A "Deck of Hours" – a set of cards that can catalyze good thinking in many ways:

• draw a card randomly and ponder it
• arrange several cards into patterns – similarities, differences, progressions, chains, ...
• choose a card based on the hour, or day, or question at hand
• ...

see also Comments on Think Better ...

The cards will address issues of life – chance, change, choice, cause, consequence, contrast, control, conflict, cooperation, complexity, complementarity, ...

Among the primary patterns perhaps will be:

• threes
• alliterations
• permutations
• ...

Examples of patterns might be the meditative matrix:

Other patterns might be built involving causal relationships, systems of coupled differential equations, probabilistic belief networks, game-theoretic tables of clashing tactics, ...

The cards in the deck – 24? 48? 72? – might have notches or arrows or other features on their edges (or faces) to suggest how they could fit into one another to form chains or trees or stacks. To provoke thought, the cards might have pretty images, words, poems, ...

Consider the progression:

• causality - systems thinking, feedback loops, time scales, flows, boundaries, ...
• chance - likelihoods, weighting evidence, updating beliefs, surprising vs expected events, ...
• conflict - divergent goals, unpredictable strategies, deception, sequential vs simultaneous decision, ...

Suggestions for morning mindfulness exercises:

• sit quietly and count breaths
• pick a "word of the day" to breathe with – for instance, on the first of the month do "Oneness" and follow the rows or columns of the "meditative matrix" to a new word each day
• do a five-breath progression – for instance, start with the "word of the day" and pair it in turn with another word from that same column of the matrix

think about how you could be wrong!