Before an engineer trusts a number, they ask what it rests on: a full-scale test, a handful of coupons, or a formula and a hope. This sheet asks the same question of the beliefs a mission gets built on — and it is filled in before the mission is declared, not after.
Why this comes first
Task 0 grounds authority: who has been flying your aircraft. This sheet is its companion. Most of what a person "knows" about themselves arrived as a story from someone else, and stories do not come with a data-quality label. A mission declared on top of a single-source belief is an airplane certified on a formula nobody tested. The sheet does not tell you what is true. It tells you how you know — which is the only question a program can act on.
Truth has domains
Engineers learned this the hard way. The ordinary formula for stress around a hole gives a clean answer: three times the applied stress, at the edge of the hole. Make the hole narrower and narrower until it becomes a crack, and the same formula divides by zero. The formula was never wrong. It was out of its domain, and a new branch of the science — fracture mechanics — had to be built for the region where it fails. Then, smaller still, that branch fails too, and quantum mechanics takes over.
THE SAME PLATE · A HOLE · THE FORMULA HOLDS
A round hole under a pull. The load's flow lines bend around it and crowd at its sides — about three times the average stress there. Finite, calculable, inside the domain of the ordinary formula.
THE SAME PLATE · A CRACK · A NEW DOMAIN
Squeeze the hole into a crack and the same formula divides by zero. The old truth is not wrong — it is out of its domain. The belief that got you through school may divide by zero at forty-six. That is not a character flaw. It is a domain boundary. The full five-drawing exercise is here.
So the first question on the sheet is not "is this true?" but "in what conditions has this been true, and am I still inside them?"
The ladder: six qualities of a truth
Take one belief you are about to build a mission on — "I'm not a leader," "I can't work for myself," "I hold up under anything" — and find its rung. Mark one box. Be exact; the sheet is for you.
WORKSHEET 0-B · QUALITY OF THE TRUTH · MARK ONE
Full truth. Tested across the whole range of conditions, by more than one method, and it held every time. Rare. Physics gets here; a life rarely does.
Clipped truth. Solid in the middle of the range, unknown or failing at the extremes. "I'm patient" — until a certain kind of week. Most working beliefs live here, and that is fine, as long as you know where the clip is.
Many points, one curve. A real record fitted to a pattern — the logged days, the career load history. Good enough to fly on; never mistake the fit for the thing.
Few points plus an assumption. Two or three events and a story that connects them. The story is doing most of the work. This is where "I always…" and "I never…" come from.
Metaphor. A picture borrowed from somewhere else, standing in for a measurement. The lab runs on these on purpose — and labels them, on purpose. A metaphor is a hypothesis wearing a good coat.
Single source, refuses to add data. One authority said it, and nothing that has happened since is allowed to count. This rung has a second name on the founder's card: delusional. Not because the belief is odd, but because the door is shut.
The ladder is not a ranking of the belief's importance. A single-source belief can be the most important thing in a life. The ladder only says how far it has been tested.
Three kinds of true
Second question. Which kind of truth is it? The three do not argue with each other — they are answered by different instruments.
WORKSHEET 0-B · KIND OF TRUTH · MARK ONE
Objective. True whether or not anyone believes it. Physics, the number of days logged, what the bank statement says. Verifiable by someone who does not like you.
Subjective. True because you experience it, and true only there. Pain is the founder's example. It needs no outside witness, and it cannot be argued away by one.
Intersubjective. True because enough people agree to act as if it is — money, a title, "what a good son does." These truths shape the world regardless of whether they are real. The story collects us. Note which stories are collecting you.
Most of the beliefs that turn out to be running a person's mission are intersubjective ones that were filed as objective. This sheet is where they get re-filed.
Validate, don't vindicate. Anchor to what is, not to what lets you skip the work.
The one rule
In structural modeling the rule is written on the wall: validate, don't vindicate. To validate is to anchor the model to the best available picture of what is actually there. To vindicate is to defend a model you already like because doing the work would mean changing it. The sheet is only useful under the first rule. Under the second it becomes one more story.
So, third and last question, for the belief you marked: what would count as evidence against it — and when did you last let any in? Write the answer on the line. If the line stays blank, that is the finding.
WORKSHEET 0-B · THE LINE
The belief
Its domain — the conditions it has actually been tested in
What would count against it
Last time evidence was let in
This is a gauge, not a diagnosis. Nothing on this page generates a mental-health label or a prediction, and none of it is medical advice. It cannot see a crisis. If you are in one, the right instrument is a person: in the US, call or text 988, any time.
Fly it
Task 0 is done when the authority is traced and the beliefs are labeled. Then you declare.