A – Z · Reference
The self-development glossary.
Plain-English definitions of the ideas we cite most across 47 entries — no jargon, no fluff, no gurus. Named after the people who coined them, then explained like you're smart and tired.
47
defined terms
20
categories
20
letters covered
0
guru quotes
By desk
- Branding
- Communication
- Creativity
- Discipline
- Entrepreneurship
- Fitness
- Focus
- Habits
- Leadership
- Learning
- Lifestyle
- Mindset
- Money
- Parenting
- Productivity
- Purpose
- Relationships
- Sleep
- Spirituality
- Wellbeing
- Anti-Goal Mindset
- A clearly named outcome you refuse to accept — often more motivating than the goal itself.
- Atomic Habit Habits
- A tiny routine so small it feels almost embarrassing to skip — the smallest unit of behavior change.
- Attachment Style Relationships
- Recurring pattern in how you seek closeness or distance in relationships — secure, anxious, avoidant, disorganized.
- Beginner's Mind Learning
- Approaching a familiar subject with the openness of a novice; Zen concept adopted by learners and leaders.
- Bright Line Discipline
- A rule with no exceptions — chosen precisely because ‘it depends' has failed you before.
- Circadian Rhythm Sleep
- The roughly 24-hour internal clock that governs sleep, hormones, focus and appetite.
- Cognitive Load Focus
- The total amount your working memory is holding at once — the invisible tax on every decision.
- Compound Interest of Behavior Habits
- Small daily improvements accumulate into radically different long-term outcomes.
- Deep Work Productivity
- Focused, undistracted cognitive effort on a demanding task, coined by Cal Newport.
- Delayed Gratification Discipline
- Choosing a larger later reward over a smaller sooner one — the psychological engine of long-term outcomes.
- Divergent Thinking Creativity
- Generating many possible solutions to a problem — the raw material of creativity.
- Dopamine Fasting Focus
- A misused pop term for reducing high-stimulation inputs; useful in the narrow sense of restoring baseline pleasure sensitivity.
- Eisenhower Matrix Productivity
- A 2×2 for triaging work by urgency and importance — attributed to Dwight D. Eisenhower.
- FIRE Money
- Financial Independence, Retire Early — a movement built on high savings and lean living.
- Flow State Wellbeing
- The state of full absorption in an activity that matches skill to challenge, coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
- Framework Mindset
- A named structure for thinking about a class of problems — portable across contexts, unlike a personal opinion.
- Growth Mindset Mindset
- Belief that abilities can be developed through effort, coined by Carol Dweck.
- Habit Stacking Habits
- Attaching a new tiny behavior to an already established one — a cue-piggyback strategy from BJ Fogg and James Clear.
- Hedonic Treadmill Wellbeing
- The tendency to return to a stable level of happiness despite gains — hence why the next promotion feels smaller than expected.
- Identity-Based Habits Habits
- Change built on the sentence ‘I am the kind of person who…' rather than on outcomes.
- Ikigai Purpose
- Japanese concept of the reason for being — the intersection of what you love, what you're good at, what the world needs and what pays.
- Implementation Intention Discipline
- A pre-committed ‘if X, then I will Y' plan — one of the most robust findings in behavior science.
- Kaizen Mindset
- Japanese philosophy of continuous, incremental improvement.
- Locus of Control Mindset
- The degree to which you believe you influence outcomes in your life vs. external forces.
- Memento Mori Spirituality
- Latin: ‘remember you must die'. A Stoic reminder used to clarify priorities and dissolve pettiness.
- Metacognition Learning
- Thinking about your own thinking — the skill that makes every other skill improvable.
- Negative Visualization Spirituality
- Stoic practice of imagining losing what you have, in order to appreciate it now.
- Non-Sleep Deep Rest Sleep
- NSDR — a short, guided body-scan protocol popularized by Andrew Huberman for recovery and focus.
- Overton Window Communication
- The range of ideas considered mainstream at a given moment — quietly shifts what feels ‘reasonable' to want.
- Pareto Principle Productivity
- The 80/20 rule — roughly 80% of results come from 20% of causes.
- Personal Brand Branding
- The public perception of your professional identity, shaped deliberately over time.
- Pomodoro Productivity
- A 25-minute focused work sprint followed by a 5-minute break, invented by Francesco Cirillo.
- Positive Discipline Parenting
- A parenting approach that is firm and kind — teaching skills instead of punishing.
- Product-Market Fit Entrepreneurship
- The moment your product finally satisfies a strong market demand.
- Progressive Overload Fitness
- The training principle of gradually increasing load to force adaptation — applies to muscles and to skills.
- Psychological Safety Leadership
- A team norm where members feel safe taking interpersonal risks — the biggest predictor of team performance in Google's Project Aristotle.
- Radical Candor Communication
- Kim Scott's model for feedback: care personally, challenge directly.
- Sabbatical Lifestyle
- An intentional pause from work — a month, quarter or year — used for rest, learning or reinvention.
- Second Brain Learning
- An external system for capturing ideas so your first brain can think, popularized by Tiago Forte.
- Servant Leadership Leadership
- A leadership philosophy where the primary role is to serve the team, coined by Robert Greenleaf.
- Sleep Hygiene Sleep
- The set of behaviors that make consistent, restorative sleep more likely.
- Spaced Repetition Learning
- Reviewing material at expanding intervals — the most efficient way to move facts into long-term memory.
- Stoicism Mindset
- Ancient philosophy of virtue and equanimity focused on what you can control.
- Sunk Cost Fallacy Mindset
- Continuing an effort because of past investment rather than expected future value.
- Time Blocking Productivity
- Assigning specific hours to specific work in advance instead of reacting to a to-do list.
- Wabi-Sabi Spirituality
- Japanese aesthetic that finds beauty in imperfection, impermanence and incompleteness.
- Zone 2 Cardio Fitness
- Sustained low-intensity aerobic training at a pace where you can still hold a conversation — the mitochondrial base of endurance.
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