Knowing both sides

Sunzi wrote: if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, you'll win some and lose some. If you know neither, you're in danger in every battle.

Commerce has quietly rewritten the first clause into "know the competition", and dropped the half about yourself, which is the half Sunzi put first.

Most of the people I meet can describe their market in detail. Ask them which situations make them lose composure and they'll give you a general answer about stress.

That's the version of self-knowledge the oldest military strategist in the world considered the more important one. Not what you're good at. What reliably defeats you, and in what order it happens.

For one person it's being interrupted. For another it's being late. For a third it's a specific tone of voice that resembles someone from twenty years ago. Those aren't weaknesses to be managed; they're predictable defeat conditions.

The work, then, isn't more market analysis. It's a small honest list, written in your own hand: these three situations take me out, and here's what I usually do next.

MOJOWAY's intake asks exactly that. Three topics, two angles, written down before the week gets loud. Naming your defeat conditions is the cheapest form of protection available.