Chicken Ribs
Updated 2026-08-22
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
The phrase comes from the Three Kingdoms period. Cao Cao used chicken ribs as the nightly password, and Yang Xiu immediately understood the army would withdraw: chicken ribs have no meat when eaten but enough savor that discarding them feels wasteful. The scaffold is sunk cost and decision paralysis: when a project, feature, or employee becomes a chicken rib, the rational move is to discard it at once. The cognitive bandwidth and maintenance cost it consumes far outweigh its actual value.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Revalue the item: weigh the attention it drains against the value it still returns. - Name the trap: recognize reluctance that is driven by the flavor rather than the meat. - Book the loss: discard the marginal thing and record the loss honestly.
Anchor fast decisions
The hold is not the object's value but the asymmetry of how losses feel. The faint residual benefit keeps the item inside the frame of use, while its maintenance cost is diffuse and therefore undercounted. Yang Xiu's insight is to price the whole thing: the flavor is real but the meat is gone, so keeping the rib is a steady payment for nothing.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
account_treeGenealogyexpand_more
menu_bookReferencesexpand_more
Source support: Explicit
- zh.wikipedia.orghttps://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%89%E5%9B%BD%E5%BF%97verified
PRIVATE NOTES · Only visible to you
SAVED Q&A
ENTRY Q&A · Private saving available
Ask with a clear boundary
thinkingmodels answers from published entry context only.
Your question is sent to thinkingmodels. The answer uses public entry context only.
RELATED MODELS