Fighting vs Winning

A short idea: There's a fundamental difference between learning how to fight and learning how to win.

or, also: a difference in fighting and winning as they're performed / executed.

As a metaphor: if you wanted to be a sword fighter for the movies you might focus on how to block the other sword in a flashy way, you'd learn choreography and the point is that the swords with clash and clang as often and long as possible for spectacle - you're playing the role of sword fighting. Real sword fights were never very long. Samurais and pirates and so on mostly just stabbed at each other for a second or two until someone fell over with steel through their gut. They'd be super quick and relatively boring to watch. There'd be two men and then one man. Even fencing, the sport of trying to win by blocking and parrying swords is very codified into what you can and can't do. If you wanted to win against a professional fencer you could just use a gun, or step off the narrow mat by which they define the rule-allowable court and walk around them or whatever. They're trapped by their rules for fighting and you don't need to fight at all in order to win.

The parallels to life and problem solving its problems should be obvious: you rarely need to be a good sword fighter to win against sword fighters.

There's a lot of smart people who spend a lot of time, energy and money to becoming a good sword fighter because they think that'll help them succeed, and often the training results in a battle where they lose a hand anyway, or the other people win against them with a gun. "well that's not fair!"

There are very few true engagement rules, you certainly don't have to follow what's expected.

In fact, if you fight within the rules, you'll almost always lose. So don't fight at all. Win.