Scientific Definition
Self-similar productivity patterns that repeat at every scale — day, week, quarter, year, life.
Plain-English Definition
Self-similar productivity patterns that repeat at every scale — day, week, quarter, year, life.
Feynman Explanation
The way you spend the next hour is the way you spend the next decade. Sorry.
Core Principle
Self-similar productivity patterns that repeat at every scale — day, week, quarter, year, life.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Self-similar productivity patterns that repeat at every scale — day, week, quarter, year, life.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Operating cadence and personal effectiveness for founders.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
The way you spend the next hour is the way you spend the next decade. Sorry.
Examples
- Pagan's framing: structure the morning the way you structure the year — same shape, smaller scale.
- Operating cadence and personal effectiveness for founders.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Audit one day. If it's not the year you want in miniature, the year won't fix itself.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Audit one day. If it's not the year you want in miniature, the year won't fix itself.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
Combining substances to create a new material stronger than its parts.
A single constraint limits the throughput of an entire system.
A system's throughput is constrained by its single slowest step.
Small visible disorders signal that bigger ones will be tolerated.
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
Adding people to a late project makes it later.
A substance that speeds up a reaction without being consumed.
Nonlinear systems are highly sensitive to initial conditions.
Inputs combine under conditions to produce new outputs — sometimes irreversibly.
Software architecture mirrors org structure.
Working together has a cost that scales with the number of people.
The threshold at which a system becomes self-sustaining.