Helpful Frameworks
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
I find this system helpful as it appears to be a universal framework common to all humans, and it helps to understand the highest aspirations of all humans. In other words, once all a person's basic needs are met, there is still an intrinsic drive to reach one's maximum potential.
Bloom's Taxonomy
I find Bloom's Taxonomy to be extremely helpful in understanding cognitive development and human pedagogy. Combined with Bloom's Two Sigma Problem, this set of research provides a very clear understanding of how to approach education.
Kohlberg's Moral Development
Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development creates a framework through which it is very easy to understand the moral and ethical differences across the landscape of humanity. Rather than philosophy's asinine search for universal or absolute morality, Kohlberg's framework is anchored in the human condition and the fact that morality is learned and developed over a lifetime. It dovetails very nicely with Patricia Churchland's book Braintrust.
Self-Determination Theory
SDT is a very simple framework to understand human motivation and needs in a purely psychological sense. It has some parallels to Maslow's Hierarchy, but is much simpler to understand. Its simplicity makes it easy to apply practically.
Choice Theory
Similar to both Maslow and SDT, Choice Theory is another simple and practical framework to understand human motivation. It's extremely useful in the context of work and education (e.g. how do you motivate students and employees?)
Cognitive Development
Much like Kohlberg's theory of moral development, Kegan's model of cognitive development present a very clear roadmap of intellectual development. In particular, it implicitly presents the idea of epistemic tribes and identity. This model can help users recognize their own embeddedness within epistemic tribes and to perceive epistemic boundaries, and thus to disentangle their identity from their cognitive development.
Ikigai
Ikigai is a Japanese concept that roughly translates to "reason for existing", not unlike the French raison d'être. The Japanese have a more systematic framework for defining one's ikigai. In this case, ikigai is the intersection of four spheres:
That which you love
That which you can get paid for
That which you're good at
That which society needs
This framework is very helpful in deciding what to do with your life.
