Action Everywhere Means Inaction Everywhere: Sun Tzu On Force Concentration (Patreon)

"When you are concentrated into one while the opponent is divided into ten, you are attacking a concentration of ten to one, so you outnumber the opponent...If you can strike few with many, you will thus minimize the number of those with whom yo do battle...Preparedness everywhere means lack everywhere."

The Art of War, Sun Tzu (translated by Thomas Cleary)

[Amazon | The Art of War | Sun Tzu, Thomas Cleary | History of Technology] https://amzn.to/2PAACih

Don't try to get everything done. Don't try to do everything at once. Your "targets", your "enemies", your tasks, should be worthy of your full attention, your total energy. "Task loading" like a toddler at a supermarket candy pick-and-mix, is a sign that none of your targets are worthy of your full attention, and thus a sign that they're crappy, useless targets that deserve no attention whatsoever.

No target is of infinite value, so don't spend infinite time on anything, but do spend "infinite" energy, that is, spend all your energy, all your focus, all your concentration on the target for the brief and limited time you have allotted it. Be intense. And then be done. And then, if the target warrants it, be intense again. Work like a hurricane, not a piddly drizzle. Be cyclical. Sprint. Then rest. Then sprint again.

Your time and resources are limited. Finite. But if you pick on a "weak" task and overwhelm it with focus and energy, then, for the purposes of that task, you're as powerful as a pagan god. Globally, you may be outnumbered and outgunned, but locally, you can outnumber, outgun and outclass your putative "enemy", the "opponent", the task at hand.

"Preparedness everywhere means lack everywhere": trying to do everything is a great way to do nothing. Trying to learn everything at once is a great way to learn nothing. You can have wide knowledge, but you can only get it through multiple repetitions of acquiring narrow knowledge.

To borrow the words of the brave warrior prince Boromir (LOTR nerds be like: “‘e’s no’ a prince, ‘e’s steward’s son!”), one doesn’t simply “learn Japanese”, one learns word, one kanji. And then another. And another. 虱潰し. Like crushing lice. Combing through the hair. Looking for ignorance. To be honest, though, I’ve never seen anyone deal with lice by crushing them one at a time (which is what is implied), so this Japanese saying, like so many things, suddenly seems weirdly malapropos after a bit of reflection.

Anyway...

Be selective, not exhaustive, as the great author Richard Koch once so eloquently put it. You can't act everywhere, but you can act everywhere that truly counts. You don't save hard disk space by deleting more files, you save it by deleting a few big files. And, apart from the research step, it takes literally the same amount of work, of effort, for you to delete a large file as it does to delete a small one. Mind effing blown, playa!

You need to use your brain to pick smart targets, and you need to grow enough sac to openly, deliberately and unapologetically reject dumb targets.

Selective action begets awesomeness. Exhaustive actions begets exhaustion. By selecting and attacking good targets, you yourself become part of the select few who get awesome results. And then people credit invisible ancient magic ("natural selection") for your results, when really it was just the very artificial selection of good targets, repeated, that got you there.