The art of war | Types of life generals

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故曰：知彼知己，百戰不殆；不知彼而知己，一勝一負；不知彼，不知己，每戰必殆。

So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will fight without danger in battles.
If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.
If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.

- Sun Tzu -

You’d be surprised to know how many things can be learned by being a hardcore player of RTS (Real Time Strategy) games. Not only about war, but also about the “victories” of life.

Since the 1980s, Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” has become a classic for the corporate culture. It’s usefulness for the corporate environment may seem inexistent at first, as the treatise covers aspects of warfare, but after reading it one comes to notice that much of the text is about how to fight wars without actually having to do battle. It gives tips on how to outsmart one’s opponent so that physical battle is not necessary.

It has inspired and influenced business books, law books, corporate strategies, sports, politics, social relationships and of course, armed conflicts.

But I’m not here to bore you with unpractical knowledge that can be picked up from countless sources; I’m here to share an important piece of information that came to me after playing RTS games for a long time. It may sound trivial at first, but please bear with me ’till the end; it will be worth it.

Here we go, the important piece of strategic information that I was telling you about is this: based on the strategies used, there are three big types of war generals – the rusher, the passive and the patient. Nothing new? Probably. But hear this: in the real, day to day life, we all fit (and operate) under one of those types.

Each action that we take, each move that we make in our life’s playground, has a thinking behind it. Whether that thinking is our own or someone else’s is somewhat irrelevant to the present article, but what is important to know is that even if
we
use someone
else’s thinking we
actively choose
one that fits
our typeeven if we use someone else’s thinking we actively choose one that fits our type of living – rusher, passive or patient.

As Sun Tzu wrote, “it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will fight without danger in battles.” Now I don’t know what battles you fight in, but I can help you get to know yourself better. And by helping you in that aspect, you will get from a state in which you always endanger yourself to losing, to a state in which you may win or you may lose.

The Rusher

In RTS computer games, a rush is a fast attack right at the beginning of the game. It emphasizes speed in an attempt to overwhelm an unprepared opponent. It is analogous to the human wave attack in real-world ground warfare, in which overwhelming numbers of troops are sent at the enemy, disregarding tactics or casualties.

To perform a rush, the attacking player focuses on quickly building a large number of units adept at attacking. In the majority of cases, these units are fast and cheap to enable larger numbers and opportunistic attack strategies, but they may sometimes be chosen to exploit a particular weakness of the enemy. The player who rushes may sacrifice options such as long-term resource gathering or immediate research up the tech tree to opt instead for a quick strike.

The emphasized words are key to understanding this tactic. And if we extrapolate, we get to the juicy core principle which can be used to improve our lives.

We all have goals to reach and dreams to accomplish, but some of us like to challenge our skills and luck with shortcuts and silverbullets. Those kinds of persons represent the rusher type, the type that literally rushes to “victory” by using opportunistic tactics that offer immediate high results.

However, the rush is a risky tactic. If successful, then one has reached his goals or got to a position that is significantly ahead of the “competition” in a record time. If the rush fails, the rushing individual has wasted valuable time and resources.

Want some examples of rushers? Since this is the giving season I’ll send out some link-love, so here are 3 random rushers from around the blogosphere: “John Cow” from JohnCow.com; Tina Su from ThinkSimpleNow.com; Leo Babauta from ZenHabits.net.

To summarize: the rusher uses his resources, energy and time for a risky explosive growth.

In a way, because the rusher gets faster to his destination, we all dream of using this tactic. But some of us are operating under different “instructions,” for example…

…The Passive

We’ve seen that the rusher invests all the resources at his disposal for a quick effect. The passive on the other hand, does almost nothing… neither short-term or long-term.
The passive starts slowly, evolves slowly and – very importantly – finishes fast (without being nowhere near his goals).

The passive doesn’t focus on speed, doesn’t use opportunities and very often doesn’t have any kind of strategy prepared. His sole usefulness is as a growth-mark on the wall, for the ones around him.

In the real world, most of us get to this point at one time or another. If, for example, a rusher suffers a defeat that is more than he can handle, he becomes passive for a while.

There’s no problem in being passive for a little while, resting your mind & all, but when it represents the normal state of things, serious problems appear.

How many times have you seen people complaining they don’t have enough money, yet don’t do anything to earn more? It’s like having a terrible tooth-ache and not going to see a dentist. Those people represent the passive type.

Examples of passive types: again with a blogosphere example, 97% of the newly created blogs (too many links to gather).

To summarize: the passive isn’t aggressive or defensive… he just sits quietly in his corner, busy doing nothing; just trying to blend in and hopefully survive.

The Patient

In RTS games, this strategy is commonly known as turtling. Named after the turtle animal, it relates to a completely defensive strategy.

Sometimes the objective of turtling is simply to avoid defeat, and sometimes it is to research and build advanced combat units so that a devastating attack can be launched later.

As opposed to the aggressive expansion of a rusher, the patient general protects his territory to the exclusion of creating any forces for attacking the enemy. That is until late in the game, when advanced upgraded units become available and the initial defensive strategy becomes an unstoppable expansion which “p0wns” everyone else – if used properly.

The patient gathers all the resources he can, gets his strength to the highest level possible, and then gets out the door and reaches all his goals in a single round.

In RTS games, this strategy has some major weaknesses. However, in its real-life extrapolated version, most of those weaknesses don’t apply. One of the only ones that still apply is the fact that turtling may collapse because of the psychological pressure exercised by the ones rushing – it’s like seeing a Ferrari go by at full speed, while you’re riding a bike, up a hill.

This blog and I are operating under this strategy, and so is Steve Pavlina’s blog (and probably Steve too).

To summarize: the patient’s strategy focuses on slow initial development followed by a late, very strong peak-point, reached by advanced means.

The relevance of it, or how to use what you just read

What I’ve just shared is relevant and can help you improve your life in that it can offer you a clearer picture of where you stand and what path you are currently on. Knowing that, you can focus on improving your strategy.

I have seen bloggers and entrepreneurs starting enthusiastically and then quitting after a few months. Most of the time, that happened not because they were defeated by the “game,” but because they didn’t have extraordinarily fast results like some others did. And they abandoned the fight without knowing that those other people were having an essentially different strategy. They abandoned because their lack of knowledge of themselves made them vulnerable to their own person.

In case you’re the passive general, I’ll advise you to quickly change your tactics and strategy. For the ones who fit under the other two – learn how to make the most of them.

I won’t lie and say that if you know under which category you fit in and improve it, you’re a winner in life. No, because it’s not enough. You’ll have to know the same, and more, about your competition.

But more on that in a future article.

In the meantime, you can legally download “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu from this link. I highly recommend you read it!

Until next time,
keep fighting!