Cognitive Hygiene for Builders

Shipping quickly can erode thinking quality. Cognitive hygiene is the practice of keeping your mental environment clean—so you spot bad assumptions before they turn into bad products.

Habits That Help

• Single source of truth: One doc for decisions; link evidence, tradeoffs, and owners.
• Pre-mortems: Write the “this failed because…” story before you build; design mitigations early.
• Default cooldowns: Wait 24 hours on irreversible decisions unless there’s true urgency.

Protect Attention

• Batch Slack/email checks; never leave notifications on while designing or coding.
• Use calendar blocks for deep work and defend them like meetings.
• Limit context switches—cluster similar tasks and keep sprints tight.

Review Loops

Weekly, list one wrong bet and what signal you missed. Small adjustments compound into sharper intuition.

Good hygiene isn’t perfection; it’s about reducing noise so your best ideas can surface and survive.