Find a thinking move to make, or a mental model to understand a situation.
Attention & Contemplative Practice
Witness consciousness (sakshi in Hindu philosophy, 'the observer' in Western contemplative psychology) refers to the capacity to be aware of experience without being identified with it — watching thoughts, emotions, and…
Contemplative FrameworksAttention & Contemplative Practice
Herbert Simon first noted in 1971 that 'a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.' The Attention Economy model, applied at the personal level, treats attention as your scarcest resource — more finite than t…
Attention ScienceAttention & Contemplative Practice
The Digital Sabbath (or Technology Shabbat) is a structured practice of completely disconnecting from digital devices for a defined period — typically 24 hours weekly, though some practitioners use daily or seasonal rhyt…
Digital Well-beingAttention & Contemplative Practice
Cal Newport's Deep Work framework distinguishes between deep work (cognitively demanding tasks requiring sustained, uninterrupted attention — the activities that produce your highest-value output) and shallow work (logis…
Peak PerformanceAttention & Contemplative Practice
The 'monkey mind' (kapicitta in Buddhist Pali texts) is a metaphor for the untrained mind's tendency to swing ceaselessly from thought to thought — like a monkey swinging from branch to branch — without settling anywhere
Applied MindfulnessAttention & Contemplative Practice
Centering Prayer, developed by Thomas Keating, William Meninger, and Basil Pennington in the 1970s, is a Christian contemplative practice that closely parallels Eastern meditation but is rooted in the Christian apophatic…
Contemplative FrameworksAttention & Contemplative Practice
The body scan is a meditation practice where attention moves systematically through different regions of the body — typically from feet to head or vice versa — noticing sensations (warmth, tension, tingling, numbness, pa…
Meditation TechniquesAttention & Contemplative Practice
Walking meditation is a contemplative practice where slow, deliberate walking becomes the object of meditative attention — observing the lifting, moving, and placing of each foot, the shifting of weight, and the subtle b…
Meditation TechniquesAttention & Contemplative Practice
Philosopher and mystic Simone Weil argued that attention is not merely a cognitive faculty but a moral and spiritual practice — that 'attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.' Weil's concept of 'attention'…
Contemplative FrameworksAttention & Contemplative Practice
Though often conflated, concentration (samadhi) and mindfulness (sati) are distinct attentional skills that serve different functions and require different training
Attention ScienceAttention & Contemplative Practice
The jhanas are a series of progressively refined meditative absorption states described in the Buddhist Pali Canon, recently validated by neuroscience research
Meditation TechniquesAttention & Contemplative Practice
Lectio Divina ('divine reading') is a structured contemplative reading practice from the Benedictine monastic tradition, dating to the 6th century
Contemplative FrameworksAttention & Contemplative Practice
Sophie Leroy's research on attention residue demonstrates that when you switch from Task A to Task B, your attention doesn't completely transfer — a 'residue' of Task A continues to occupy working memory, reducing perfor…
Attention ScienceConflict & Repair
John Gottman's Four Horsemen identifies four communication patterns that predict relationship failure with over 90% accuracy: (1) Criticism — attacking the partner's character rather than addressing specific behavior ('Y…
Relationship DynamicsConflict & Repair
Every close relationship — romantic, parental, professional, therapeutic — involves inevitable ruptures: moments of misattunement, disconnection, hurt, or failure
Repair ProcessesConflict & Repair
Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication (NVC) provides a four-step process for expressing yourself and hearing others in ways that create connection rather than conflict: (1) Observation — state what you concretely…
Communication FrameworksConflict & Repair
Stephen Karpman's Drama Triangle identifies three dysfunctional roles people unconsciously rotate through during conflict: the Persecutor (blames, criticizes, dominates — 'This is all your fault'), the Victim (feels help…
Conflict PatternsConflict & Repair
Friedrich Glasl's nine-stage model maps how conflicts escalate from mild tension to mutual destruction, providing a diagnostic framework for intervention
Escalation & De-escalationConflict & Repair
Restorative justice shifts the focus of conflict resolution from punishment (What rule was broken? Who is to blame? What punishment do they deserve?) to repair (Who was harmed? What are their needs? Whose obligation is i…
Repair ProcessesConflict & Repair
John Gottman's research identified 'repair attempts' as the single most important factor predicting relationship success — more important than the severity or frequency of conflicts
Repair ProcessesConflict & Repair
The classic fight-or-flight response (Walter Cannon, 1932) has been expanded to include freeze (immobilization, dissociation, playing dead) and fawn (people-pleasing, appeasing, over-accommodating)
Stress ResponsesConflict & Repair
Not all conflict is destructive
Conflict PatternsConflict & Repair
John Gottman's research revealed that relationships are built or eroded through thousands of small moments he calls 'bids for connection' — any attempt to get attention, affirmation, affection, or engagement from another…
Relationship DynamicsConflict & Repair
De-escalation is a set of evidence-based techniques for reducing emotional intensity in conflict situations before they reach the point of no return
Escalation & De-escalationConflict & Repair
Zero-sum thinking assumes that one party's gain requires another's loss — that the pie is fixed
Negotiation FramesConflict & Repair
Gary Chapman and Jennifer Thomas identified five distinct 'apology languages' — different ways people give and expect to receive apologies — explaining why some apologies land and others feel hollow even when sincere
Repair ProcessesConflict & Repair
The Mediation Triangle describes a conflict resolution structure where a neutral third party facilitates dialogue between two disputants
Negotiation FramesConflict & Repair
The Conflict Avoidance Trap describes the paradox where avoiding small, manageable conflicts leads to larger, unmanageable ones
Conflict PatternsConflict & Repair
Accountability and blame are often conflated but serve opposite functions
Communication FrameworksEnergy Management
Ultradian rhythms are roughly 90-minute cycles of higher and lower arousal that occur throughout the day, discovered by sleep researcher Nathaniel Kleitman (who also identified REM sleep)
Biological RhythmsEnergy Management
An Energy Audit is a systematic assessment of where your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual energy goes — analogous to a financial audit but tracking your most perishable resource
Assessment ToolsEnergy Management
Christine Miserandino's Spoon Theory, originally created to explain the experience of living with lupus, uses a metaphor of spoons representing finite daily energy units
Capacity ModelsEnergy Management
Borrowed from chemistry, activation energy in behavioral science refers to the initial energy required to begin a behavior — the 'startup cost' that must be overcome before the activity can become self-sustaining
Habit DesignEnergy Management
Roy Baumeister's 'ego depletion' model proposed that willpower functions like a muscle that fatigues with use — each act of self-control depletes a limited pool, leaving less for subsequent tasks
Willpower & Self-RegulationEnergy Management
Chronotype refers to your biologically determined preference for sleep-wake timing, governed by the suprachiasmatic nucleus (the brain's master clock) and influenced by genetics, age, and light exposure
Biological RhythmsEnergy Management
Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz's 'Corporate Athlete' model, drawn from their work with elite athletes, argues that sustained high performance depends not on working more but on alternating strategically between energy expen…
Recovery ScienceEnergy Management
While 'adrenal fatigue' is not a recognized medical diagnosis (the adrenal glands don't actually fatigue in the way popularly described), the concept points to a real phenomenon: the continuum from healthy stress respons…
Capacity ModelsEnergy Management
Energy ROI Analysis applies investment thinking to energy allocation: for each activity, what energy return do you get relative to the energy invested? Some activities have high energy ROI — a 30-minute exercise session…
Assessment ToolsEnergy Management
Circadian alignment refers to synchronizing your behavior — especially light exposure, meal timing, sleep schedule, and activity level — with your body's internal 24-hour clock
Biological RhythmsEnergy Management
Emotional Energy Accounting treats emotional experiences as having concrete energy costs and returns that can be tracked and managed
Emotional EnergyEnergy Management
Decision fatigue is the deterioration of decision quality after a long session of decision-making, documented in Shai Danziger's famous study showing that Israeli judges granted parole at 65% in morning sessions but drop…
Willpower & Self-RegulationEnergy Management
Jim Loehr's four-dimensional energy model argues that sustainable high performance requires management across four energy domains: Physical (the foundation — sleep, nutrition, exercise, health), Emotional (quality of ene…
Recovery ScienceEnergy Management
The Stress-Recovery Balance model, derived from both exercise physiology and organizational psychology, proposes that growth and high performance require deliberate alternation between stress (demanding activity that exc…
Recovery ScienceEnergy Management
Micro-recoveries are brief (30 seconds to 5 minutes) restorative activities interspersed throughout the workday that partially reset physiological stress markers without requiring full breaks
Recovery ScienceEnergy Management
Peak-End Energy Planning combines Daniel Kahneman's Peak-End Rule (experiences are remembered based on their peak intensity and how they end, not their average) with energy management principles
Strategic PlanningFriendship & Social Architecture
Robin Dunbar's research identified nested social layers based on emotional closeness and interaction frequency: 5 (intimate support group — people you'd call in a crisis at 3am), 15 (sympathy group — close friends whose…
Network StructureFriendship & Social Architecture
Friendship Maintenance Theory, drawing on work by William Rawlins and Laura Stafford, identifies the specific behaviors that sustain friendships over time — countering the passive assumption that good friendships 'just h…
Friendship MaintenanceFriendship & Social Architecture
Robert Kahn and Toni Antonucci's Social Convoy Model visualizes each person surrounded by concentric circles of relationships that travel with them through life — like a convoy of ships traveling together
Network StructurePage 30 of 50 · 1393–1440 of 2,375 models