Attention
Prompt Reflex
Asking AI before giving your own mind the first attempt.
You may have this if
Open a blank document. Can you write five ugly bullet points before opening an AI tool?
Field guide
The Outsourced Mind Glossary
A diagnostic vocabulary for what repeated AI use does inside attention, memory, reasoning, decisions, voice, and team behavior.
Initial set
Twenty names for the thing people feel but cannot yet name.
Start with the five high-signal entries, or filter by the circuit that is failing first.
Reasoning False Competence Mistaking the model's fluency for your own expertise. Memory Draft Amnesia You submitted the text, but cannot remember what it says. Attention Prompt Reflex Asking AI before giving your own mind the first attempt. Reasoning Sycophancy Loop Returning to the model because it keeps making your first thoughts feel correct. Team Team Memory Leak A team stops remembering decisions because every meeting is summarized, not metabolized.
Memory
Draft Amnesia
You submitted the text, but cannot remember what it says.
You may have this if
After sending an AI-assisted draft, close it and explain the argument aloud in five sentences.
Reasoning
False Competence
Mistaking the model's fluency for your own expertise.
You may have this if
Can you explain the answer with no AI, no notes, and one skeptical follow-up question?
Attention
Outsourced Mind
A state where the first move of thinking has migrated outside you.
You may have this if
Name your opinion on a current work problem before checking any external system.
Reasoning
Sycophancy Loop
Returning to the model because it keeps making your first thoughts feel correct.
You may have this if
Ask the model for the strongest case that your favorite idea should be killed. Do you feel curious or annoyed?
Voice
Voice Drift
Your writing begins to sound like the average of every model output you accept.
You may have this if
Read one paragraph aloud. Would someone who knows you recognize the sentence rhythm?
Decisions
Decision Offloading
Asking AI what you should choose before naming your own criteria.
You may have this if
Before asking AI, can you write the three standards the decision must satisfy?
Reasoning
Rubber-Stamp Review
Reviewing AI output for surface errors while accepting its frame.
You may have this if
Can you name one framing assumption in the AI output that you rejected?
Memory
Search-to-Synthesis Collapse
Skipping the difficult middle step between finding information and forming judgment.
You may have this if
Can you draw the argument map from memory, including the strongest opposing source?
Attention
The Ten-Minute Wall
The first resistance point where your brain wants to outsource the work.
You may have this if
Set a ten-minute timer on a hard task. Does the urge to prompt arrive before the timer ends?
Reasoning
Cognitive Debt
The accumulated cost of repeatedly skipping the effort that maintains a circuit.
You may have this if
Name one cognitive task that has become harder since AI entered your workflow.
Attention
Cognitive Tax
The hidden cost imposed by a task when AI removes the practice your brain needed.
You may have this if
What skill does this AI workflow prevent you from practicing this week?
Decisions
Pharmakon Error
Treating AI as medicine in a dose where it has become poison.
You may have this if
Is AI helping this circuit recover, or replacing the work that would recover it?
Decisions
Authority Borrowing
Letting the model's confident tone carry a claim you have not verified.
You may have this if
Can you point to the primary source for the strongest claim in the output?
Reasoning
Specious Certainty
The calm feeling produced by polished language before evidence has earned it.
You may have this if
Remove the formatting and rewrite the claim as one crude sentence. Does it still feel true?
Voice
Infinite Refinement Loop
Asking for one more improvement because making a final human choice feels exposed.
You may have this if
Are you improving the work, or postponing the moment where your taste has to stand behind it?
Team
Managerial Fog
Leaders receive cleaner summaries but lose direct contact with the work.
You may have this if
Can the leader name one messy detail that did not appear in the summary?
Team
Team Memory Leak
A team stops remembering decisions because every meeting is summarized, not metabolized.
You may have this if
Ask three people why last month's decision happened. Do they tell the same story without searching?
Decisions
AI Hand-Off
The exact moment a task moves from human attempt to machine completion.
You may have this if
Could you point to the sentence, slide, or decision where the work stopped being primarily yours?
Voice
Cognitive Partisan
A user who works with AI while keeping the craft, judgment, and first move inside the human.
You may have this if
Can you show your human first attempt, the machine critique, and the final human decision?
Use this in your team
Turn the glossary into shared rules before it becomes shared drift.
Team-related entries include a policy norm you can adopt immediately. The future Handbook for Teams will turn these into meeting rituals, AI-use rules, and facilitator prompts.
Ask about the team handbook →Book concepts
Legacy anchors from the book glossary.
These anchors keep older citations and internal links stable while the new field guide grows.
Core concepts
AI Detox
A deliberate, time-boxed interruption of AI-assisted cognitive work designed to reload the circuits AI consumes.
Core concepts
Pharmakon
A substance that is medicine or poison depending on the dose. The book uses this as its central frame for AI.
Core concepts
Cognitive Debt
The accumulated cost of repeatedly delegating cognitive effort that would otherwise maintain attention, memory, reasoning, or decisions.
Core concepts
Cognitive Sovereignty
The state of using AI without surrendering the first move, the verification burden, or the final judgment.
Core concepts
Cognitive Partisan
A person who uses AI harder than most without losing the cognitive tissue AI consumes in passive users.
Core concepts
The Ten-Minute Wall
The point early in an unassisted cognitive task when the urge to outsource becomes physically noticeable.
Core concepts
Outsourced Mind
The condition where the first move of thinking has migrated outside the human and into the model.
The Five-Layer Model
Flesh
Layer 1: the body the brain lives in - sleep, oxygen, movement, light, and physiological load.
The Five-Layer Model
Archive
Layer 2: the memory store built through handwriting, spaced recall, deep reading, and deliberate retrieval.
The Five-Layer Model
Lens
Layer 3: the attention filter - what you let in, reject, and hold long enough to become thought.
The Five-Layer Model
Loop
Layer 4: the reasoning cycle - hold, compare, steelman, reject, revise, and try again.
The Five-Layer Model
Voice
Layer 5: the output layer where sentence, decision, artifact, or judgment becomes unambiguously yours.
The protocol
The Anti-AI Seven
The seven daily disciplines of the 30-day protocol: Deep Reading, Handwriting, Movement, Strategic Play, Silence, Cognitive Ops, and Recall-and-Teach.
The four reader tiers
Ghost
Tier 1 on the Anti-AI Brain Score: a reader whose attention, memory, and judgment have been handing work to AI long enough that the transfer is visible.
The four reader tiers
Partisan
Tier 2 on the Score: a reader who sees the pull of AI delegation and still loses to it about half the time.
The four reader tiers
Operator
Tier 3 on the Score: a reader who runs the machine rather than being run by it.
The four reader tiers
Sovereign
Tier 4 on the Score: a reader who spars with the machine and does not hand it the pen.