Seasonal Intelligence: restructure into A Day's Walk + Seasonal Intelligence
Theory revised and narrowed to what the evidence supports; renamed The
Relevance Theory. Project split into two books and six essays, with the
three-tier relevance model promoted to the flagship.
- EVIDENCE.md claims sorted into four tiers, governs what may be claimed
- CRAFT.md lyric/landscape register, governs how it may be said
- PORTFOLIO.md the two-book plus six-essay split, and what was cut
- BOOK_ONE_CHAPTERS.md walk spine on the Stezka Ceskou Kanadou,
beats for all 14 units, argument ledger
- FIELD_BRIEF.md what to capture on the trail
- drafts/ prologue, ch 3, ch 5 (register tests, specifics are placeholders)
- archive/ original theory and outline, unchanged
Cut: the foreign-policy argument, the weight-loss protocol, the diagnostic
scoring, the I/me labels, the seasonal network mapping (demoted to metaphor
in Book Two).
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# Seasonal Intelligence — project overview
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*Restructured July 2026. What was one fourteen-chapter book is now two books and six essays, with every claim sorted by how much evidence it can carry.*
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## What changed, and why
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The original project bundled four books that shared a theory but not a reader: a media critique, a seasonal-living book, a leadership manual, and a nature/health book. It also had its priorities inverted — the **three-tier relevance model** is the original idea here, and it sat at chapter 3 of 14, while the **seasonal frame**, the least-evidenced part and the most crowded shelf in the category, got the title and the spine.
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The restructure does three things:
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1. **Promotes the relevance model to its own book** and gives it the full argument.
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2. **Reframes the seasonal material** as cultural history plus practical design rather than neuroscience — because the neuroscience isn't there, and the design argument doesn't need it.
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3. **Sorts every claim into evidence tiers** that govern the voice each chapter may be written in.
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## Files
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**Start here**
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- **`PORTFOLIO.md`** — the split: two books, six essays, what was cut and why, and the sequence to work in.
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- **`EVIDENCE.md`** — every load-bearing claim sorted into four tiers, with sources. **This file governs what register each chapter can be written in.** It also identifies an internal contradiction in the original theory that has to be resolved before drafting.
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**The books**
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- **`BOOK_ONE_CHAPTERS.md`** — *A Day's Walk*, chapter by chapter. **The drafting document.** The eight-day walk spine, opening scene and numbered argument beats for all 14 units, and the argument ledger tracking every claim from where it's raised to where it's paid off.
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- **`CRAFT.md`** — how the book is written: lyric/landscape register, scene-before-claim, the recurring objects, and the rule that keeps Part IV from turning into self-help. **Governs voice the way `EVIDENCE.md` governs claims.**
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- **`BOOK_ONE_OUTLINE.md`** — the strategic rationale behind Book One's shape. Superseded by `BOOK_ONE_CHAPTERS.md` for drafting.
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- **`BOOK_TWO_OUTLINE.md`** — *Seasonal Intelligence*. 10 chapters, reframed as design rather than brain states. Chapter beats to come once Book One's voice is settled.
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**The theory**
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- **`THEORY.md`** — revised and renamed *The Relevance Theory*. Narrowed to what the evidence supports, with the cut material and the reasons listed at the end.
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**Doing the walk**
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- **`FIELD_BRIEF.md`** — what each chapter needs from the ground, the nightly capture protocol, the chapter-6 phone protocol, what not to do on the trail, and a map-verification checklist. Carry this.
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- **`drafts/`** — prologue, chapter 3, chapter 5. Register tests; the specifics are placeholders.
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**Archive**
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- `archive/THEORY_v1.md` and `archive/BOOK_OUTLINE_v1.md` — the originals, unchanged. Nothing has been lost; check here before assuming something was deleted.
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## The four evidence tiers
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| Tier | Meaning | How to write it |
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|---|---|---|
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| **A** | Well-supported, multiple sources | State it, cite it, move on |
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| **B** | Contested — real dispute in the literature | Present both sides *in the text* |
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| **C** | Plausible, untested — your hypothesis | Mark as hypothesis, in the text, every time |
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| **D** | Speculative or personal | Memoir or metaphor; cannot carry an argument |
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The failure mode this whole restructure exists to prevent is a Tier C chapter written in a Tier A voice. Most of Part II of Book One — the original contribution — is Tier C. Saying so plainly is what makes the rest believable.
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## Status
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- Theory: revised, narrowed, evidence-checked
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- Book One: outlined, unwritten
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- Book Two: outlined, unwritten, needs a year of case-study collection first
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- Essays: outlined, unwritten
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- Manuscript: **still zero words** — and this is now the only thing that matters
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## Next step
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**Write essay 1, "Stress Hunger," this weekend.** Roughly 2,000 words on being ravenous after a day at a desk and barely hungry after four days walking. It's the shortest distance between you and a finished piece, it's pure voice, and it's the lowest-stakes way to find out how you write at length.
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Everything in these files is a guess until there are sentences. The outline will be rearranged by the drafting regardless — that's what drafting is for. The only irreversible mistake available right now is spending another twelve months on structure.
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