Zero-Based Calendaring is rebuild your calendar from scratch every quarter rather than inheriting it from the last one. It sits in the Cognition dimension (COG) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™ as element HBT-COG-0710, within the Decision family. The core principle: rebuild your calendar from scratch every quarter rather than inheriting it from the last one. In incentive terms, it matters because it changes the payoff people perceive before they choose — which means it can be designed for, or exploited.
Scientific Definition
Rebuild your calendar from scratch every quarter rather than inheriting it from the last one.
Plain-English Definition
Rebuild your calendar from scratch every quarter rather than inheriting it from the last one.
Feynman Explanation
Your default calendar is last year's priorities cosplaying as this year's.
Core Principle
Rebuild your calendar from scratch every quarter rather than inheriting it from the last one.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Rebuild your calendar from scratch every quarter rather than inheriting it from the last one.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Executive focus and strategic alignment of hours to bets.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Your default calendar is last year's priorities cosplaying as this year's.
Examples
- Zero-based budgeting applied to time.
- Executive focus and strategic alignment of hours to bets.
Pending editorial review.
Original analysis from The Incentives Lab — how this element behaves inside real payoff structures.
Why this element matters to incentive design
When this element shows up in a diagnostic, the instinct is to train people out of it. Training rarely moves it. The mechanism underneath it is straightforward: rebuild your calendar from scratch every quarter rather than inheriting it from the last one. You can recognize it in the field by its signature: your default calendar is last year's priorities cosplaying as this year's. Every element in the Cognition dimension changes the perceived payoff of an action before the action happens, which is exactly where incentive design has leverage.
How it gets exploited
Left undesigned, executive focus and strategic alignment of hours to bets. It is amplified whenever executive focus and strategic alignment of hours to bets. Inside organizations that shows up as executive focus and strategic alignment of hours to bets. The pattern is the same one Goodhart's Law describes: the measurable proxy attracts the effort, and the purpose behind it quietly loses funding.
How the Lab designs around it
The redesign move is to once a quarter: blank slate, then re-add only what earns its slot. Design against it the way you would design against a known failure mode — assume it will appear, and price the exploit before someone finds it.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Once a quarter: blank slate, then re-add only what earns its slot.
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.
- Once a quarter: blank slate, then re-add only what earns its slot.
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.
How will I feel about this in 10 minutes / 10 months / 10 years?
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Forgetting to compare an offer with the next-best alternative.
Outcomes that could have happened but did not.
Overthinking a situation so that decision-making stalls.
The first number on the table silently sets the range for every number after it.
Tversky & Kahneman's classic: identical outcomes flip from 'risk averse' to 'risk seeking' when framed as lives saved vs. lives lost.
Our perception is shaped by what we selectively pay attention to.
Favoring suggestions from automated systems over conflicting human judgment.
A color appears different depending on adjacent colors.
Decisions are constrained by available information, cognitive limits, and time.
The ability to focus on one voice in a noisy environment.
Where Zero-Based Calendaring is cited in the corpus
Essays, field guides, and diagnostics from The Incentives Lab that apply this element.
- EssayGoodhart's Law in the Real World
How measurable proxies capture judgment.
- EssayThe Perverse Incentives Hiding in Your KPIs
Cognitive shortcuts turned into scorecards.
- EssayAI Agents Inherit Your Incentives
How this element propagates into automated systems.
- ReferenceThe Periodic Table of Human Behavior
The full 1,267-element map this page belongs to.
- CourseIncentives 101
The free ten-part primer on reading a payoff structure.
Questions about Zero-Based Calendaring
- What is Zero-Based Calendaring?
- Zero-Based Calendaring is rebuild your calendar from scratch every quarter rather than inheriting it from the last one. It sits in the Cognition dimension (COG) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™ as element HBT-COG-0710, within the Decision family. The core principle: rebuild your calendar from scratch every quarter rather than inheriting it from the last one. In incentive terms, it matters because it changes the payoff people perceive before they choose — which means it can be designed for, or exploited.
- What is an example of Zero-Based Calendaring?
- Executive focus and strategic alignment of hours to bets. The Incentives Lab catalogs everyday, organizational, and historical instances of this element on its Human Behavior Taxonomy™ page (HBT-COG-0710).
- How is Zero-Based Calendaring exploited?
- Executive focus and strategic alignment of hours to bets.
- How do you design around Zero-Based Calendaring?
- Once a quarter: blank slate, then re-add only what earns its slot.
- Which behavioral dimension does Zero-Based Calendaring belong to?
- Zero-Based Calendaring is classified in the Cognition dimension (COG) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™, family "Decision", class "Mental Model". Its permanent identifier is HBT-COG-0710 and its evidence grade is B.