Glossary

Build your view of yourself from things you actually did, not from the version of yourself you wish you were.

Source: This curriculum

Also known as: Default response under pressure

The way you tend to react first when something surprising or stressful happens.

Source: This curriculum, adapted from System 1 thinking (Daniel Kahneman)

Break a problem down to facts you can verify, then build your plan back up from those facts.

Source: Aristotle (popularised by Elon Musk in modern practice)

Also known as: Intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation

The energy you get from doing the thing itself is different from the energy you get from people clapping for it.

Source: Daniel Pink, Drive

Four kinds of energy that feel similar from the inside but behave very differently when nobody is watching.

Source: This curriculum

Treat skill as something that grows with effort, so a mistake becomes information instead of evidence against you.

Source: Carol Dweck

Also known as: Cue, response, reward

Every habit runs on a three-part loop: a cue that starts it, a response you do, and a reward you get.

Source: Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit

Turn a vague feeling like 'I always do this' into a specific cue, response, and reward you can actually interrupt.

Source: This curriculum

Also known as: Stated values vs real behaviour

The honest distance between how you actually work today and how you say you want to work.

Source: This curriculum

Check whether something you say you value still holds when no one is watching and there is no immediate reward.

Source: This curriculum

Four common ways people handle a surprising moment. None of them is always the right one.

Source: This curriculum

Also known as: Rushed, judged, ignored, stuck, derailed

Five kinds of moment that reliably set off fast reactions in most people.

Source: This curriculum

A value keeps pulling you when the room goes quiet. A reward is the good feeling you get while the room is loud.

Source: This curriculum

Test a choice by asking how it will feel in ten minutes, ten months, and ten years.

Source: Suzy Welch

Make decisions inside what you actually understand. The aim is not the biggest circle, but knowing where its edge is.

Source: Warren Buffett

Also known as: Task, people, pressure, time

Whether the same action helps or hurts depends on the situation around it.

Source: This curriculum

List your options down one side, list what you care about along the top, and score each combination.

Source: Decision-science practice; widely used

Judge a choice by the information you had at the time, not by how it turned out. The result and the choice are separate things.

Source: This curriculum

A one-way choice cannot be undone. A two-way choice can. Move fast on the second, slow on the first.

Source: Jeff Bezos

List three good things, three bad things, and three things you do not yet know about a choice.

Source: Decision-making practice

Also known as: Imagine yourself at eighty

A way to make hard choices: picture yourself at eighty and ask which option you would regret skipping more.

Source: Jeff Bezos

Explain a topic out loud as if teaching a ten-year-old. The places you stumble are what you do not yet understand.

Source: Richard Feynman

The way of thinking you reach for first, plus a second one you can practise for when the first one stalls.

Source: This curriculum

Test yourself instead of re-reading. Pulling information out of your head is what builds memory, not putting it back in.

Source: Cognitive psychology, multiple researchers

Review what you are learning at growing time gaps. The forgetting between sessions is part of why it works.

Source: Hermann Ebbinghaus (forgetting curve research)

Also known as: Visual, verbal, step-by-step thinking

Three different ways to work through a problem. Most people prefer one but can practise the others.

Source: This curriculum

Sort tasks by two questions: is it urgent, and is it important? The two are not the same.

Source: Dwight Eisenhower (popularised by Stephen Covey)

Also known as: Implementation intention

A small specific rule of the shape 'if X happens, then I will do Y'. Specific beats vague almost every time.

Source: Peter Gollwitzer (implementation intentions research)

Work in focused 25-minute blocks with a five-minute break in between.

Source: Francesco Cirillo

Give a task a fixed time window in advance. When the window ends, you stop or switch, even if it is not finished.

Source: Productivity practice; widely attributed

If a task takes less than two minutes, do it now. The hassle of putting it off costs more than the task itself.

Source: David Allen, Getting Things Done

Also known as: Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan

A four-step planning move: name the wish, picture the outcome, identify the obstacle, write an if-then plan.

Source: Gabriele Oettingen

Slow breathing pulls your nervous system back from a stress spike faster than reasoning can.

Source: Box breathing / 4-4-6 protocol; widely used

Track three things that gave you energy and three that drained you in the last day or week.

Source: This curriculum, adapted from energy-management research

Also known as: Losing track of time

The feeling of being so absorbed in something that you forget what time it is.

Source: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Also known as: Common stress responses

Four ways people behave when their mental energy drops and stress takes over.

Source: This curriculum

Something you own that has value, and ideally either pays you over time or grows in value.

Source: Standard accounting

A loan you make to a government or company. They pay you fixed interest, then return your money on an agreed date.

Source: Investing fundamentals

The point where total money in equals total money out. Below it you lose money; above it you start to keep some.

Source: Standard managerial accounting

A plan you make in advance for what your money will do, before any of it gets spent.

Source: Personal-finance fundamentals

The actual money moving in and out of an account each month. Different from profit, and what bills get paid from.

Source: Standard accounting

Also known as: Earning interest on interest

When the money you earn from saving starts earning its own money on top.

Source: Standard financial mathematics

Money you borrow now and agree to pay back later, usually with interest on top.

Source: Personal-finance fundamentals

Money you owe to a lender. Useful for the right purchase, painful for the wrong one.

Source: Personal-finance fundamentals

Spread money across different things so one bad result does not sink the whole pile.

Source: Modern portfolio theory; widely used

Money set aside in cash for surprise expenses, so a bad month does not turn into a real crisis.

Source: Personal-finance fundamentals

Money going out. Splits into fixed expenses (the same every month) and variable expenses (different each month).

Source: Standard accounting / personal finance

Money coming in to you or to a business. The first number on any budget.

Source: Standard accounting / personal finance

When prices rise across an economy over time, your money buys less than it used to, even though the number stays the same.

Source: Macroeconomics fundamentals

Putting money into something you expect to grow or pay you over time, accepting that you might also lose some of it.

Source: Investing fundamentals

Money you owe to someone else. The opposite of an asset.

Source: Standard accounting

Also known as: Profit margin

The part of each sale you keep after paying the costs of making the sale. Usually shown as a percentage.

Source: Standard managerial accounting

Needs are the things that keep you safe and well. Wants make life nicer. Mixing them up is what empties most budgets.

Source: This curriculum

Net worth equals everything you own minus everything you owe. One number that summarises a financial position.

Source: Standard accounting

What you give up when you choose one option over another. Every dollar and every hour has a second-best use.

Source: Economics fundamentals

Profit is the money you have left after paying for everything it cost to earn it.

Source: Standard accounting

The total money a business takes in from selling things, before any costs come out.

Source: Standard accounting

Bigger possible gains usually come with bigger possible losses. There is no free lunch in finance.

Source: Investing fundamentals

Interest paid only on the original amount, never on the interest you have already earned.

Source: Standard financial mathematics

Also known as: Share, equity

A small ownership slice of a company. As the company does well or badly, the value of your slice changes.

Source: Investing fundamentals

The basic force behind most prices. When more people want a thing, prices rise; when fewer want it, prices fall.

Source: Economics fundamentals

Also known as: VC

Money invested in young, risky companies in exchange for ownership and the chance of a much bigger payback later.

Source: Investing fundamentals

Building a business with your own savings, your customers' payments, and discipline. No outside investors.

Source: Entrepreneurship practice

What people say about your business when you are not in the room. The trust earned over time, not the logo.

Source: Marketing fundamentals

Anyone the customer might choose instead of you. The toughest one is often 'do nothing'.

Source: Business strategy

Proving that real people will pay (in money or time) for what you are building, before you build all of it.

Source: This curriculum, adapted from Steve Blank's Customer Development

Someone who builds a product or service to solve a real problem and tries to make it pay for itself and grow.

Source: This curriculum

A way of building businesses that prefers small, fast experiments over big, slow plans.

Source: Eric Ries, The Lean Startup

The group of people who could buy what you are selling. Defines who you compete with and for whom.

Source: Business strategy

The work of helping the right people understand that something exists and is worth their attention.

Source: Marketing fundamentals

Also known as: MVP

The smallest version of an idea that is real enough for someone to actually use it and tell you the truth about it.

Source: Eric Ries, The Lean Startup

Also known as: Competitive advantage

Something durable that protects a business from competitors copying it. A real reason customers choose this one and not another.

Source: Warren Buffett

When a product gets more useful as more people use it.

Source: Network economics

A planned change in direction. Keep what is working, replace what is not, based on what the evidence is telling you.

Source: Eric Ries, The Lean Startup

When the right group of people genuinely want what you have built and tell each other about it without prompting.

Source: Marc Andreessen (popularised the modern phrasing)

The conversation that turns interest into a paid customer. Done well, it feels less like persuasion and more like checking whether you fit.

Source: Sales practice

How easily a business can grow without its costs and complexity growing at the same rate.

Source: Business strategy

The specific group of people a product is designed for. Trying to please everyone usually means pleasing no one well.

Source: Marketing fundamentals

A short, honest sentence that names who you help, what problem you solve, and why your way is better.

Source: Standard product/marketing practice

A small card with five lines that captures how you tend to think and act, so you can use it before real decisions.

Source: This curriculum

Treat what you notice about yourself as useful information that may change, not a permanent description of who you are.

Source: This curriculum

A short card naming what gives you energy, what drains you, and the conditions where you do your best work.

Source: This curriculum

A short card naming one pattern you want less of, one you want more of, and a small move for each.

Source: This curriculum

A five-line summary card that points your self-knowledge at a real upcoming decision.

Source: This curriculum