deepstash
Beta
Deepstash brings you key ideas from the most inspiring articles like this one:
Read more efficiently
Save what inspires you
Remember anything
Sun Tzu: How to Use Military Strategy to Build Better Habits
5
Key Ideas
Save all ideas
Sun Tzu: Winning without fighting
Sun Tzu, the legendary military strategist, preferred to win without fighting or, at the very least, to win the easiest battles first.
The teachings of Sun Tzu extend far beyond the field of battle because they are focused on finding the easiest way to achieve a specific goal.
179 SAVES
Failure relates to a weak strategy
In most situations failure is not a result of poor willpower, but a result of poor strategy.
268 SAVES
In battles and in building new habits, start easy
Good military leaders start by winning easy battles and improving their position.
Same goes for starting habits. You should not start new habits in an environment that makes progress difficult.
245 SAVES
Success and easy-to-follow habits
You can be sure in succeeding in your habits if you only build habits which are easy to maintain.
196 SAVES
Good habits don't last in bad environments
Becoming better is not simply a matter of willpower or work ethic. It’s also a matter of strategy.
What people assume to be a lack of willpower or an unwillingness to change is often a consequence of trying to build good habits in bad environments.
225 SAVES
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
5
Key Ideas
Fighting your inner battles
Like most other things in our life, getting healthy is more about fighting our inner battles - desiring the bad food, wanting to drink and smoke, or forgoing the planned workout.
Identify the demon first
It is difficult to fight an inner battle if you do not know what you are fighting.
Get to the root of the problem by putting a face on that demon. Identify the real problem that is holding you back.
Stay Away Until You’re Ready
Don't try to fight your inner battle until you have leveled up. The inner battle you're facing never goes away completely. It just becomes easier when you are prepared.
- Remove all the junk food out of your house until you’re better equipped to handle it.
- Drive a different path to work so that you can avoid Burger King and McDonald’s.
- Take a month off from going out to bars.
9
Key Ideas
Tactical Hell
It is a place where we are perpetually reactive to other people’s demands and needs, driven by emotional instead of logical impulses.
We need to escape it and see things objectively an...
The Art of Negative Visualization
This is a stoic lesson, to visualize failure in advance.
It helps because if you imagine failure you start seeing all the ways that have led to that result. And you can start actively working on addressing and mitigating them in advance.
The ‘Draw-Down Period’
Before he would jump into an idea and go full steam, take a reflective period to step back ask yourself: "What do I really have here? Do I actually have something? What am I hoping to accomplish?”
5
Key Ideas
Trigger, Behavior, and Reward
Much of human behavior follows a predictable cycle: trigger, behavior, reward.
For behaviors that you want to do, the goal is to make triggers salient, the behavior easy, and the reward as...
Rig Your Environment
In habit speak, don’t underestimate the power of everything around you to act as a trigger.
A better option than relying purely on willpower is to consciously design your environment to remove the temptations that regularly get in the way of what you’re trying to do.
Enlist a Community
it’s not just your physical environment that influences your behavior but also your social one. Motivation is contagious.
A community also helps with accountability. If you’ve made a commitment to another person or group, you’re more likely to stick with it.