What does it mean that evaluating schema sources?

Not all sources of schemas are equally reliable — evaluate where your models come from.

Example: A founder builds her entire go-to-market strategy around a framework she heard in a podcast interview. The guest was articulate, confident, and told a compelling origin story. Six months and forty thousand dollars later, the strategy has produced nothing. She traces the framework back and discovers the guest had used it once, in a market with completely different dynamics, and the podcast host never asked about replication. The schema was vivid. The source was unreliable. She had never thought to check.

Try this: Pick five schemas you currently operate on — beliefs about your career, your health, your relationships, your productivity, your identity. For each one, write down where you acquired it: a specific person, a book, a cultural norm, direct experience, or unknown. Then rate each source on three dimensions: (1) does the source have direct experience in this domain? (2) does the source have incentives that might distort their claim? (3) have you verified this schema against any independent source? You will likely find that your most confidently held beliefs have the least-examined origins.