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Psychology
How people reason, as opposed to how they are supposed to.
- AkrasiaActing against your own better judgment — knowing the better course and taking the worse one, which Socrates argued is impossible and everyone else has observed constantly.ConceptsPhilosophy
- Base rate neglectJudging how likely something is from how well the case matches a picture, while ignoring how common the thing is to begin with.ConceptsBusiness
- Carol DweckThe distinction between fixed and growth mindsets, and research on how beliefs about ability shape responses to failure.FiguresBusinessb. 1946
- Cognitive dissonanceThe discomfort of holding two things that do not fit, and the work done to remove it.ConceptsBusiness
- Competency confusionAssuming that excellence at the thing you deliver transfers to running the business that delivers it.ConceptsBusiness
- CompoundingGrowth applied to a base that already includes previous growth.ConceptsBusiness
- Confirmation biasThe tendency to look for, notice and weight evidence that fits what you already think.ConceptsBusiness
- Daniel KahnemanHeuristics and biases, prospect theory, loss aversion, and the two-systems account of judgement.FiguresBusiness1934–2024
- Decision FatigueThe decline in decision quality after a long sequence of choices.ConceptsBusiness
- Deep WorkSustained concentration is becoming rare as it becomes valuable, and it has to be scheduled rather than fitted around interruptions.BooksBusiness2016
- Deliberate PracticePractice designed to improve a specific weakness, with immediate feedback and at the edge of current ability.ConceptsBusiness
- Dunbar's numberThe rough limit on how many people someone can maintain stable relationships with, usually put near 150.ConceptsBusiness
- Golden handcuffsCompensation good enough to keep you in a job that has stopped teaching you anything.ConceptsTransitions
- Herbert A. SimonBounded rationality, satisficing, the economics of attention, and the founding of symbolic artificial intelligence.FiguresBusiness1916–2001
- IkigaiA Japanese word for what makes life feel worth living.ConceptsMeaning
- K. Anders EricssonResearch establishing deliberate practice as the mechanism behind expert performance, and the critique of the ten thousand hours rule.FiguresBusiness1947–2020
- Locus Of ControlThe degree to which a person attributes outcomes to their own action rather than to luck, fate or other people.ConceptsTransitions
- Loss AversionLosing something feels roughly twice as bad as gaining the equivalent feels good.ConceptsBusiness
- Maslow's hierarchy of needsAbraham Maslow's 1943 proposal that human motives fall into classes — physiological, safety, belonging, esteem, self-actualization — with the lower ones generally more urgent when unmet.ConceptsMeaning
- MeditationsMarcus Aurelius's private philosophical notebooks, twelve books of Stoic reflections composed during the later years of his reign as Roman emperor.BooksPhilosophy
- MindsetWhether you believe ability is fixed or developable changes how you respond to difficulty, and beliefs about ability are shaped by how effort and results are praised.BooksBusiness2006
- Moral licensingHaving done something good makes people likelier to do something bad afterwards, as though a balance had been credited.ConceptsBusiness
- PeakExpertise comes from practice with specific conditions — targeting weakness at the edge of ability with feedback — rather than from experience or talent.BooksBusiness2016
- Performance TheaterActivity performed to be seen working rather than to move a result.ConceptsBusiness
- Present BiasOverweighting what is close in time.ConceptsBusiness
- Price AnchoringThe first number mentioned shapes every number that follows.ConceptsBusiness
- Proxy workActivity that resembles progress and substitutes for it.ConceptsBusiness
- Relative deprivationDissatisfaction produced by comparison with a reference group rather than by conditions themselves.ConceptsMeaning
- Revealed preferenceThe inference of what someone values from what they chose, rather than from what they said.ConceptsBusiness
- SatisficingChoosing the first option that meets a standard you set in advance, rather than searching for the best available one.ConceptsMind
- Status GamesCompetition for relative position rather than absolute outcome.ConceptsBusiness
- Sturgeon's lawNinety percent of everything is crud.ConceptsMind
- Sunk costMoney, time or effort already spent and not recoverable.ConceptsTransitions
- Survivorship biasDrawing conclusions from the cases that made it into view while the ones that did not are invisible.ConceptsBusiness
- The availability heuristicJudging how likely or common something is by how easily an example comes to mind.ConceptsBusiness
- The Dunning-Kruger effectThat the skill needed to do something well is close to the skill needed to judge whether it was done well, so the least competent are the worst placed to know it.ConceptsBusiness
- The hedonic treadmillThe tendency to return to a stable level of contentment after a change in circumstances, good or bad.ConceptsMeaning
- Thinking, Fast and SlowJudgement runs on a fast automatic system that produces confident answers, and a slow deliberate one that rarely checks them.BooksBusiness2011