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The Art of Strategic Thinking (How to Become Wildly Successful at Anything You Do)

Dan Koe47:09Added Aug 31, 2026

Strategic thinking will change your life.Full Eden guide: https://youtu.be/1VhMmgL_Gx8Personal brand strategy AI: https://app.eden.so/ai/personal-brand-strat...

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Contributed by 刘嘉琪

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Transcript format

  1. Stop obsessing over tactics

  2. 00:00Everyone is racing to be successful right now. And as you'd guess, 99.99% of them will not in fact become
  3. 00:07successful because they're all obsessed with the wrong thing. They're obsessed with the clawed code skills that they're
  4. 00:12collecting from Instagram posts that tell you to comment a keyword in order for them to DM you so you can follow
  5. 00:18them so that they can send you the link to the skill that you're going to try once and never use again. They're
  6. 00:24obsessed with the YouTube videos that teach them how to build a profitable business in five actionable steps. And I
  7. 00:31still don't understand why people are so obsessed with actionable steps and bullet point summaries because that's
  8. 00:36not going to help you in the slightest if you don't have understanding or context or experience. They're obsessed
  9. 00:43with tactics. You know, the same knowledge that everyone else has access to. Do you not realize that all the
  10. 00:49information you could ever need to make a hund00 million is readily available to you online, in books, or just inside of
  11. 00:55an AI chat if you talk to it long enough? Have you ever stopped and wondered why everyone in the world isn't
  12. 01:01making millions of dollars right now? Have you ever considered that the actionable advice you crave so much
  13. 01:07won't get you anywhere unless you know how the pieces you're picking up fit into the entire puzzle? So, why is this?
  14. 01:13Why are so many people trying to desperately aim for success but get nowhere close to achieving it? One is
  15. 01:20because they're exchanging one form of cheap dopamine for another more insidious form. I would argue that
  16. 01:25endless tactic collection by endlessly consuming YouTube videos around business and self-improvement is worse than just
  17. 01:33doom scrolling brain rot videos because you're getting a sense of fake progress.
  18. 01:39At least with the doom scrolling videos, you just feel bad about yourself. But with the self-improvement in business and even this video, you feel bad about
  19. 01:46yourself, but you also get this false certainty that you're making progress just by watching the video. The second
  20. 01:51reason is because they don't have a strategy that allows them to use the tactics they're collecting to their
  21. 01:57highest degree. Tactic collection or tactics in general, which is just execution. Strategy is positioning.
  22. 02:04Tactics is execution. If you don't have a strategy that one exposes you to the
  23. 02:10right tactics that you didn't even know about in the first place or didn't register as an opportunity, then you're just going to be thrown around like a
  24. 02:16puppet by internet marketers because they know how to capture your attention and persuade you that something is valuable, even if it may not fit your
  25. 02:23specific situation and your specific mind. Now, if you're this type of person who just collects tactics, I'm not
  26. 02:28trying to belittle you. I do the same thing quite often right now and I did it a lot more in the past. I got stuck in
  27. 02:36tutorial hell. I took all the courses. I tried and failed at seven different business models. Facebook ads, SEO, drop
  28. 02:42shipping, web design, digital art, and a few more. And I wouldn't even consider them businesses. I would consider them
  29. 02:47hobbies because I would learn the high value skill and that felt good. I would
  30. 02:52start the LLC and that felt good. I would build the website and try to write
  31. 02:57the copy for it so that it's persuasive and that felt good. But when it came to actually getting a customer, getting
  32. 03:04someone to pay me, I was nowhere to be found. And the missing piece was a strategy. But not just a strategy, the
  33. 03:11ability to think strategically because how else are you going to create a strategy? And that's an incredibly
  34. 03:16difficult thing to learn. But that's what we're here to talk about. That's the secret behind Steve Jobs, Alexander
  35. 03:23the Great, military strategists in general. Most great and successful people that we look up to have the
  36. 03:29ability to think strategically. They may not say that that is their superpower or their secret because they may be
  37. 03:35unconsciously competent, but that is exactly it. It all comes down to strategy. And that's what I'm going to
  38. 03:41show you not only how to learn, but how to do in this video. We're going to create a life strategy. and you're going
  39. 03:47to learn the principles that you can take and apply to anything that you do, be it business, sports, relationships,
  40. 03:53anything. We're also going to talk about the nine traits of a master strategist and especially how a lack of strategy
  41. 04:00means a lack of control over the outcome of your life. As we begin, the only
  42. 04:05thing I ask of you is that you actually listen and attempt to implement what I
  43. 04:10say. You take notes. you actually do something aside from just watching the video and then letting it leave your
  44. 04:16mind 30 minutes later. So section number one, strategy is getting yourself into a superior position while at the same time

  45. IStrategy is getting yourself into a superior position

  46. 04:23making sure your opponent is in a worse one. And this section is all about understanding the quote tactics flow
  47. 04:29from a superior position from Bobby Fischer who is a chess grandmaster. Now let's walk through a simple chess match.
  48. 04:35I'll try not to bore you here. We'll make it quick just so we can get to the point. But player one in the chess match
  49. 04:40spends the first part of the game doing things that look boring. They aren't attacking. They aren't capturing any
  50. 04:45pieces. And from the outside, it looks like they're not doing anything. They're just moving their pieces to certain squares on the board. And in a game like
  51. 04:52chess, you're playing on a grid, but not all of the squares on that grid are created equal. It's the same with life.
  52. 04:59A piece in the center of a board can reach many more places than a piece stuck behind a corner. Now, in the game,
  53. 05:05player one slides a rook onto an open lane where nothing blocks it. They place a bishop on a path that points straight
  54. 05:12at the enemy king. They place a knight on a square near the middle of the board. And meanwhile, player two has
  55. 05:18pieces just getting in each other's way. Their most powerful pieces are trapped behind their own pawns. Their king is
  56. 05:24stuck in the middle of the board because they never found a safe moment to tuck it away in a corner. Player two was only reacting to player one's moves. So
  57. 05:31player one moves their knight to a square where it can attack player two's king and queen at the same time. And in
  58. 05:38chess, this is called a fork. So your opponent can only save one. Those are two very powerful pieces, the king and
  59. 05:44the queen. So losing either one is not good. So of course, player two has to move his king so he doesn't lose the
  60. 05:51game. But that leads to player one being able to take their queen, which is the most powerful piece on the board, and
  61. 05:57it's essentially game over at this point. But the thing here is the lesson is that any player who got to that exact
  62. 06:04arrangement of pieces could have played that game-winning move. The reason player one got there is because they
  63. 06:10spent the entire game building up to it. So if you were to remove any of those boring steps from the start, the fork or
  64. 06:16the game-winning tactic wouldn't exist. The knight would have gotten blocked and the king would have escaped as a
  65. 06:22defending piece arrived. So the real lesson is strategy is getting yourself into a superior position while at the
  66. 06:29same time making sure your opponent is in a worse one. Strategy is the work of making your position better and your
  67. 06:36opponent's position worse move by move until the gap between the two is so large that tactics start appearing on
  68. 06:42their own. Now the interesting thing here is that in the game of life, you are both the opponent and the player.
  69. 06:49Every decision you make changes your own position. And most people are just completely blind to where they are. If
  70. 06:55the average person's life were a chess match, they probably have gotten into a game-winning move before, but they
  71. 07:01didn't even realize it. They weren't able to act on that opportunity because it was just unconscious to them. They
  72. 07:06didn't have the cognitive flexibility or architecture, which we're going to talk about in the next video, to actually
  73. 07:11know when they can execute on a specific tactic to get a big reward. That's why
  74. 07:17strategy has to come first. Because if you want to actually succeed at building the side business or the creator
  75. 07:23business like we talk about here or just building an aesthetic physique or becoming healthy or simply getting what
  76. 07:30you want out of life, you can't be like most people because most people spend
  77. 07:35zero time strategizing. They don't engage in intentional strategic
  78. 07:40thinking. Like think about your own life, right? I do this all the time. We all do. But when you're just going about
  79. 07:45your life, are you actually thinking or are you just reacting to thoughts and emotions? Are you understanding what's
  80. 07:51going on in your head or are you just letting it play out? Both have their benefits, right? They're different modes of thinking. There's creativity and
  81. 07:57there's productivity. Creativity benefits from a more open focus, letting your mind be kind of chaotic and then
  82. 08:04picking picking certain ideas or pieces and synthesizing them together. And then productivity is more strategic, more
  83. 08:10focused, more hierarchical. But most people don't engage in productivity in that way. They engage in a very narrow
  84. 08:17state of stressful focus based on urgency or scarcity because they have to to survive. And that is not a good place
  85. 08:25to be in. And lastly, if you observe society, you will see that plain tactic
  86. 08:30level thinking is very disastrous. And that leads into section number two, which is that the average person lives

  87. The average person lives in a mindless cycle of struggles they can't escape

  88. 08:36in a mindless cycle of struggles they can't escape. So, thank goodness you aren't actually on a battlefield because
  89. 08:43you'd probably be dead. Most people commit highly predictable strategic mistakes that if they were in a truly
  90. 08:49violent setting, they would lose and winners would be studying what they did so that they could do the exact
  91. 08:54opposite. Getting married too early or late, not developing mastery in anything, trusting that AI can do
  92. 09:01everything for you. And I'm saying this as someone who is not anti-AII completely because everything is a
  93. 09:06religion nowadays and we don't have to treat anti- AI or the flavor of the day drama that's going on that's been
  94. 09:12happening every 3 months. It's just a different thing that people get obsessed with and cry about and play victim with
  95. 09:20and virtue signal on social media. You don't have to engage in that and you can see the signs of lower levels of
  96. 09:25thinking in those people and you can avoid them. Again, we're going to talk about that in the next video. But other
  97. 09:30examples, chasing money over meaning, irresponsibly going into debt, staying in a bad relationship, not investing in
  98. 09:36education, climbing a corporate ladder that leads to nowhere, the list just goes on. The average person does not try
  99. 09:43to solve their problems or their struggles. They get stuck in a routine where they live the same day over and
  100. 09:49over again because that's what the conditioning process led to in their lives. When they were born, their
  101. 09:55parents and teachers injected values and beliefs into their head that put them on the default path heading toward the goal
  102. 10:01that society wanted for them, which is go to school, get a job, retire at 65, the industrial paradigm. And most people
  103. 10:07never question that. And by the time they turn 20, it had become so conditioned in their mind that it's just
  104. 10:13habitual. It's just unconscious. It's just what they do. it doesn't cross their minds to snap out of it, engage in
  105. 10:18strategic thinking and change the direction of their life so that they can eventually reach a more advantageous
  106. 10:25position where their problems aren't so painful. They still have problems. Everyone still has problems, but they're
  107. 10:31of a lesser magnitude. They're more fun and creative problems to solve. You start to see life as a puzzle rather
  108. 10:37than a death sentence. So, what I'm saying is that everyone has a strategy, but for most people, it's not one that
  109. 10:44they created. it's one that they were assigned. Their strategy is again, go to school, get a job, retire at 65, be a
  110. 10:50good student, make a a decent amount of money, even though it's not that much. Be humble. Don't stick your nose out.
  111. 10:56Your dreams aren't worth pursuing because they're risky, which doesn't make sense because risk is the only way to get reward. It all just doesn't make
  112. 11:04sense when you actually think about it. Especially going into the new paradigm, which is AI, information, all of that
  113. 11:10stuff. It requires a completely different strategy. Whether or not you agree that culture and society should be
  114. 11:17heading in this direction of AI and information that doesn't mean that it's not happening. People are so mad that oh
  115. 11:22jobs are going to re be replaced even though I don't know if that's going to be the case but that's what people are saying. No matter what it is you need to
  116. 11:29create a new strategy so that you can thrive in the future rather than being
  117. 11:34stuck in the one that you were assigned that was only somewhat beneficial to the
  118. 11:40old way of life, the American dream. So, how do you actually start to get out of this mindless and honestly meaningless
  119. 11:47way of living? And you may not be completely in it, but this still applies to you to start to create your own
  120. 11:52strategy. Well, you think of it as if you're on an actual battlefield because in many ways you are. You're living
  121. 11:58under this guise of modern comfort and convenience where everything is just easy and you're allowed to just coast
  122. 12:05through life and do the bare minimum in order to survive. But if you were on a battlefield, think of the general. His
  123. 12:11own life was on the line. That forced strategic depth. He had to be strategic
  124. 12:18in order to win or else he would die. You need pressure. You need tactical
  125. 12:23stress. You need to put yourself in a position where you must craft a strategy or you lose or else you're just going to
  126. 12:29lose either way. Move into an apartment you can't afford. Book the plane ticket to somewhere you've never been. Invest
  127. 12:35in the business software, the course, or coaching. even if you think it's a scam because at least your finances will be
  128. 12:40put on the line and you can't live in a shroud of false comfort anymore. So, you get it. You need a strategy and you need
  129. 12:46to develop the skill of strategic thinking because without those every single decision you make in life becomes
  130. 12:51arbitrary. It doesn't matter. It it is quite literally meaningless because it's not aimed in a specific direction. That
  131. 12:57doesn't feel good to think about. That every single thing that you do every single day without a strategy does not
  132. 13:03get you anywhere. I'm being hyperbolic, but that's for a reason to actually get you to take this seriously. And if the
  133. 13:09outcome of your life is the accumulation of the decisions you make, then this is arguably one of the most important

  134. How to build a superior life position

  135. 13:15things you could ever do. That leads to section number three, how to build a superior life position by going so deep
  136. 13:22you see patterns in everything you do. Now, in the book of Five Rings by Miiamoto Mousashi, there are nine
  137. 13:27precepts or principles every strategist should follow. One is don't think dishonestly. Two, training is the way
  138. 13:34itself. Three, get acquainted with every art. Four, know the ways of all professions. Five, understand gain and
  139. 13:41loss in worldly dealings. Six, develop intuitive judgment about everything. Seven, perceive what can't be seen.
  140. 13:48Eight, attend even to small things. Nine, do nothing useless. A strategist
  141. 13:54in Mousashi's mind is someone who goes so deep into one discipline that they discover something universal at the
  142. 14:00bottom of it. You notice patterns that aren't specific to business or relationships or swordsmanship or chess.
  143. 14:06They are constants. And once you see those patterns and notice them across domains, you become far more effective
  144. 14:11within all domains because you are never really starting from scratch. You have an understanding of reality as a whole
  145. 14:16on your side. We'll go into how to uncover these like universal patterns so to say, but the first time I became
  146. 14:22aware of this is when I started in business. Because for most of my life, I
  147. 14:28had been into fitness and in the gym and studying nutrition and all of this stuff just in my free time. And when I started
  148. 14:34building the business and actually seeing some success with it, I'm like, this is progressive overload, right? If
  149. 14:40you know what progressive overload is where it's like slowly increasing the weight over time. You're not trying to jump up in huge leaps and bounds of
  150. 14:47weight. You increase by 2.5 lbs or 5 lbs. And the nutrition you eat has to fuel the recovery to facilitate that.
  151. 14:54and you use that as a metric for how much you're growing. Because if you can focus on that, that is a great proxy for
  152. 15:00muscle growth, for understanding how much muscle you're actually building and whether or not you're building muscle is
  153. 15:05if you're consistently getting stronger over time. So all of the variables have to come together in order to build
  154. 15:11muscle, which is the end result. But in business, making money, the same exact thing happens. You need all of the
  155. 15:17variables to come together. And you're not aiming for a a viral explosion of sales like many of the startups are.
  156. 15:23You're aiming for the slow consistent growth and year after year you look back
  157. 15:28and you're like, "Holy crap, this has been an exponential line." Now, the nine precepts or principles that we went over
  158. 15:35define what this strategist or master strategist looks like on the outside. So, the modern idea of a generalist is
  159. 15:43usually someone who knows a little about a lot. They're a jack of all trades. But what Mousashi is describing here is a
  160. 15:48bit different. There's the generalist, there's the specialist, and then there's the master or the strategist. And this
  161. 15:54also maps quite well to the stages of ego development and spiral dynamics. The strategist stage is quite achievable and
  162. 16:01comes with the following qualities. The first is systems thinking. So, strategists see competing systems and
  163. 16:06perspectives simultaneously while achievers who are the self-helpers or the businessmen operate within a single
  164. 16:12system of success and achievement. They're also comfortable with paradox. So they can hold contradictions like
  165. 16:18being both pro and anti-AII rather than resolving them into clear or false
  166. 16:23answers. They focus on process over outcome, so they care about how things happen and the principles at play, not
  167. 16:30just the results. They're aware of constraints, so they see how their assumptions and frameworks shape what
  168. 16:35they perceive. They have a sense of meta awareness, so strategists can observe their own meaning-making and not just
  169. 16:40deploy expertise or navigate social dynamics. And they have principled flexibility. They have strong values but
  170. 16:46adapt methods fluidly versus rigid rules or social conformity. The most important trait there in my opinion is the ability
  171. 16:53to hold paradox or to hold multiple frameworks or perspectives. What that
  172. 16:58means is not engaging in black and white thinking which is the lowest form of intelligence. And this is one massive
  173. 17:04trap of social media. Every time you log on that's all you see and you react to it and you get addicted to it without
  174. 17:10even knowing it. and you slowly degrade your mental capacity to hold paradox.
  175. 17:16So, as a side note, the solution to that is to become a curator. You need to carefully protect your mind and curate
  176. 17:23your own sources of information and where you're getting information from. This is why we built the reader and idea
  177. 17:29capture inside of Eden. You can save a link to anything like this YouTube video and then open it in a reader so you can
  178. 17:36highlight it and keep your curated information in one place, organized on boards. And for people who are creators
  179. 17:42who actually use social media for research, we have a discover feed which shows you the top performing posts. So
  180. 17:48then you can save those to boards, reverse engineer them, study them, and then use them as inspiration to
  181. 17:53synthesize into your own writing or work or YouTube scripts or newsletters or social posts. So if you want to start
  182. 17:59building your garden for ideas, you can start with Eden, the idea capture portion, and reading is free via the
  183. 18:05link in the description. Strategists see their own constructions as choices. their identity, their values, their
  184. 18:12worldview. The master or strategist receives the benefits of both the generalist and the specialist. Both the
  185. 18:18ability to be good at many things so they don't narrow their mind to one area of study limiting their potential and
  186. 18:23the ability to excel significantly at one thing so they can get outsized results, preferably in a meaningful
  187. 18:29domain. So that is our goal to become someone who can embody these precepts or
  188. 18:34principles of the strategist. And closer to the end, I'll actually give you a shortcut or as close to a shortcut as
  189. 18:41you can get to just studying these universal principles directly so that you can notice them in your life. And
  190. 18:47for this section, I think the most actionable point is the ninth precept, which is to do nothing useless. Make
  191. 18:55that your operating principle for the next year and you will do incredible things. If you were to simply audit your
  192. 19:01thoughts and behavior for usefulness, you would rapidly turn your life around. As I said, scrolling on social media,
  193. 19:07getting sucked into the dogmatic black and white thinking is useless. The mindless way of life is a useless way of
  194. 19:14life. So the questions now are what do you actually master? What is your form of training? How do you begin to
  195. 19:20understand gain and loss? How do you begin to embody the principles of a master strategist? And most importantly,
  196. 19:25in my eyes, how do you do something useful? That leads to section four, which is how to think so strategically
  197. 19:32you finally take back control of your life. So thankfully we can study what makes a good strategy or what strategic
  198. 19:39thinking looks like and then we can reverse engineer it. Take the principles and start to apply them to our life. And
  199. 19:45these principles have been refined and iterated on over centuries of military and war and sports and business. You
  200. 19:51have a massive amount of historical wins and losses that you can look at. And the beautiful thing is that all of these
  201. 19:58apply to your own personal life and success. I've personally compiled seven of them here. So if you sit down and
  202. 20:04actually do this and follow through with this, your life will change. That doesn't mean that your strategy is going
  203. 20:10to be a winning strategy. You can still lose, but it sure helps you in not being trampled over by your opponent, which is

  204. Principle 1 - Vision

  205. 20:16often yourself. So principle one of strategic thinking is vision. And I love this quote from the account orange book
  206. 20:23on X. No one ever suddenly gets lucky. If the stars suddenly align for you, you
  207. 20:28actually align them consciously or not by choosing where to live, who to learn from, who to marry, who to befriend,
  208. 20:34what lifestyle to maintain, what risk to take, and what vision to believe in. Now, if you don't have a vision, you're
  209. 20:41lost. You do not have intention behind your actions because you don't know what your actions are leading to. You're
  210. 20:47holding 10 darts in your hand and those represent the 10 bold decisions that will determine the outcome of your life.
  211. 20:53But you don't even have a dart board to aim at. In other words, you don't even have a chance to hit the board. You
  212. 20:58don't know where the board is. But of course, there is a benefit to actually being lost. I'm not saying that you
  213. 21:04should never feel lost in your life because when you're lost, you have a decision to make. You either let entropy
  214. 21:10drag you into oblivion, which is that your life gets slowly worse and worse over time without you really noticing it
  215. 21:16until it's so bad. It's like your room getting messy. You don't clean your room one day and then shirts appear over here
  216. 21:22and then you don't clean it the next and you start to notice dust is gathering and eventually day after day it becomes
  217. 21:27a pig's thigh and it's normal to you. That's the dangerous part is that it doesn't just rapidly get dirty. It
  218. 21:34happens slowly over time in this way where you don't even notice it. And then it's so much harder to get out. And
  219. 21:40that's what's happening when you feel lost. You have to make the decision to figure it out. Experiment with new
  220. 21:46things until you find that one thing that's worth going all in on. The void is where success is born. Now, a vision
  221. 21:53is the ultimate outcome that you're aiming for in life. It is not a vague wish. It must be as specific as it can
  222. 21:59possibly be. It must be compelling enough to motivate and guide every action because until you're clear about
  223. 22:04what you want, you can't have a strategy at all. Once you are clear, you can reverse engineer every step and iterate
  224. 22:10as you go. So, if you want to become someone who is emotionally resilient or deeply self-aware and financially
  225. 22:16independent by 35, that's very specific. That allows you to evaluate every daily decision against it. Scrolling social
  226. 22:22media for 2 hours probably doesn't move you toward that. And without vision, you wouldn't even register that as a problem
  227. 22:28in your life. As another example, if you want to build a 50,000 follower audience or newsletter in the personal
  228. 22:34development space that generates enough revenue to quit your job in 18 months, again, that is very specific. That is
  229. 22:40doable. You can actively see whether or not your actions are leading toward that. And then you can course correct
  230. 22:45when they're not. where you can educate so that you know what to do and you know what tactics to apply and you know
  231. 22:51whether or not the tactics apply to you so you don't get sucked down the distraction rabbit hole on social media
  232. 22:57of people trying to tell you their business model is better. Every piece of content that you write, every platform choice and where you choose to grow on
  233. 23:03social media, every monetization decision can be evaluated against the intent. And now since everyone's talking
  234. 23:09about building a personal brand these days and I'm with them, I do think it is the future in many ways, especially as a
  235. 23:15value creator, not necessarily an influencer that contributes to brain rot and ruining people's minds, but someone
  236. 23:20who explores their curiosity and shares what they learn and provides some form of value. I do believe that that is a
  237. 23:26very good path to go down for people that want to go down it. Now, I actually created something pretty cool. The link is in the description, but all you do is
  238. 23:33you fill out five questions, and this is completely free. I built it kind of just for fun, but you fill out five questions
  239. 23:39and then it researches what's working in the market. And then at the end, it spits out a personal brand strategy for
  240. 23:45you that you resonate with and it builds a board inside of Eden with a swipe file of posts that you can use as inspiration
  241. 23:51to create your first post because they're based on what works and what's performing in the market. So, it's
  242. 23:56pretty cool. Try it out. And if you're listening to the Spotify version of this video, just go to eden.so/brand-strategy.
  243. 24:05Now the thing here is that vision is very difficult to create just by thinking about it or imagining it. It's
  244. 24:12very difficult to think about what you want and actually know whether or not that's what you want. So instead it's
  245. 24:17easier to start with inverting it, right? An anti- vision or creating a post-mortem for your life. And a
  246. 24:24postmortem is essentially writing out every single thing that went wrong so that you can avoid it. So that's step
  247. 24:29one. That's what I want you to do. I want you to stop, take out your notes, take out a piece of paper, and just quickly write this down and you can
  248. 24:36iterate it and add to it over time. First, write your anti-vision. Just one paragraph. Think of exactly what you
  249. 24:42don't want the outcome of your life to be. The second thing is a post-mortem. So, reverse engineer why that
  250. 24:47anti-vision would have happened in the first place and what mistakes were made and how to avoid them. And from there,
  251. 24:53it's much easier now to think about what your starting vision could be, your MVV
  252. 24:59or your minimum viable vision because it does evolve over time as situations change. So you just need one paragraph,
  253. 25:05one idea of what your vision is right now so that you have something to improve because you can't improve what

  254. Principle 2 - Research

  255. 25:12doesn't exist. So principle number two is research. And we'll start with a quote from Devin Ericson. worry less
  256. 25:19about which career skills AI will take over and more about whether you are training to be and training your kids to
  257. 25:25be high agency perceptive self-motivated people who can navigate an unknowable future with an adaptable mind. So in a
  258. 25:33war a general sends out spies, studies the terrain and learns the enemy's habits and tendencies because you need
  259. 25:38intel before you act. The question is when was the last time you studied yourself? When was the last time you
  260. 25:45audited your habits and what kind of life they were compounding into? When was the last time you paid attention to
  261. 25:50how your mind reacts to silly little things that end up clogging your headsp space for hours on end, removing you
  262. 25:56from your path? Most people have zero intel on how to start a business, how to build a career, what healthy
  263. 26:02relationships look like, how to stay lean and healthy, or what the mastery process looks like. they get a little
  264. 26:08spurt of motivation like for a New Year's resolution, go about it blindly and obviously fail because they didn't
  265. 26:13engage in research and self-education. That's not a habit for them. So before you begin improving your life with
  266. 26:19something like a spirituality practice or anything else, you want to study multiple traditions, read the research
  267. 26:25on different techniques, talk to people who've done it for years, follow a range of social accounts in that domain, and
  268. 26:31understand your own psychological patterns and what tends to trigger you. You don't just grab the first meditation
  269. 26:36app that shows up on an Instagram ad or the first tactic that someone tells you for clearing your mind and being happy
  270. 26:42all the time that you saw as a tweet or a YouTube video. The same thing goes for social media. If you're treating this as
  271. 26:49something that you actually want to do well at, you need a strategy. You need to study what other people in the market
  272. 26:55are doing. You need to understand what works and you need to let that inform your strategy. You need to use a
  273. 27:01research tool like Eden or the other ones and scroll the discover feed and see what's working and scroll social
  274. 27:07media and save posts so that you have them ready when it's time to write. You curate lists of creators and you study
  275. 27:14them. You don't just blindly scroll social media. And once you have enough research, you begin to strategize how
  276. 27:20can you wedge yourself into the market by doing what works, but by doing also what is unique. This is the downfall of
  277. 27:26starving artists because all they want to do is practice their little art, but they're they won't merge it with
  278. 27:32business. They won't integrate the two. They think that by simply going about it in a business way just strips all the
  279. 27:38humanity and soul from it when that's not anywhere close to the case. You're just not thinking. Again, you're
  280. 27:43thinking in black and white. You're letting other people's beliefs and polarizing opinions infect your mind and
  281. 27:49you're not questioning them. You're not coming up with your own opinion on the matter. Because obviously if your goal
  282. 27:54is to actually see success and then you go and do something completely different because your beliefs are tainted, then
  283. 28:01that's not ideal. So if you just want to write as art, then go ahead and do it.
  284. 28:07But don't expect anyone to give you your attention just because you spent a lot of time writing because time does not
  285. 28:13equate to value. It is okay. It is perfectly okay to treat writing or art as a hobby. But if you're trying to do
  286. 28:19this as a form of meaningful work, then it is a business. Now, principle number

  287. Principle 3 - Preparation

  288. 28:25three is preparation. And this is where you identify your resources, the resources that you specifically have and
  289. 28:31your gaps. Because you wouldn't just drop into a battlefield without food or logistics or weapons or support. And so
  290. 28:39once you know what resources you have or the ones that you don't, you can start building reserves so that eventually you
  291. 28:46can execute on your strategy. The resources that most people need to look for are money, time, knowledge, skills,
  292. 28:53the location you live, connections, and relationships. All of those things are valid resources. Just because you don't
  293. 28:59have money doesn't mean that you can't create a strategy to say start a business because you can still develop
  294. 29:05skill. You can develop knowledge. And if you're young, you have plenty of time on your hands, right? The ones who are past
  295. 29:12the age of 20, 25, 30, when they're very ingrained in their habits and they have
  296. 29:17bills to pay and all these responsibilities, they don't have much time or money on their hands. So, if you
  297. 29:22lack those resources and they're very difficult to get, what other resources can you go after? Where can you leverage
  298. 29:29yourself? As an example, before attempting some kind of major life change like quitting a job or ending a
  299. 29:34relationship or starting a new project or venture, you'd probably want to build your financial runway. decrease your
  300. 29:40expenses, develop the emotional regulation skills you'll need, and line up support systems. You don't just rush
  301. 29:46into battle. In other words, you need to hedge against risk because every goal comes with risk. And as you go deeper
  302. 29:52and deeper into the hierarchy of goals you're trying to achieve, the risk only gets greater and greater. You may start
  303. 29:58a business as a oneperson business like we talk about with something like an information product or a simple AI
  304. 30:03product, but then what's next? Are you going to build a team? Are you going to expand? Are you going to go into e-commerce? What else are you going to
  305. 30:09do? Or are you going to stick and make it a lifestyle business, which is perfectly valid, but if you want a
  306. 30:14greater return, if you want more money or potentially more freedom or just
  307. 30:19whatever you want in life, what is your vision? Then you're going to have to build the resources so that the risk of
  308. 30:26doing so doesn't absolutely destroy you. So, if you don't have many resources, then it probably wouldn't make sense to
  309. 30:33start crypto trading or start stock trading or day trading because you're just going to lose all your money.
  310. 30:38You're gambling at that point and that's not a strategy. You are much better off starting smaller so that you can acquire
  311. 30:45resources. That is the beginning of your strategy is how do I do something that allows me to get the resources I need to
  312. 30:53do what I eventually want to do. So the way that I went about that is social media. I knew that it was free to
  313. 30:59access. I didn't need any money to start the business. I didn't need any money to create an info product. I didn't need any money to write a book. And then that
  314. 31:06allowed me to acquire the resource of money so that I could invest into a bigger business that I wanted to build
  315. 31:11which is Eden the software business and eventually soon s the neutropic business. So if you have these high and
  316. 31:17mighty dreams of doing something massive right which I think is a very worthwhile thing to do and to think about but it's
  317. 31:23not feasible for you right now. What are you doing about it? Just because you can't start the business you want to
  318. 31:29start now doesn't mean you can't start another form of a business that allows you to start that business. Otherwise,
  319. 31:34you're never going to be able to start the one you want to start. Now, speaking specifically to young people, you have
  320. 31:40so much time on your hands. You are in one of the greatest positions you can possibly be right now at this point in
  321. 31:46your life. And if you have these high and mighty dreams, in my opinion, the best thing you can do is just hedge
  322. 31:51against risk as much as you can so that you can take risk and have nothing to lose. What that means is selling
  323. 31:58everything you own. Living in a depression apartment as Devon calls it, aka an apartment that costs nothing. You
  324. 32:04just have no standard of living for your young years. And you cut all your expenses so that everything you have can
  325. 32:11go into the thing that you're building because you have the resource of time, but you don't have the resource of money. So you need to pull all of your
  326. 32:18reserves in and put it toward generating the resource of money. Now principle number four of strategic thinking is

  327. Principle 4 - Focus

  328. 32:25focus specifically concentration of force. So a quote from Greg Macau from the book essentialism. Is there a point
  329. 32:32at which doing more does not produce more? Is there a point at which doing less but thinking more will actually
  330. 32:38produce better outcomes? So focus or concentration of force is the military principle of focusing all of your
  331. 32:45resources at the decisive point rather than spreading thin. The best example of this is France in 1940 where the French
  332. 32:52had more tanks and troops than the Germans and they had far more raw resources but they distributed their
  333. 32:57armor or tanks evenly across the entire front. So every sector had a few tanks. The Germans took every panzer they had
  334. 33:04and drove them through a single point which the French thought was impassible. So they barely defended it. Focus is
  335. 33:10about where you put what you have. And in life you only have so much of it at any given time. Most people try to
  336. 33:16change their life and place 10% of their attention into diet, sleep, exercise, meditation, relationships, their side
  337. 33:22hustle, and more when they would get better at all of them faster if they focused on the single bottleneck holding
  338. 33:30them back the most. I don't think people understand that enough. That focus does
  339. 33:35not decrease your progress in all areas. It increases them in all areas. By
  340. 33:41focusing on one thing, you increase every other area. And for most people,
  341. 33:46the single bottleneck is money because money buys anything. So if you focused solely on solving your financial
  342. 33:53struggle first, then that frees up more resources to put towards other areas of
  343. 33:58your life like diet, you can afford higher quality food. When you have more money, you're in a less stressful state.
  344. 34:04You can think more creatively. It benefits your creative work and spirituality. And with those three things, a clearer mind and a better diet
  345. 34:11and more energy and potentially more time to go and exercise that benefits your relationships. And the same applies
  346. 34:17to business. On something like social media, there is more to growth than just content. So cross-osting to all
  347. 34:22platforms takes away time you could be spending building connections with people that will help you grow. You'd
  348. 34:27gain more followers by focusing on one platform first, which can then be used as leverage to grow on the other
  349. 34:33platforms faster than you would have in the same amount of time, spreading your force across all platforms. One tangible
  350. 34:39example of that is that I chose Twitter or X as my first platform and I solely focused on that. I built connections on
  351. 34:46that platform and I still know and talk to those connections today. But when I had somewhat of a large following on
  352. 34:52Twitter, when I decided I wanted to deploy my strategy on Instagram and grow
  353. 34:57there, I found people with a large following on Instagram and said, "Hey, I have a large following on X. Do you want
  354. 35:03to help each other grow by sharing each other's content on either platform and that alone allowed me to grow on
  355. 35:10Instagram so much faster than anyone else just starting from scratch?" This is something we teach in week four of

  356. Principle 5 - Execute

  357. 35:16the creator boot camp. Now principle number five of strategic thinking is just execute or execution and from Alex
  358. 35:22Herozi strategy is how you choose to allocate your limited resources against unlimited options. Proper execution of
  359. 35:29strategy is the continuous act of jumping between macro vision and micro daily action ensuring that the decisions
  360. 35:36you make have aim and intention. This is the core of what strategy is. Doing the
  361. 35:41opposite of what 99% of people do because most people do not think outside of their conditioning, assigned goals or
  362. 35:48repetitive routines. But how do you actually execute effectively? This is where everything starts to come
  363. 35:54together. First, you practice holding your vision in the back of your mind. Write it down somewhere and look at it
  364. 36:00every morning. It must become a part of who you are through repeat exposure. Second, take note of what you learned
  365. 36:06from studying your opponents or yourself. Meditate on it. Contemplate it. Let it marinate in your mind so that
  366. 36:12it can start to make connections. Third, identify the primary resource that you can leverage. For young people, it's
  367. 36:18time and freedom most likely. For some, it's capital. For others, it's an internet audience. For more, it's a
  368. 36:23weird set of interests and knowledge. And yes, for many, it's AI, but not from the low-level sense. AI gives high
  369. 36:29agency people the ability to do so much more. It gives low agency people a reason to play victim and complain. But
  370. 36:36the trap for the high agency person is that now they have unlimited options. They can do anything. So concentration
  371. 36:41of force strategic thinking is even more important than ever because you can do anything with AI. But that doesn't mean
  372. 36:47you're going to get anywhere. And fourth, choose your concentration of force play. Where is the single highest
  373. 36:53leverage point? The one that would unlock progress in more than one domain. The thing that makes everything else
  374. 36:59easier. And from there, we have a soft plan, but it needs to be crystal clear. We have to reverse engineer our vision
  375. 37:06down into a hierarchy of goals that allows us to gain perspective and clarity on our daily actions. They can't
  376. 37:12be so far away from each other. You have to see how your daily actions slowly contribute to your vision because in
  377. 37:19many cases, they're not going to directly contribute to it. You're going to take a daily action and you're not going to be able to see how it actually
  378. 37:25is creating your vision. That's why you have to break it down and see the entire system. So, take your vision and then
  379. 37:32work backward to one-year goals, 90-day objectives, weekly priorities, and daily habits. Every step should trace back to
  380. 37:39the intent or vision. If it doesn't, set it aside. That is your sign to take the piece of paper that you took out earlier

  381. Principle 6 - Adapt

  382. 37:45and to write this down with everything else. Now, principle number six is adapt or adaptability. And a quote from Mihi
  383. 37:51Chetmihi, "It is not possible to experience a feeling of control unless one is willing to give up the safety of
  384. 37:58protective routines. Only when a doubtful outcome is at stake and one is able to influence that outcome can a
  385. 38:03person really know whether she is in control." What that means is that a rigid strategy or routine is a losing
  386. 38:10strategy or routine. Especially in today's world where the rate of change is extreme, right? During the industrial
  387. 38:15age and up until now, not too much change. That's why it's so deeply ingrained to go to school, get a job,
  388. 38:21retire at 65 because the societal system was built up according to that paradigm with the goal. But now with AI and
  389. 38:28disruption and all of this stuff, everything is changing every 3 to 6 months. And the rate of change will only
  390. 38:34increase and it's going to filter out so many people who get stuck with a rigid strategy and aren't able to adapt. So,
  391. 38:40in my eyes, the future belongs to the true strategist at this higher level of thinking that we'll dive into more in
  392. 38:46the next video because masters can adapt on the fly because they have the universal principles that they can apply
  393. 38:52to all domains. They don't necessarily need to relearn everything. They don't need to upskill or reskill or re-educate
  394. 38:59because they can do that extremely fast on their own. So your job is to respond to what's actually happening then and
  395. 39:05there on the battlefield, not your mental fabrications of worst case scenarios or your fantasies that are not
  396. 39:11yet real. So if you committed to a morning routine as an example, but your job schedule changed, you don't just
  397. 39:17abandon the routine. That's what most people do. Don't do what most people do. The vision and intent of your strategy
  398. 39:24doesn't change, which is becoming, let's say, more disciplined and grounded. That's why you created a morning routine. But the tactics do. If a
  399. 39:32particular meditation or business strategy stops working after six months, then you need to change. You need to
  400. 39:37experiment and try something new. You need to be in the constant state of experimentation. And that's just the
  401. 39:42principle that systems fall apart over time. You should expect that. Think of the notion system that you built out 6
  402. 39:48months ago and don't use now or the clawed skill you downloaded and don't use anymore. You have to be skilled
  403. 39:53enough to know when something isn't working. The same is true with social media. I have people come to me all the
  404. 39:58time and it's like, "Dan, I posted this and it was supposed to work according to all of these things that I learned, but it didn't work. What do I do?" You
  405. 40:04adapt. You experiment. You keep trying. This isn't a job. You don't just study and train a repeatable set of tasks. You
  406. 40:11have to have the entrepreneurial mind, the creative mind. You have to be in this constant state of taking in what's
  407. 40:17going on and interpreting it and then outputting it and then slowly getting better at that entire process over time.
  408. 40:23Now, the way you actually practice this is review, reflection, and prediction. You need to schedule this weekly. You
  409. 40:29need to review your week, see if you're on track, reflect on your progress, and predict where you're heading. And this
  410. 40:35doesn't need to be in any fancy template or thing that you download. This is like just keep a piece of paper by your
  411. 40:41computer. I have this little tiny notebook where I just jot things down because I understand that if I try to
  412. 40:48keep up with a note-taking system, I don't keep up with it. That's not how your mind works. It kind of has to be
  413. 40:53messy. You have to embrace just putting an idea down and letting it get lost. And if it's important, you will remember
  414. 40:59it. That's the library feature of Eden. You just drop ideas in and we auto tag, autocategorize everything for you. But
  415. 41:05you don't even need that. You can use Apple notes, you can use the notebook, you can use anything. Just get in the

  416. Principle 7 - Study of Principles

  417. 41:10habit of writing things down. Now, the final principle number seven, the principle of all principles of strategic
  418. 41:16thinking is the study of principles. Now with this section, I encourage you to
  419. 41:22adopt the belief that everything is a skill. Everything is a field of study
  420. 41:27that you can stack experience in and get better at. Money, mindset, beliefs,
  421. 41:32relationships, business, social media. Everything that you think is luck is not luck. It's skill. It's only luck because
  422. 41:39you're gambling and you don't have strategy. And strategy itself is a field of study with principles that hold
  423. 41:45across domains. The more you study strategy and its principles, the better you become at applying them to your own
  424. 41:51life situation. It is a lifelong ongoing practice. So read Sunzu, read about
  425. 41:56cognitive biases, study how habits form, learn the principles of negotiation, study why content goes viral, study how
  426. 42:02attention economics works. You don't just copy what other creators do. You study the principles so you can come up
  427. 42:08with your own moves. That is essentially what originality is because nothing is original. Nothing is authentic. It
  428. 42:14honestly peeves me when people like people get in little arguments on social media of like, "Oh, you copied my idea
  429. 42:20and you copied my idea." But you're just looking through the lens of specificity, right? Did they copy your niche? You
  430. 42:26guys write about the same topics. Did they copy how you walk? You guys both walk. You're both human. You both speak the English language. Did you come up
  431. 42:33with that all on your own? Did you come up with any of the words that you speak on a daily basis? Did you create the
  432. 42:40clothes that you wear? Have you actually audited the beliefs in your head? How original and authentic are you actually?
  433. 42:46Why do you treat this as some form of high value that you can stand on to virtue signal to other people when you'd get much better results in life when you
  434. 42:52actually leaned in to what nature and authenticity is? Now, I'm not saying that plagiarism is good by any means,
  435. 42:58but I am saying that people take it way too seriously and that people are allowed to have similar ideas. They're
  436. 43:05allowed to post similar ideas under their brand because they resonate with it. But yeah, if it's a direct rip, then
  437. 43:10yeah, credit the person. But if it's just an inspired idea, welcome to how the world works. Now, beyond that, I
  438. 43:17believe that the best way to study true principles is to study reality itself
  439. 43:22because strategy is the application of reality's principles to human goals. So, I want to leave you with many different
  440. 43:30things that you can go down a rabbit hole afterwards, right? I'm going to give you a long list and I want you to pick one and I want you to go and read
  441. 43:36that thing or buy the book or whatever it is, just read it. And I'll break these up into categories. The first
  442. 43:42category is just formal systems. The first is cybernetics. The study of feedback loops, control, and self-regulation in any system,
  443. 43:49mechanical, biological, or social. So go down a rabbit hole with AI or Google about cybernetics. Systems theory, which
  444. 43:55is the study of holes, interconnections, stocks, and flows, emergence, and leverage points. Go and buy a book on
  445. 44:01systems thinking. Third is thermodynamics, especially the second law. Because entropy always increases.
  446. 44:06Every ordered system requires energy input to resist decay. Your habits and routines will fall apart otherwise. Aka
  447. 44:13clean your room. I'd recommend the book Flow by Mihi Chetmihi for that one. Even though it's not about thermodynamics,
  448. 44:19it's a good read though. Now, in the category of philosophical traditions, study taoism, which is the Tao or Dao. I
  449. 44:25always forget which one it is as the ineffable underlying principle of reality. It's woe, which is action in
  450. 44:31accordance with nature, not forced action. yin-yang, complimentary opposites, and cultivation of effortless
  451. 44:36mastery. And then there's perennial philosophy, which is the claim that all major wisdom traditions share a common
  452. 44:42metaphysical core. There's an ultimate reality. The human self can participate in it, and the purpose of life is to
  453. 44:48realize this. This is like the antithesis of black and white dogmatic thinking. The next category is integrative metaprameworks. The first is
  454. 44:55integral theory by Ken Wilbur, which maps reality across quadrants, levels of development, states of consciousness,
  455. 45:00and types. And then there's spiral dynamics which is a model of value systems development through tears. It
  456. 45:06models how humans construct meaning at different stages which for a strategist is studying reality because it's
  457. 45:12constructed by the observer. The next category is the esoteric or symbolic. So hermetic principles or the cabalon the
  458. 45:18book mentalism correspondence vibration polarity rhythm cause and effect and gender. A compact set of lens that have
  459. 45:24influenced a lot of new thought traditions. This is where as above so below comes from. And then there's also
  460. 45:30yian alchemy. So the psychological and spiritual process of transformation. It's a framework for how deep change
  461. 45:36actually works in a person or system. And then the last category is the strategic or mathematical. So game
  462. 45:41theory, the mathematical study of strategic interaction, zero sum versus positive sum games, the prisoners
  463. 45:47dilemma, Nash equilibrium, and then there's evolutionary theory. So selection, adaptation, fitness
  464. 45:53landscapes, variation, and retention. And all of these are just lenses that point at how a different facet of
  465. 45:58reality works. If you were to simply study these domains or those things for the next year, your understanding of
  466. 46:05almost every skill or discipline or domain or area of learning would rise with it. You will naturally be better at
  467. 46:12everything you do in life. So, I hope all of that was helpful on strategic thinking. Again, if you want a garden
  468. 46:18for ideas, a place to curate your knowledge, to save ideas, to save social posts quickly on mobile, to research top
  469. 46:24performing content if you're a creator or writer, and to just have a place where you can dump ideas without worrying about the organization while
  470. 46:31being able to find them later. This is essentially what I do for videos like these is I read a lot of stuff. I save a
  471. 46:37lot of stuff. I highlight a lot of stuff. And then when I choose a topic, I just ask the AI chat to look through my
  472. 46:42library and it can find novel relations and connections between all of the ideas I've saved and give me potential ideas
  473. 46:49that I can include in videos like these. The quotes that I used throughout each
  474. 46:55section was actually done via that process. So, I'll leave it at that. Thank you for watching. Again, I hope
  475. 47:00you enjoyed the video. Like and subscribe while you're still here. It's just a simple button click that most people forget to do. So, if you could do
  476. 47:07that, I'd appreciate it. And I'll see you in the next video.
The Art of Strategic Thinking (How to Become Wildly Successful at Anything You Do) — Transcriptly