Hi Michael, Glad you like it! Thanks for your questions. From my viewpoint, they are very useful, and very welcome. The exercise generated lots of questions for me too! And the diagram was very much intended as a discussion-starter, not by any means a finished product. So, a few thoughts on your questions (with the usual caveat that I'm fairly new to NLP) - using the same numbers to save lots of copying and pasting - 1. I think there's a mapping between "re-usable generic sub-patterns" and "NLP skills and techniques" - from Triple Description (which Michael Carroll suggested, in another post, is also useful in Photo-Reading) to the "Creative resource" which is used in 3rd Position, but could also be used anywhere you need to generate lots of options (a kind of internal brainstorming machine). One of the benefits of standardised documentation/diagrams might be that it makes it easier to identify those techniques that are used often, so that they can be practiced and improved (like a tennis player might practice their backhand)? You could also have a repository of different techniques to achieve a certain objective - 5 different brainstorming techniques, 7 ways to step into 2nd position, and so on? 2. I had a vision of a very general high-level diagram, where you could then click on different parts to show more detail - but I'm not sure how detailed you could practically/usefully go - and it may be that there are several different ways to achieve some functions (brainstorming lots of options, for example), so that could be left to the reader's discretion, perhaps with a pointer to a list of common techniques for achieving that function? 3. A mixture? As I was working on the diagram, I could imagine breaking the "Thinking State" down into further sub-states, whereas some of the procedures would be easier to represent as traditional "Do this, then do that, if condition x, then do Y" code. But aren't the two interchangeable, depending on preference? Some programmers like to see the diagrams, some prefer to read the code - both are representations of the same thing? 4. Perhaps there are two different purposes? First, to represent a model of one person's way of achieving a certain objective (the exceptional person you modelled), in which case you don't get the problem you mention? And second, to combine several models (five very good salespeople, for example), to create a "best practice" pattern? I'm not sure at the moment how you'd tackle the second case! But, another benefit of diagrams is that they might make it easier to look at different patterns and see where the variations and similarities occur? 5. I think there's some things that will have to be a "black box", because by definition, they cannot be described verbally! But maybe you can describe (and document) the techniques for achieving them, perhaps there are chains of states and transitions that will lead you to the "indescribable state"? Maybe there's also an underlying assumption that a repository of documented patterns is primarily aimed at experienced NLP practitioners, who will know from experience (or training) how to recognise those "indescribable states"? I'm out of my depth on this one!  :-) Hope that's useful! Cheers, Jon