Hat Protocol
A practice for working with multiple problems, tasks, and desires simultaneously rather than sequentially.
Provisional. These concepts are provisional. They name practices, forces, and patterns that may be refined through future research, examples, and lived observation.
The Hat Protocol is a practice developed by the Academy in which problems, tasks, and desires are placed in a circular field — the “hat” — and allowed to interact without sequential processing.
Over days, the field stirs: some elements shift, some dissolve, and new patterns emerge. The outcome is not deduced but recognized.
The name comes from the practice of placing written items in a hat and drawing them out, but the actual practice is more sustained: a held awareness of multiple elements simultaneously, allowing attention to find connections that sequential thinking would miss.
How it works
The Hat Protocol is not a thinking technique but an attentional practice. It works by:
- Placing — writing down each problem, task, or desire on a separate piece of paper or in a separate mental compartment.
- holding — keeping all items in awareness simultaneously, without prioritizing or sequencing them.
- waiting — allowing the field to stir over days, noticing which elements shift, dissolve, or connect.
- recognizing — the outcome is not deduced but recognized when it emerges.
Open Question
The Hat Protocol is described in the Academy's practices document but has no detailed documentation beyond this summary. How it relates to established practices like brainstorming, mind-mapping, or incubation in creativity research is an open question.
Source: concepts/academy-practices-and-forces.md