, not a convenient proxy
  4. Drill — attack your weakest point; break skills into parts, master, reassemble
  5. Retrieval — test yourself before you feel ready; active recall beats re-reading
  6. Feedback — don’t dodge the punches; extract signal from noise
  7. Retention — understand what you forget and why; spaced repetition
  8. Intuition — dig deep through play; avoid shortcut memorization
  9. Experimentation — go beyond the paths others have walked

Metalearning — Why / What / How

Scott Young

When to use: Before starting any ultralearning project — to plan what and how to study.

  1. Why? — understand your motivation (instrumental vs intrinsic)
  2. What? — map the knowledge into three columns: Concepts (to understand), Facts (to memorize), Procedures (to practice)
  3. How? — benchmark existing curricula + use the Emphasize/Exclude method to tailor to your “Why”

Four Levels of Thought (Learning Journey)

Annie Duke / Peter Attia

When to use: Gauging where you actually are on a skill; knowing what to work on next.

  1. Unconscious incompetence — don’t know what you don’t know
  2. Conscious incompetence — now you know why you’re bad at it
  3. Conscious competence — you can do it if you think about it
  4. Unconscious competence — autonomic; no longer requires deliberate thought

Decision Making

Annie Duke’s Six-Step Decision Process

Annie Duke

When to use: Any high-stakes choice where you want structure instead of gut; any time you’re tempted to judge a decision by its outcome rather than its quality.

  1. Identify the reasonable set of possible outcomes
  2. Identify your preference via payoff for each outcome (how much you like/dislike each)
  3. Estimate the likelihood of each outcome unfolding
  4. Assess the relative likelihood of outcomes you like vs. dislike for the option under consideration
  5. Repeat steps 1–4 for other options under consideration
  6. Compare the options

Companion tools: Resulting (don’t judge a decision by its outcome), Knowledge Tracker (record what you knew vs. learned after), Preferences–Payoffs–Probabilities framing.

Backcasting + Premortem

Annie Duke

When to use: Planning toward a one-year (or N-year) goal; anticipating failure modes before committing.

  1. Backcast: imagine it’s the day after you hit the goal — look back and map the steps that got you there
  2. Premortem: imagine it’s the day after you failed — list the reasons why

Both force you to reason about decisions within your control, not just luck.

Prediction & Forecasting

Superforecasting — Five-Step Process

Philip Tetlock

When to use: Any testable prediction with a deadline — markets, technology adoption, political events, project outcomes.

  1. Establish a testable prediction with a set end date
  2. Break the problem into several sub-problems
  3. For each sub-problem: determine the base rate (outside view, stripped of specifics), then adjust based on the inside view (specifics of this case)
  4. Logically recombine the sub-problems to determine the overall prediction likelihood
  5. Review your prediction after the answer is known — see where the model was wrong

Building & Optimizing

Elon’s Algorithm — Five-Step Process Optimization

When to use: Any process, workflow, product, or system that has accumulated requirements, steps, or complexity — before you try to speed it up or automate it.

  1. Question every requirement — make the requirements less dumb; attach a name to each one
  2. Delete what you can — if you aren’t putting back ~10% later, you didn’t delete enough
  3. Simplify and organize — but only after deletion, or you’ll polish steps that shouldn’t exist
  4. Accelerate cycle times — you can always go faster than you think
  5. Automate — only once steps 1–4 are done

RICE Scoring

When to use: Prioritizing a backlog of product features or initiatives.

Score = (Reach × Impact × Confidence) / Effort

  1. Reach — how many people/users in a given time window
  2. Impact — per-person effect of the change
  3. Confidence — how sure you are of Reach and Impact (0–100%)
  4. Effort — person-months (or similar) required

Lean Product — Product-Market Fit Pyramid

Dan Olsen

When to use: Positioning a new product or evaluating whether an existing one has product-market fit.

Five layers, bottom to top:

  1. Target customer
  2. Underserved needs of that customer (problem space)
  3. Value proposition you offer
  4. Feature set (solution space)
  5. User experience (UX)

“Customers don’t care about your solution. They care about their problems.”

Communication & Leadership

Golden Circle — Start with Why

Simon Sinek

When to use: Articulating a company or personal mission; crafting messaging that inspires rather than merely informs; hiring; building early-adopter audiences.

Concentric circles from the inside out:

  1. Why — the belief, purpose, cause
  2. How — the distinctive approach, values, process
  3. What — the product or service

Most organisations communicate outside-in (what → how → why). The most inspiring ones invert it: Why → How → What.

Never Split the Difference — Tactical Empathy

Chris Voss

When to use: Any negotiation — salaries, contracts, partnerships, household logistics, kids.

Core moves:

  1. Mirroring — repeat the last (or the three critical) words, then stay silent for at least four seconds
  2. Labeling — name the other side’s emotion: “It sounds like…”, “It seems like…” (never “I hear that…”)
  3. Get to “No” — “no” lowers defenses; “yes” raises them prematurely
  4. Trigger “That’s right” — a sign they feel truly understood
  5. Calibrated questions — open-ended What/How questions that push the other side to solve your problem
  6. Don’t compromise — never split the difference

Knowledge & Productivity

Building a Second Brain — The CODE Method

Tiago Forte

When to use: Designing a personal knowledge system; deciding what to capture from what you read/watch; turning notes into output.

  1. Capture — keep only what resonates; four criteria: does it inspire me, is it useful, is it personal, is it surprising?
  2. Organize — organize for action by active project (not by subject), using PARA
  3. Distill — progressive summarization; find the main point fast
  4. Express — shift time from consuming to creating

Weekly Priority Planning Framework

Andy

When to use: Sunday planning session; any week where mission feels blurry.

Tiers (ranked by impact on mission + goals):

  1. Mission-Critical: OCME work, family, health
  2. Strategic Development: Ekko, personal brand
  3. Renewal & Optimization: socializing, recovery

Weekly process:

  1. Mission Check-in — did this week advance M1/M2?
  2. Capacity Assessment — available hours, energy, competing commitments
  3. Weekly Priorities — max five, drawn from the tiers
  4. Time Blocking — fit priorities into the daily rhythm

Quick decision filter when two priorities compete:

  1. Does it directly advance the mission?
  2. Does it move me toward financial sustainability?
  3. Does it maintain health/family foundation?
  4. Does it create leverage for future productivity?