What is this all about?:

Military strategies are for wars and martial arts techniques are for fighting - right?
Well, don’t we fight our little wars and conflicts daily? At work, at home, in the shop, in the street, with kids or parents, you name it. Sometimes even putting a kid to bed turns into a sizeable conflict!
And don’t we waste tons of nerves and energy in these little fights?
Shouldn’t the ideas from the strategies and techniques be applicable to our daily conflicts? And make it easier to win and live?

Well, I think - "yes"! And I am trying to put together here a sizable amount of examples to show this. Below I present these examples together with the underlying ideas taken from military or martial arts. Sometimes their application looks like plain psychology, sometimes as office politics, and sometimes just as little tricks that you can use. And, you bet, at times it is not that pretty, but hey, who said that warfare is pretty?

As with martial arts, you can use it just to fend off attacks or to hurt people. Some ideas are aikido/judo like – soft. Some are hard. You can be gentle or play it rather ugly – it depends on you - hope not - but sometimes the circumstances dictate that too.

If you live in a violent area – it is a good idea to take some form of karate-like training, right?
By the same measure “if you live in a world of conflicts – it is a good idea to learn some techniques to handle them”.
Or you may go on and fight them “head on”.

I would be happy to hear your comments or examples – just go ahead and add a comment anywhere – I will re-post it if necessary.

Sun Tzu said: "..to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."

On the right there are links to previous posts - strategy definitions and examples of use.

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

What do I want to do here?

My wish is to create a collection of examples how the "strategic thinking" can be used in the conflicts and situations of everyday life.
There are many books on military strategy. There are books on how military strategy can be applied to business.
Yet, I think, the area where most conflicts occur - our daily routine - is not "widely" (an understatement here) covered by the books or our education.

Most of the daily conflicts are resolved/won by "head-on" approach - which is, "choose the right answer":
- not smart?
- burns lots of energy?
- if you are in a weaker position - you loose?
- causes damage to all involved?

I will try here to give examples of military strategies or martial techniques and their concrete applications to conflicts. With time I hope this blog will grow into a compilation that covers the 36 Chinese stratagems, some strategies and basic principles from Sun Tzu and techniques from martial arts. Wish me luck!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is not clear what are your expectations from this blog.
Are you going to advice people how to solve their conflicts or you are creating a forum where people raise their conflicts and the forum suggests solution?
Define the PRODUCT and SALE it.

dailyStrats said...

db,
My intent was to show through examples and explanations how the problems can be solved "in a smarter way". I had a future plan to create a forum that as you said "where people raise their conflicts and the forum suggests solution" - but if there will be enough interest right now - I will be happy to do it sooner :). People, please comment if you think this will have enough interest!
Also, if you have good examples - please post!

Alon said...

Nice idea. Hopefully it will became more and more clear as new examples/applications appear (I'm not good in theory :) ).
Good luck!

dailyStrats said...

Hope it will, though examples are hard to come by - if you/anybody have any - please post!