Heuristics are cognitive shortcuts the brain uses to make decisions quickly without exhaustive analysis. They are not mistakes — they are adaptations to an uncertain world with limited time and cognitive resources.
Tversky and Kahneman identified three primary heuristics: availability (judging likelihood by how easily examples come to mind), representativeness (judging by similarity to a prototype), and anchoring (adjusting from an initial value).
Heuristics are reliable in familiar, stable environments where they were calibrated. They break down in novel situations, when base rates are misleading, or when the stakes are high enough to justify slow, deliberate analysis.
MindFrame trains you to recognise when you're using a heuristic, evaluate whether it's appropriate for the current situation, and consciously switch to analytical reasoning when the situation demands it.