How do I practice smallest useful unit?

The most direct way to practice smallest useful unit is through a focused exercise: Take your most recent set of meeting notes or reading highlights. Find one entry that contains more than one idea. Split it into the smallest pieces that still make sense on their own — where each piece could stand as a complete thought without needing the others for context. If you split too far and a piece becomes meaningless without its neighbor, merge them back. You've just calibrated your personal granularity threshold.

Common pitfall: Splitting too aggressively until every note is a sentence fragment that means nothing without three other fragments beside it. The sign: you can't read any individual note and understand what it's about without chasing links. You haven't found the smallest useful unit — you've created debris. The opposite failure is equally common: leaving compound notes intact because splitting 'feels like extra work.' Both errors have the same root — you haven't developed the skill of sensing where meaning breaks.

This practice connects to Phase 2 (Atomicity and Decomposition) — building it as a repeatable habit compounds over time.