Published date: 2021
Category: Self-help
"There is much to be known, life is short, and life is not life without knowledge."- Baltasar Gracián
Insight: Acquiring skills is the best way to navigate a changing world.
Insight: Combining skills across disciplines is the best path to mastery.
Principle: Accumulate your skills.
"A person of sharp observation and sound judgment rules over things, not they him... There is nothing he cannot discover, notice, grasp, understand."- Baltasar Gracián
Principle: Approach all tasks as an opportunity to learn.
"Make people depend on you. More is to be gained from such dependence than courtesy. He who has slaked his thirst, immediately turns his back on the well, no longer needing it."- Baltasar Gracián
Principle: Work to be the only one that is in a position to do what you do.
Principle: Work to attach the fate of those that hire you to your own, so that they cannot get rid of you.
"Avoid outshining the master. All superiority is odious, but the superiority of a subject over his prince is not only stupid, it is fatal."- Baltasar Gracián
Principle: Make those above you feel comfortably superior.
"Know how to make use of stupidity: The wisest man plays this card at times. There are occasions when the highest wisdom consists in appearing not to know—you must not be ignorant but capable of playing it."- Baltasar Gracián
Principle: People that feel smarter feel better about themselves when you are around and drop their guard, this provides opportunities.
Principle: In general, make people believe they are smarter than you.
"Regard it as more courageous not to become involved in an engagement than to win in battle, and where there is already one interfering fool, take care that there shall not be two."- Baltasar Gracián
Principle: Maintain independence from issues not concerning you and avoid conflict.
"Always set to work without misgivings on the score of imprudence."- Baltasar Gracián
Principle: Being timid is dangerous, it can lower performance, and the trust of those around you.
Principle: Be bold in action.
"There is no revenge like oblivion, for it is the entombment of the unworthy in the dust of their own nothingness."- Baltasar Gracián
Insight: We often make worse what we pay attention to, including our own mistakes.
"He who poses as a fool is not a fool."- Baltasar Gracián
Insight: Those that profess to be innocent are often the least so.
"Knowing any man’s mainspring of motive, you have, as it were, the key to his will."- Baltasar Gracián
Principle: Do not take words or actions at face value.
Principle: Always ask who stands to benefit from the outcome.
"The best way to be well received by all is to clothe yourself in the skin of the dumbest of brutes."- Baltasar Gracián
Principle: Do not overtly question people's intelligence.
Principle: Make people feel that they are more intelligent than you.
"Mix a little mystery with everything, and the very mystery stirs up veneration."- Baltasar Gracián
Principle: Create an air of mystery.
"Find out each man’s thumbscrew. ’Tis the art of setting their wills in action. It needs more skill than resolution. You must know where to get at anyone. Every volition has a special motive which varies according to taste. All men are idolaters, some of fame, others of self-interest, most of pleasure. Skill consists in knowing these idols in order to bring them into play. Knowing any man’s mainspring of motive you have as it were the key to his will."- Baltasar Gracián
Principle: Find people's weaknesses or vices.
Principle: Turn others' weaknesses to your advantage.
"Important affairs often require rewards and punishments. Let only the good come from you and the evil from others."- Baltasar Gracián
Principle: Let other people be the bearer of bad news or executioner.
Principle: Bring only joy and good feelings to others.
"Nothing really belongs to us but time, which even he has who has nothing else. It is equally unfortunate to waste your precious life in mechanical tasks or in a profusion of important work."- Baltasar Gracián
Principle: Focus and prioritise.
Insight: There is always a difference between our plans and what actually happens - Carl von Clausewitz called this "friction."
"The first principle is that the ultimate substance of enemy strength must be traced back to the fewest possible sources, and ideally to one alone... By constantly seeking out the center of his power, by daring all to win all, will one really defeat the enemy."- Carl von Clausewitz
Insight: The ultimate strategy when facing an opponent is to attack their center of gravity - that which without the opponents position will collapse.
Principle: Analyse your opponent. Search for that which holds everything together. Hit them in the center of gravity with all of your force and focus.
Insight: Through intense absorption of a particular field over a long period of time, masters understand all the components of what they are studying - beyond intellect they internalise everything and it becomes intuitive.
Insight: Jane Goodall is an example of a master in her field - studying and living among chimpanzees in East Africa - she was able to think like a chimpanzee and see elements of the social dynamics that no other researcher had before.
Insight: Jane Goodall made discoveries that forever altered our perception of chimpanzees and other animals.
Insight: Masters gain an intuitive feel for the whole of their field.
"A sovereign should never launch an army out of anger, a leader should never start a war out of wrath."- Sun Tzu
Insight: Showing emotion and anger are signs of weakness - you must be able to control yourself to manage other things.
Principle: Master your emotional responses.
Insight: Your enemies wish you ill.
Insight: Some enemies can be best to convert to an ally, others should be crushed totally.
Principle: "Crush the enemy".
Principle: Analyse your enemy and past patterns.
Insight: One of Sun Tzu's important tactics - the false front - making the enemy believe that you are weaker than is the case.
Insight: The appearance of weakness can bring out an opponent's aggressive side, making them drop all strategy.
Principle: Don't take appearances for reality.
"When opponents are unwilling to fight with you, it is because they think it is contrary to their interests, or because you have misled them into thinking so."- Sun Tzu
Principle: Build a reputation: fighting you is not worth it.
Principle: Make your reputation credible with a few brutal or impressive acts.
Insight: Sun Tzu teaches that in any strategy the idea is to be positioned in order to unleash the force of the strategy quickly.
Insight: Strategy is not a series of steps to follow toward a goal.
Principle: Do not follow any "expert" that claims to have a formula for success and power.
Insight: Sun Tzu believed that doing something extraordinary only was effective if the setup was ordinary - if it had the element of surprise.
Principle: Make your opponent comfortable with a regular pattern of moves, then hit them with force from an entirely new angle.
Principle: Make it hard to guess what you'll do next.
"So to win a hundred victories in a hundred battles is not the highest excellence; the highest excellence is to subdue the enemy’s army without fighting at all."- Sun Tzu
Principle: Create disorder by breaking people's ability to understand you.
"To remain disciplined and calm while waiting for disorder to appear amongst the enemy is the art of self-possession."- Sun Tzu
Insight: Retreating shows strength, not weakness.
Insight: Retreating is something that must be done every now and then to detach yourself from outside influences.
Insight: Sun Tzu talked about the importance of having options, full of potential force rather than positions of strength and power, that may be limited.
Principle: Always aim to increase options for power and mobility.
"Thus one’s victories in battle cannot be repeated—they take their form in response to inexhaustibly changing circumstances."- Sun Tzu
Principle: Do not place too much weight on past experiences.
"The consummation of forming an army is to arrive at formlessness. Victory in war is not repetitious, but adapts its form endlessly... A military force has no constant formation, water has no constant shape: The ability to gain victory by changing and adapting according to the opponent is called genius."- Sun Tzu
Insight: Nothing is certain. No law or strategy is fixed. Everything changes.
Principle: Be fluid and formless, like water - do not bet on stability or lasting order.
Insight: Sun Tzu talked about a "death ground" - a place from which an army has no escape route. Without an option for retreat, an army fights with double or triple the spirit because death is viscerally present.
Principle: Put yourself in a place where there is no escape route.