Scientific Definition
Knowledge that is hard to transfer because it is personal and experience-based.
Plain-English Definition
Knowledge that is hard to transfer because it is personal and experience-based.
Feynman Explanation
You cannot learn to ride a bike by reading a manual.
Core Principle
Knowledge that is hard to transfer because it is personal and experience-based.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Knowledge that is hard to transfer because it is personal and experience-based.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Tacit knowledge walks out the door when experts leave.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
You cannot learn to ride a bike by reading a manual.
Examples
- A master craftsperson's skill is difficult to document or teach.
- Tacit knowledge walks out the door when experts leave.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Create apprenticeship, mentoring, and knowledge-capture rituals.
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.
- Create apprenticeship, mentoring, and knowledge-capture rituals.
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.
Once we know something, it is hard to imagine not knowing it.
The act of preparing to teach exposes precisely where your understanding is shallow.
Your capacity to learn, unlearn, and relearn faster than the environment changes.
Malcolm Knowles's principles of adult learning: self-direction, experience as resource, readiness, problem-centered orientation, intrinsic motivation.
Amishi Jha's research: attention is a finite, depletable, but trainable cognitive resource — short daily mindfulness measurably improves it.
Approach a situation as if you knew nothing.
Unusual or bizarre material is more memorable than common material.
Hierarchy of cognitive learning: Remember → Understand → Apply → Analyze → Evaluate → Create. Benjamin Bloom, 1956 (revised 2001).
Wallace J. Nichols: proximity to water reliably shifts the nervous system toward a calmer, more creative state.
Resourcing past memories with the state you needed at the time, so old triggers stop firing the old response.
Grouping information into familiar units to improve memory and processing.
Compressing many small patterns into one larger unit your mind treats as a single object.