Cognitive Scaffold

Preparing your thinking workspace

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MENTAL MODEL · M1380

Five Hat Racks

Five Hat Racks
BehaviorHigh supportOrganizational Behavior
Included
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Version 1.0.0 · Updated 2026-07-30

CORE DEFINITION

There are only five ways to organize information (LATCH): Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, Hierarchy. There is no sixth.

SCAFFOLDING EFFECT

psychology

Reduce cognitive load

Exhaustive classification. When faced with a pile of messy data and unsure how to organize it, try LATCH one by one. One dimension will inevitably make the chaos instantly clear.

anchor

Anchor fast decisions

The fundamental dimensions for organizing information are limited; they can be summarized as Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, and Hierarchy (LATCH). Any taxonomy is a combination or nesting of these five. Exhaustively enumerating these five dimensions will find the structure that fits the current information.

MINIMUM ACTION

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Practice this model in one real situation:

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Source support: Explicit

  • link
    wiki.mbalib.comhttps://wiki.mbalib.com/wiki/LATCH%E5%8E%9F%E5%88%99ZH · Explicit
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