principles - Concepts

Explore concepts tagged with "principles"

Total concepts: 106

Concepts

Summum Bonum - Latin for 'the highest good' - for Stoics, the highest good is virtue.
Garbage In, Garbage Out - The quality of output depends on the quality of input.
KISS Principle - Keep It Simple, Stupid - a design principle stating that systems work best when kept simple rather than made complicated.
Agile Manifesto - A foundational declaration of values and principles for iterative, collaborative software development.
Good Enough Principle - The practice of accepting solutions that meet requirements adequately rather than pursuing optimal or perfect outcomes.
Clean Code - Code that is easy to understand, maintain, and modify, following principles of readability, simplicity, and expressiveness.
A Place for Everything - The organizational principle that every item should have a designated location, and items should always be returned there.
Single Source of Truth (SSOT) - The practice of having one authoritative location for each piece of information.
Zen Productivity - A mindful, minimalist approach to productivity focused on simplicity and presence.
CIA Triad - The foundational security model comprising Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability
Gates' Law - Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.
Sturgeon's Law - The adage that 90% of everything is crap, applicable to content, ideas, and creative works.
Limit Work In Progress - Restricting the number of concurrent tasks to improve focus and throughput.
Vendor Lock-in - The situation where switching to a different tool or service becomes prohibitively difficult due to proprietary dependencies.
Symmetry in Physics - The property that the laws of physics remain unchanged under specific transformations such as translations in space or time, rotations, or reflections.
Nemo Propheta in Patria - No one is a prophet in their own land - expertise is often more valued by outsiders.
Writing Is Thinking - Writing clarifies thoughts - the act of writing is itself a form of thinking.
Reading Feeds Writing - Quality reading provides the raw material and inspiration that fuels effective writing.
Documents Are Prisons for Ideas - Ideas trapped in long documents are isolated and unable to connect.
Goldilocks Principle - The principle that optimal outcomes occur within a specific range - not too much, not too little, but just right.
Center of Gravity Principle - A place where things you want to hang on to naturally find their way towards.
Data Minimization - The principle of collecting and retaining only the data that is necessary for a specific purpose.
Gall's Law - Complex systems that work evolved from simple systems that worked.
Mindset Over Tools - Prioritizing methodology, habits, and mental models over specific tools in knowledge work.
Delayed Gratification - The ability to resist immediate rewards in favor of larger future benefits.
Pareto Principle - 80% of effects come from 20% of causes - focus on high-impact activities.
Verba Volant, Scripta Manent - Spoken words fly away, written words remain - the permanence of writing.
Amara's Law - We overestimate technology's short-term impact and underestimate its long-term impact.
Reciprocity - The social norm of responding to positive actions with positive actions.
Mise-en-place - Everything in its place - preparation before action.
1% Rule - In any Internet community, 1% of people create content, 9% contribute, and 90% lurk - aspire to be in the top 10%.
Privacy by Design - Building privacy protections into systems from the start rather than adding them later.
Goldilocks Rule for AI - The principle that AI tasks should be neither too easy nor too hard to maintain engagement and optimal learning.
Compression vs Context Tension - The tradeoff between brevity and providing enough background for understanding.
Technical Debt - The implied cost of future rework caused by choosing quick solutions over better approaches.
Least Privilege - The principle of giving users and systems only the minimum access rights needed to perform their tasks
Do What You Said You Would Do - A principle of integrity and reliability - honor your commitments by following through on what you promised.
Parkinson's Law - Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
Shipping - The practice of releasing work to the world rather than endlessly perfecting it.
Law of Staleness - The value of information declines rapidly as it ages.
Essential vs Accidental Complexity - Essential complexity is the difficulty inherent in the problem being solved, while accidental complexity is the difficulty introduced by our tools, languages, and processes that can be reduced or eliminated.
Linus' Law - Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.
You Aren't Gonna Need It (YAGNI) - Don't implement functionality until it's actually needed.
Inbox Zero - Keeping inboxes empty by processing items to appropriate destinations.
Connected Notes - Notes that link to other notes, creating a web of knowledge.
Hofstadter's Law - Things always take longer than expected, even accounting for the law itself.
Continuous Improvement - The ongoing effort to incrementally improve processes, products, and practices over time through small, consistent changes.
SOLID Principles - Five fundamental design principles for creating maintainable, scalable, and flexible object-oriented software systems.
The Four-Way Test - A non-partisan ethical framework developed by Rotary International to guide decision-making in business and personal life.
Evergreen Notes - Notes that grow and improve over time through continuous refinement.
Kill Your Darlings - The writing principle of cutting beloved content that does not serve the overall work.
Release Early, Release Often - A software development philosophy advocating frequent releases to gather feedback and iterate quickly.
Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY) - The principle of avoiding information duplication.
LIFT Principle - Locatable, Identifiable, Flat structure, Try to stay DRY.
Purpose Limitation - The principle that personal data should only be collected for specified, explicit purposes and not processed in ways incompatible with those purposes.
Characteristics of Good Notes - The key qualities that make notes valuable, findable, and useful over time, including atomicity, clarity, connectivity, and sufficient context.
Atomic Notes - The principle of creating notes that capture a single, self-contained idea.
Essentialism - The disciplined pursuit of less but better by focusing on what's truly essential.
Noether's Theorem - The fundamental principle that every continuous symmetry in the laws of physics corresponds to a conserved physical quantity.
Conceptual Integrity - The principle that a system's design should reflect a unified, coherent set of ideas as if conceived by a single mind, which Brooks considered the most important consideration in system design.
Accountability Principle - The requirement that organizations not only comply with data protection rules but must also demonstrate their compliance through documentation and evidence.
Personal Organization System Principles - Five key principles for building effective personal organization systems: safety, holistic design, life integration, simplicity, and agility.
Broken Windows Theory - Small signs of disorder lead to more disorder if not addressed.
Matthew Effect - The rich get richer phenomenon where early advantages compound over time.
Lindy Effect - The longer something has existed, the longer it's likely to continue existing.
FILE Framework - Information should be easy to File, Identify, Locate, and Retrieve.
Strong Opinions Loosely Held - Committing to a viewpoint while remaining open to changing it when presented with new evidence.
Ideas Are Cheap - The notion that ideas themselves have little value; execution is what creates real value.
Consistency - The practice of showing up regularly and maintaining steady effort over time.
No Free Lunch - Every gain comes with a trade-off or hidden cost that must be paid.
Success Principles - Timeless patterns and practices that consistently contribute to achievement across domains.
Digital Minimalism - A philosophy of technology use focused on intentionally choosing tools that support your values.
Occam's Razor - The principle that simpler explanations are generally preferable to complex ones.
Pauling Principle - The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas and throw away the bad ones.
Subsidiarity - The principle that decisions should be made at the lowest competent organizational level, closest to those affected.
Write Once, Benefit Forever - Principle that notes and knowledge artifacts should be created once and reused indefinitely
Chekhov's Gun - A dramatic principle stating that every element introduced in a story must be necessary and eventually used, or it should be removed.
Knowledge Compounds Over Time - Like compound interest, knowledge grows exponentially as ideas connect and build upon each other—but only with a system.
Categories Are Limiting - Rigid categorization constrains knowledge connections and hinders the cross-pollination of ideas.
Boy Scout Rule - Leave things better than you found them.
File Over App - Using open file formats to maintain control over your data independent of applications.
Memento Mori - The Stoic practice of remembering that death is inevitable, to live more intentionally.
Teach Timeless Lessons - A teaching principle that prioritizes concepts, principles, and ideas that age well over time-sensitive information with limited longevity.
Time Value of Money - The principle that money available now is worth more than the same amount in the future due to its earning potential.
Meet Them Where They Are - Adapt your communication to the audience's current knowledge, context, and emotional state.
Small Wins - Achieving incremental progress through manageable accomplishments to build momentum.
Knowledge Connectivity - The practice of linking and connecting pieces of knowledge to create a networked understanding.
Notes as Cattle, Not Pets - Treat notes as part of a dynamic, evolving system rather than precious individual artifacts.
Murphy's Law - Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
Personal Manifesto - A written declaration of your values, principles, and guiding beliefs.
Conservation Laws - Fundamental physical principles stating that certain measurable quantities in an isolated system remain constant over time regardless of processes occurring within.
Software Entropy - The tendency of software systems to become increasingly disordered and complex over time without active maintenance.
Kaizen - The Japanese philosophy of continuous incremental improvement.
LATCH - Five universal ways to organize information: Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, Hierarchy.
Joy of Missing Out (JOMO) - The pleasure of stepping back and disconnecting from the constant stream of information.
Less is More - The principle that simplicity and restraint lead to better outcomes than excess.
Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design - Shneiderman's foundational principles for creating effective and user-friendly interfaces.
Knowledge Centralization - The principle of consolidating all knowledge into a single trusted system to eliminate information silos and enable meaningful connections between ideas.
Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics - Ten general principles for interaction design developed by Jakob Nielsen, used as guidelines for evaluating user interface usability.
Forcing Function - Constraints or mechanisms that compel specific behaviors or outcomes.
Circumstellar Habitable Zone - The region around a star where conditions could allow liquid water to exist on a planet's surface.
Principle of Least Effort - The theory that people naturally gravitate toward the course of action requiring the least amount of work, shaping behavior in communication, information seeking, and task completion.
Key Principles of a Good Personal Organization System - Five essential principles for building an effective personal organization system: safety, holism, integration, simplicity, and agility.
Test of Time - Time as a filter for relevance - what survives is likely valuable.
Billboard Principle - Design communication to be understood in seconds, like a billboard seen while driving.
Compound Growth - Exponential growth where returns generate additional returns over time.

← Back to all concepts