Understand Human Behavior From The Foundational Canon

The multi-element state of flourishing combining positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment, plus health. (Judging validity and building toward flourishing.)

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Derived from: Understand Human Behavior From The Foundational CanonT1

Ordered tasks (58) — this is what a project auto-creates

#1Dual-Process Cognition (System 1 vs System 2)HighTo Do
Maps the two-mode architecture of the mind—fast intuition and slow reasoning—and shows how their division of labor generates every judgment you make. You get a working model of when each system dominates and why.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 0 days after project start · takes 14 days
#2Cognitive Biases & HeuristicsHighTo Do
Here you learn the named, repeatable ways intuitive judgment goes wrong—anchoring, availability, representativeness—and why they are features of an efficient mind, not bugs.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 14 days after project start · takes 14 days
#3Extrinsic Incentives & RewardsMediumTo Do
How external rewards and punishments shape behavior, and the paradox by which they can destroy the very motivation they aim to boost. You get the conditions under which incentives help, backfire, or corrode.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 28 days after project start · takes 7 days
#4Attention & Focus ControlMediumTo Do
Treats attention as the fundamental tool for ordering experience — the capacity to hold a chosen present-moment target and exclude the rest.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 35 days after project start · takes 7 days
#5Habit Formation & AutomaticityMediumTo Do
Breaks down the cue-routine-reward loop that converts effortful action into automatic response, and clarifies where behavior change actually succeeds or fails. You get the mechanics of automaticity.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 42 days after project start · takes 7 days
#6Environmental Conditioning & ReinforcementMediumTo Do
How consequences shape behavior through classical and operant conditioning, the oldest empirically grounded mechanism in the canon. You learn how reinforcement schedules govern what persists.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 49 days after project start · takes 7 days
#7Obedience & Deference to AuthorityMediumTo Do
Examine why decent people follow harmful orders, entering an 'agentic state' in which they see themselves as instruments rather than authors of their actions. You get the conditions that raise and lower obedience.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 56 days after project start · takes 7 days
#8Social Proof & ConformityHighTo Do
Why people copy others' behavior as evidence of the right action, and when this tendency intensifies. You learn to use accurate norms and to resist false consensus.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 63 days after project start · takes 14 days
#9Interpretation, Beliefs & Cognitive SchemasMediumTo Do
Use the cognitive-therapy premise that events do not cause feelings directly; your interpretation of them does, via automatic thoughts and durable schemas.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 77 days after project start · takes 7 days
#10Emotion, Affect & ArousalMediumTo Do
Emotion and arousal as motivational signals that bias attention, decision, and expression—and how appraisal feeds them.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 84 days after project start · takes 7 days
#11Choice Architecture & FramingHighTo Do
Shows how the framing, defaults, and arrangement of options quietly steer decisions, and how to design environments—for yourself and others—that produce better choices.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 91 days after project start · takes 14 days
#12Loss Aversion & Reference DependenceMediumTo Do
Why people evaluate outcomes against a reference point rather than in absolute terms, and why the pain of losing outweighs the pleasure of an equal gain.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 105 days after project start · takes 7 days
#13Present Bias & Self-ControlMediumTo Do
How present bias distorts choices that span time, and what self-regulation can and cannot do about it. You get the mechanics of why the future loses to the now, and where leverage actually lives.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 112 days after project start · takes 7 days
#14Escalation of Commitment & Over-PersistenceMediumTo Do
Why smart people pour more resources into losing ventures, and how to recognize the pull before it costs you again. You get the three engines — sunk cost, identity, and loss aversion — and the exit discipline that counters them.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 119 days after project start · takes 7 days
#15Cognitive DissonanceLowTo Do
The discomfort that follows when your actions and beliefs clash, and the surprising directions people take to resolve it. You get why dissonance changes attitudes rather than behavior, and how to read it in yourself and others.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 126 days after project start · takes 3 days
#16Scientific Method & SkepticismMediumTo Do
Use the disciplined machinery for separating what is true from what merely feels true: controlled comparison, doubt, and the demand for evidence. You get the habits that make you hard to deceive, including by yourself.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 129 days after project start · takes 7 days
#17Intrinsic Motivation & AutonomyHighTo Do
What actually powers sustained, self-generated effort—and how to design work so people push themselves rather than needing to be pushed.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 136 days after project start · takes 14 days
#18Flow & EngagementMediumTo Do
How flow actually arises—not as a mood you summon, but as a byproduct of a specific ratio between what a task demands and what you can do. You get the levers that make absorption reliable.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 150 days after project start · takes 7 days
#19Self-Efficacy & ConfidenceMediumTo Do
Distinguishes belief in your capability to execute a specific task from generalized self-esteem, and shows why that distinction drives whether you persist or quit. You learn the four sources that build it.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 157 days after project start · takes 7 days
#20Goal Setting & CommitmentMediumTo Do
How specific, challenging, values-connected goals channel effort — and how vague or trivial ones quietly waste it.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 164 days after project start · takes 7 days
#21Environmental & Situational DesignMediumTo Do
Change behavior by changing surroundings rather than minds—arranging friction and cues so the desired action becomes the path of least resistance. You get the architecture of choice.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 171 days after project start · takes 7 days
#22Social Influence & Compliance PrinciplesHighTo Do
Lays out the six levers—reciprocity, commitment/consistency, social proof, liking, authority, scarcity—that trigger near-automatic 'yes' responses. You learn both to deploy them and to recognize when they are used on you.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 178 days after project start · takes 14 days
#23Persuasion & Attitude ChangeMediumTo Do
Distinguishes the two routes to attitude change—effortful argument processing versus quick heuristic cues—and adds pre-suasion, the framing that happens before the message. You learn which route to target and when.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 192 days after project start · takes 7 days
#24Need for Differentiation & DistinctionLowTo Do
The drive to stand apart—why people diverge from crowds and use choices to signal a distinct identity. You get the mechanics of when distinction kicks in and how to read it in behavior.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 199 days after project start · takes 3 days
#25Status-Seeking & Social HierarchyMediumTo Do
The universal pull toward rank and position—how competition, signaling, and deference organize almost every social setting. You get a lens for seeing hierarchy where you thought there was only preference.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 202 days after project start · takes 7 days
#26Impression Management & Self-PresentationLowTo Do
Unpacks Goffman's dramaturgy—how people perform a self for audiences, maintaining a polished 'front stage' distinct from a 'backstage' where the performance drops. You get tools to see the staging behind everyday behavior.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 209 days after project start · takes 3 days
#27Stress, Anxiety & CopingMediumTo Do
Address the threat-response system and the coping and recovery processes that determine whether stress builds capacity or erodes it.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 212 days after project start · takes 7 days
#28Need Hierarchy & MotivationLowTo Do
Presents Maslow's prepotency claim that lower needs must be reasonably satisfied before higher motivations reliably emerge, and flags where the evidence strains it.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 219 days after project start · takes 3 days
#29Self-Awareness & MetacognitionMediumTo Do
Introspective and metacognitive knowledge—awareness of your own emotions, biases, and reasoning—as the gateway to self-regulation and better judgment.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 222 days after project start · takes 7 days
#30Decision & Judgment QualityHighTo Do
Separates the quality of a decision from the quality of its outcome and gives you a process-based standard for judging your own choices.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 229 days after project start · takes 14 days
#31Mental Models & Multidisciplinary ThinkingMediumTo Do
Why a broad kit of frameworks drawn from many disciplines outperforms deep mastery of one, and how to build and deploy that latticework.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 243 days after project start · takes 7 days
#32Deliberate PracticeHighTo Do
What separates practice that builds expertise from practice that merely logs hours: structured effort at the edge of ability with tight feedback loops.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 250 days after project start · takes 14 days
#33Mental Representations & ExpertiseMediumTo Do
What actually separates experts from novices: not faster processing or raw talent, but richer mental models stored in long-term memory. You learn what these representations are and how they get built.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 264 days after project start · takes 7 days
#34Grit, Passion & PerseveranceMediumTo Do
Distinguishes grit — sustained passion and perseverance toward a long-term goal — from mere toughness or short bursts of intensity.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 271 days after project start · takes 7 days
#35Situational & Systemic Power over BehaviorLowTo Do
Address the uncomfortable finding that ordinary people commit extraordinary harm—or heroism—when placed in certain situations, roles, and systems. You learn to see the situation as a cause, not just a stage.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 278 days after project start · takes 3 days
#36Moral Disengagement & DehumanizationLowTo Do
Details the specific cognitive maneuvers—euphemism, diffusion, victim-blaming, dehumanization—that let people commit acts against their own moral standards without feeling they violated them. You learn to spot the mechanisms in language.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 281 days after project start · takes 3 days
#37Evolutionary Adaptations & MismatchMediumTo Do
Situates behavior in its biological and evolutionary substrate: inherited dispositions and neurochemical states that were adaptive in ancestral environments. You learn why some strong, automatic responses are mismatched to the modern world.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 284 days after project start · takes 7 days
#38Sexual Selection, Mate Choice & AttractivenessLowTo Do
How sexual selection shapes mate preferences and what counts as an attractiveness cue—physical and psychological fitness indicators that are hard to fake. You get why certain traits reliably draw attention across cultures.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 291 days after project start · takes 3 days
#39Kin & Reciprocal AltruismLowTo Do
The twin engines of evolved cooperation: helping genetic relatives in proportion to relatedness, and trading favors with non-kin over time. You get the logic beneath moral sentiments like loyalty and gratitude.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 294 days after project start · takes 3 days
#40Social Preferences, Fairness & CooperationMediumTo Do
Address why people care about fairness, reciprocity, and others' outcomes even at personal cost. You get the evidence that humans are not purely self-interested and what that implies for designing institutions.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 297 days after project start · takes 7 days
#41Social Integration, Regulation & SolidarityMediumTo Do
Draws on Durkheim to explain how the strength of bonds and legitimate limits binding people to groups governs behavior and moral order. You get why too little (and too much) integration both produce dysfunction.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 304 days after project start · takes 7 days
#42Positive Relationships & Social SupportMediumTo Do
Close, caring relationships as the foundation of wellbeing and a lever for behavior change. You get why belonging and support are not soft extras but material predictors of health and flourishing.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 311 days after project start · takes 7 days
#43Culture, Context & MeaningMediumTo Do
How culture, situation, and shared meaning shape perception, judgment, and action—often more than the person's stable traits. You get a corrective to the habit of explaining behavior by character alone.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 318 days after project start · takes 7 days
#44Observational Learning & ModelingLowTo Do
Bandura's insight that people learn behaviors, rules, and standards by watching models—live or symbolic—without direct reinforcement. You get how modeling builds skill and the confidence to attempt it.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 325 days after project start · takes 3 days
#45Diffusion & Social EpidemicsLowTo Do
How innovations and behaviors spread through networks—via a behavior's perceived attributes, key connector roles, and tipping-point dynamics. You get a map of why some things catch and most don't.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 328 days after project start · takes 3 days
#46Narrative, Myth & Meaning-MakingLowTo Do
How humans build stories and myths to simulate social situations, transmit norms, and stitch identity and meaning together. You get why narrative is a cognitive technology, not mere entertainment.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 331 days after project start · takes 3 days
#47The Unconscious, Drives & Symbolic ProcessesMediumTo Do
Orients you to the depth-psychological claim that behavior is driven by material outside awareness, and how the canon (Freud, Jung) frames its influence on symptom and symbol.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 334 days after project start · takes 7 days
#48Purpose, Meaning & Self-ActualizationMediumTo Do
The drive toward meaning, potential-realization, and self-transcendence—serving something larger than the self as a distinct source of vitality.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 341 days after project start · takes 7 days
#49Character Strengths & VirtueLowTo Do
Introduces the positive-psychology program of identifying signature strengths and cultivating virtue as stable dispositions guiding conduct.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 348 days after project start · takes 3 days
#50Resilience & OptimismLowTo Do
The capacity to recover from adversity and the explanatory style—how you narrate causes of setbacks—that underwrites it.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 351 days after project start · takes 3 days
#51Psychopathology & MaladjustmentLowTo Do
Presents maladjustment as convergent: multiple traditions locate its roots in thwarting, disintegration, faulty striving, or social disconnection. You get a map of the four causal pathways the canon proposes.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 354 days after project start · takes 3 days
#52Therapeutic & Behavior-Change InterventionMediumTo Do
Intervention as principle-driven action that both corrects interpretation and directly builds well-being. You get why activating behavior and building strengths are as central as disputing beliefs.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 357 days after project start · takes 7 days
#53Behavior as Situated OutcomeMediumTo Do
Observable behavior as Lewin's B=f(P,E)—a joint function of person and environment—the terminal outcome the whole model aims to explain.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 364 days after project start · takes 7 days
#54Method & Explanatory Adequacy of Human ScienceLowTo Do
Examine whether and how the study of human beings can be a science at all, and what 'valid understanding' means when the object of study is a person. You get the tension between measurable regularity and meaningful interpretation.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 371 days after project start · takes 3 days
#55Well-Being & FlourishingHighTo Do
Flourishing as multi-dimensional — positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment together — rather than a single feeling.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 374 days after project start · takes 14 days
#56Performance, Skill & AchievementHighTo Do
Define high performance and expert mastery as the cumulative product of skill built through effort — not a fixed endowment revealed by results.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 388 days after project start · takes 14 days
#57Valid Knowledge, Mastery & True UnderstandingLowTo Do
What counts as valid knowledge—grasping necessary conditions and causes well enough to predict and regulate—and why the scientific method is its source rather than intuition or authority.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 402 days after project start · takes 3 days
#58Societal & Systemic OutcomesMediumTo Do
Scales up: how individual behaviors aggregate into markets, institutions, cultural norms, violence, and the robustness or fragility of civilizations.
Assignee: Unassigned · due 405 days after project start · takes 7 days