- deferred dreams:
dreams we put off until “later”. The classic deferred dreams are all those things we promise we’ll do “when we retire”. (Tim Ferriss) - not-to-do list:
(Tim Ferriss) - mini-retirements:
longer than annual holidays, say three to six months months, taken every few years; they could coincide with job changes. (Tim Ferriss) - cognitive net:
a protective device against memory lapses. The term cognitive net was coined by Atul Gawande in his book The Checklist Manifesto . Gawande explains how a checklist acts as a cognitive net:
“Checklists seem able to defend everyone, even the experienced, against failure in many more tasks than we realized. They provide a kind of cognitive net. They catch mental flaws.”
Applying a cognitive net in the form of a checklist will catch small mental oversights, which could prevent major disasters,such as in medical practice, aviation and investing. - cocaine brain:
This term appeared in Atul Gawande’s book The Checklist Manifesto. Gawande is discussing the highly profitable share-investing strategies of fund investors Mohnish Pabrai and Guy Spier:“[Pabrai] hits upon hundreds of [stock market] possibilities but most drop away after cusory examination. Every week or so, though, he spots one that starts his pulse racing. It seems surefire. He can’t believe no one else has caught onto it yet. He begins to think it could make him tens of millions of dollars if he plays it right, no, this time maybe hundreds of millions.“You go into greed mode, ” Pabrai said.Guy Spier called it “cocaine brain.” Neuroscientists have found that the prospect of making money stimulates the same primitive reward circuits in the brain that cocaine does. And that, Pabrai said, is when serious investors like himself try to become systematic. They focus on dispassionate analysis, on avoiding both irrational exuberance and panic.” (p 163)
- imposter syndrome:
The fear that you’re not as good as other people (usually your work colleagues) think you are and that any day now you’re going to be exposed as a fraud. - pretty power:
exploiting the very real “beautiful is good” phenomenon, where we unconsciously treat attractive people more favorably than we do less attractive people. (The easiest way to present ourselves attractively is to smile! Smile sincerely, generously and often and you will increase your “pretty power”.) - post-traumatic growth:
“A substantial number pf people show intense depression and anxiety after extreme adversity, often to the level of PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder], but then they grow. In the long run, they arrive at a higher level of psychological functioning than before. “What does not kill me makes me stronger,” said Nietzsche.” (from Martin Seligman’s book Flourish, p 159) - the epidemic of inactivity:
We human beings are designed to move our bodies, but our generation as a whole isn’t moving much. The evidence strongly suggests that this epidemic of inactivity is hurting us more than is the epidemic of obesity. (Martin Seligman in Flourish) - self-sustaining activities:
activities that, once we start doing them, we are happy to keep doing them because we enjoy doing them and enjoy the benefits they bring. (Martin Seligman) - being wisely selfish:
This is a term the Dalai Lama uses. “We want to be happy, so the best thing we can do is to contribute to the happiness of others,” explains David Michie in Buddhism for Busy People, p 136) - unconditional acceptance of the complete package:
The ideal way to approach a relationship with someone, as opposed to being critical of them and wanting them to change. - the Abundance Mentality and the Scarcity Mentality:
Stephen Covey in his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People defines these as follows:“The Abundance Mentality [is] the paradigm that there is plenty out there for everyone. Most people are deeply scripted in what I call the Scarcity Mentality. They see life as having only so much, as though there were only one pie out there. And if someone were to get a big piece of the pie, it would mean less for everybody else. . . People with a Scarcity Mentality have a very difficult time sharing recognition and credit, power or profit–even with those who help in the production.They also have a very hard time being genuinely happy for the success of other people–even, and sometimes especially, members of their own family or close friends and associates. It’s almost as if something has been taken from them when someone else receives special recognition or windfall gain or has remarkable success or achievement. . .Their sense of worth comes from being compared, and someone else’s success, to some degree, means their failure. . .
The Abundance Mentality, on the other hand, flows out of a deep inner sense of personal worth and security. It is the paradigm that there is plenty out there and enough to spare for everybody. It results in the sharing of prestige, of recognition, of profits, of decision making.” (p 219-220)
- upward spiral:
A positive chain of events where one good thing leads to more good things, which in turn lead to more and more good things! The accumulated positive growth is so big and far-ranging it’s hard to believe it could come from such small beginnings. If we could just take the first positive tiny steps, imagine where we might end up? - the disruptive questioner:
This person is the perfect antidote to “groupthink” and is the one “who speaks up when there’s a problem, is vocal about the mistakes they and others make, and asks those annoying “Why do we do it this way?” types of questions. . .Organizations that learn–and and improve–need the disruptive questioner.” (from Counter Clockwise by Ellen J. Langer, p 143). - interdependence:
the emotionally mature state where “we cooperate to combine our talents and abilities and create something greater together. . .Interdependence is all about “we”. . .As an interdependent person, I have the opportunity to share myself deeply, meaningfully, with others, and I have access to the vast resources and potential of others human beings. Interdependence is a choice only independent people can make. Dependent people cannot choose to be interdependent. They don’t have the character to do it; they don’t own enough of themselves.” (from Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, p 49-51). - being proactive:
Stephen Covey defines proactive to mean:
“. . . as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen. Look at that word responsibility–“response ability”–the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.”The opposite of being proactive is being reactive.
“Reactive people are often affected by the physical weather. If the weather is good, they feel good. If it isn’t, it affects their attitude and their performance. . .Reactive people are also affected by their social environment, by the “social weather.” When people treat them well, they feel well; when people don’t, they become defensive or protective. Reactive people build their emotional lives around the behavior of others, empowering the weaknesses of other people to control them” (from The 7Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, p 71-73).
- conversational narcissism:
where individuals employ numerous techniques to turn the course of a conversation towards themselves. (from The Pursuit of Attention by Charles Derber) - logic bubble:
Edward de Bono coined this term to help us learn to see things from the other person’s perspective. He writes: “When someone does something you do not like or with which you do not agree, it is easy to label that person as stupid, ignorant or malevolent. But that person may be acting ‘logically’ within his or her ‘logic bubble’. That bubble is made up of the perceptions, values, needs and experience of that person. If you make a real effort to see inside that bubble and to see where that person is ‘coming from’, you usually see the logic of that person’s position.” (How to Have a Beautiful Mind, p 6). - technology-induced ADD:
a term coined by Jamais Cascio in an article Get Smarter to describe how the internet and other new technology may be teaching us to become easily distracted and to lose our ability to concentrate and think deeply. Nicholas Carr explored this idea that the internet is making us shallow in his book aptly called The Shallows! - crowdsourcing:
literally meaning “out-sourcing” to the crowd. According to Kathy Davidson in her book Now You See it, crowd-sourcing was coined by Jeff Howe of Wired magazine in 2006 to refer to the widespread Internet practice of posting an open call requesting help in completing some task. Davidson says: “Crowdsourcing works best when you observe three nonhierarchical principles. First, the fundamental principle of all crowdsourcing is that difference and diversity–not expertise and uniformity–solves problems. Second, if you predict the result in any way, if you try to force a solution, you limit the participation and therefore the likelihood of success. And, third, the community most served by the solution should be chiefly involved in the process of finding it.” - the inventor’s dilemma:
a term coined by Clayton Christensen where people who invent something are usually the last ones to see past it so get left behind in the innovation race. - eudaimonia:
Aristotle’s term meaning a life well-lived with a sense of purpose and virtue ( as defined by Timothy Wilson in his book Redirect). - compulsion for closure:
a term Edwin Bliss uses in his classic time management book Getting Things Done, where he urges us to “develop that precious habit to finish what we start known as compulsion to closure.” He writes: “Once you start something, finish it. Don’t accumulate a backlog of half-finished projects.” (p 114)
Handy informative terms
May 24, 2011 by Leave a Comment
