What is meta-patterns?

Meta-patterns is a concept in personal epistemology: Patterns in how your patterns form and dissolve — meta-patterns — are especially valuable.

Example: You notice that every time you start a new project, you go through the same sequence: intense enthusiasm for two weeks, a dip when the first real obstacle hits, a period of avoidance disguised as 'research,' and then either abandonment or a breakthrough that comes from external accountability. That sequence isn't a pattern about any single project. It's a pattern about how all your project-patterns form and dissolve. Seeing it changes what you do at the two-week mark — you stop treating the dip as evidence this project is wrong and start treating it as a predictable phase you've mapped before.

This concept is part of Phase 6 (Pattern Recognition) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for pattern recognition.