Reference glossary
Plain-language definitions for self-discovery concepts.
Use these definitions as starting points, not diagnoses or permanent labels. Each term links back to the wider topic where its limits, related questions and assessments are explained.
Intelligence, Logic and Reasoning
Core definitions
- Intelligence type
- A practical description of the thinking strengths that appear most consistently across different kinds of tasks.
- Logical reasoning
- The ability to use rules, evidence and step-by-step relationships to reach a conclusion.
- Pattern recognition
- The ability to notice recurring structures, transformations, sequences or relationships in information.
- Creative intelligence
- The ability to generate useful alternatives, connect ideas in new ways and experiment with different approaches.
- Problem-solving style
- The repeatable way a person frames a problem, tests options and decides what to try next.
Personality and Emotional Intelligence
Core definitions
- Personality pattern
- A recurring tendency in how someone responds to situations, people, uncertainty and everyday choices.
- Emotional awareness
- The ability to notice and name emotional signals in yourself and, with appropriate caution, in other people.
- Communication style
- The habitual way a person expresses ideas, disagreement, needs and feedback.
- Social judgment
- The process of interpreting context, relationships and likely consequences before responding in a social situation.
- Self-awareness
- The ability to notice your own patterns, triggers, strengths and limitations without treating them as fixed labels.
Career Strengths and Work Style
Core definitions
- Career strength
- A capability or working tendency that can be useful across multiple roles, such as analysis, creativity, communication, structure or pattern finding.
- Work style
- The conditions and habits that influence how someone plans, collaborates, focuses and completes work.
- Role fit
- The degree to which a role matches a person’s skills, constraints, values, interests and preferred way of working.
- Career experiment
- A low-risk way to test a possible direction through a project, conversation, course, freelance task or short-term experience.
- Transferable strength
- A useful capability that can carry across industries or job titles rather than belonging to only one occupation.
Focus, Memory and Learning
Core definitions
- Attention pattern
- The way concentration changes across time, task type, interruptions and mental effort.
- Recall
- The ability to retrieve information without simply recognizing it when it is shown again.
- Working memory
- The limited mental workspace used to hold and manipulate information while completing a task.
- Learning strategy
- A repeatable method for understanding, practicing and retrieving information, such as active recall or spaced review.
- Focus recovery
- The ability to return to a task after an interruption rather than expecting concentration to remain perfect.
Decision-Making and Self-Awareness
Core definitions
- Decision style
- A recurring preference for how much analysis, speed, intuition, caution or social input to use before committing.
- Decision threshold
- The point at which you decide you have enough information to act rather than continuing to gather evidence.
- Overthinking
- A pattern where additional analysis stops producing meaningful new information but continues delaying a decision.
- Feedback loop
- A repeatable process of acting, observing the outcome and using the result to improve the next decision.
- Adaptive judgment
- The ability to change decision style when the situation requires more speed, caution, collaboration or evidence.