Hmmm…I respectfully disagree. Neither tactics nor strategy will lift you out of the self-generated rat-race of competition. There will always be 99% left - you'll never run out of people you have to beat. The answer is evolving, from the competitive mindset to the creative one. When you finally let go of comparison and competition as motivators, you become a powerhouse of sovereignty with unlimited creative capacity.
I don’t think this is what he meant. Being better than others is an innate desire and he uses it to keep attention and drive his point home. It’s not about beating anyone but yourself, as Dan says, and by doing that, you actually start living better than 99% of people. But it can’t happen without a long-term strategy.
If that's not what he means, he should say it. What i mean is that as long as you remain a slave to that innate desire to compare yourself to others and be "better" than them, you'll never be more than a better slave. If the point of this article is to focus exclusively on beating yourself, then he lost the plot because thats not what this piece is about. There's a whole world of work that has to come before strategy, otherwise you end up building a strategy that serves your illusions instead of your genius.
I believe this is the future of entrepreneurship in general - we have to get past making stats matter. If the goal is happiness and creative satisfaction, then stop using an irrelevant conventional "bro"-style yardstick to measure how you're doing...
Ah, a voice of reason. That is the true source of wealth: a life of curiosity, contribution and creativity. Striving to be the 1% will actually cannibalise those attributes. Better to be aware of this at the start before you embark on a long journey, get to the end and realise you were driven by the wrong things the whole time.
I don't think so , either I'm a bad reader or you took that on the 1rst degree. Competition & opponents was just mentionned to put on the table the reality of the business word & inner conquest or self mastery.
I agree that you have not to be drive by the competitive mindset , but only in real life thinks such as : personal achivements , wealth .... and so on . However when it comes to business you have to , because the only way to take the place of the1rst is to beat him.
"the only way to take the place of first is to best him". If this is your mindset, then do like that. I don't believe it can lead to ultimate success because there's always someone else to "best". You're giving your power away to a measurement that's fundamentally an illusion. Decide if you're invested in yourself or in comparing to another - you can't do both at once.
That depends on your timeline and your definition of success…I would argue that bringing forth an expression of your highest potential is more important to your ultimate feeling of life satisfaction than winning at the money game - beyond providing for your needs, of course. The market will follow real innovation, which is not just making a better widget than the other guy.
Thanks for the point out. Larry, could you please put some words for me? I'm about to start my app business creation to build my freedom and to retire my mum, although I'm still learning Flutter ( a programming language).
If the problems generated on Platform A cannot be solved, they cannot be easily solved when you are on Platform B either.
On the contrary, you can notice that someone who does well on one platform can very easily do well on other platforms, while people who get stuck on one platform will keep looking for other solutions.
Yes, that’s why I’m always so baffled when people focus on acquiring platform-specific knowledge only, then complain when that platform tanks or algorithm changes. I’ve been through enough platforms to know that’s inevitable.
Hey Maya, thank you for replying to me. 💯 aligned. People keep pursuing platforms, which is really just the “how.” Instead, I think the real question we should be asking is: “Why is someone doing this?” In my opinion, some fundamental skills are highly transferable across almost any social media platform. The platform may change, but the underlying principles don’t.
What fascinates me about Miyamoto Musashi's Art of Strategy is that even though he's quite prescriptive (he defines the five "Ways" as the Way of Farming, the Way of Business, the Way of the Warrior, the Way of Technical Skill and the Way of Strategy), he also cautions that you must fall in love with the Way you choose with your heart - otherwise, it's not your Way. I love this so much.
Here it is in his own words from The Book of 5 Rings (David Groff translation):
In all Ways and in every instance, there are thoughts that "deviate from the Way", as they are called. Even if you can say that you are striving hard every day on a particular Way, if your heart strays from it, though you may think it is a good path, when viewed objectively it is not the true Way. (from the "Ground" scroll).
The way I connect this to your essay, Dan, is that it is more valuable to follow one Way (let's say that of Business) and get so obsessed with that Way that you really learn the strategy principles that drive it. Even though Musashi did see value in what you say: "get acquainted with every art" and "know the Way of all professions", I don't think he advocates such breadth. In the book he shows how one can master the principles through any ONE Way, as long as you're committed in their heart to that Way and stick with it to achieve the depth of understanding that you talk about in your essay.
With all due respect, I was disappointed by “it's not the internet marketers fault you can’t control your own mind.” What many marketers do to people’s minds and emotional states would be considered barbaric if done to another human beings body.
I hear your point, but I don’t think it’s fair to assume most are sophisticated enough in advertising to spot manipulation.
I predict the same people who succeeded on “if you can’t beat em, join em,” will also be the ones reaping what they sow, in the end. @DAN KOE
This is the new and improved form of marketing apparently. Negging desperate people looking for help into thinking they need to pay for an AI subscription forever in order to ever have security in their life ever again. I honestly do not know how marketers live with themselves. It's the most spiritually debased and nihilistic occupation anyone could possibly have outside of the military.
💯 and I guess cognitive dissonance.. They've convinced themselves they know best and their tactics are ethically persuading people to better their lives.
I just went on a whole fucking rant about how inherently hypocritical this post is, but I hid it because I don't want pro AI chuds harassing me. Probably should just delete it but it felt really good to get off my chest. I agree the cognitive dissonance it must require to post shit like this is breathtaking though. Citing the work of genuinely enlightened humans like the Tao which means an enormous amount to me in the service of selling yet another fucking AI is deeply offensive to me in a way that words cannot fully express. Humanity is honestly going backwards as a species, what a joke.
I feel you!!!!!! And rants are good purges. I love that you're expressing how you really feel too, it's needed. The Tao, is remarkable.. and what I saw when reading humanity is going backwards, the image of a seed growing its roots down before coming back up into the light. We'll get there. You are proof. Thank youuuuuu 💫
But don’t you think us taking control over our minds will allow us to decide what we really need vs falling for everything? I don’t think I want to be immune to all kinds of advertising because I find good marketing is a lot about getting me out of my own way. But if I have a strategy and think for myself, I can notice which ads make me feel FOMO and which make me feel genuinely curious and excited to try it: I don’t think this requires marketing know-how to recognize.
Thank you for saying this @Maya Say truly. I know exactly what you mean, and I do agree with you with one caveat..
I love sales and marketing without manipulation. Sometimes the right message lands at the right moment and helps you do the thing you already wanted to do. That's real, and it's one of the good parts of this work.
But I've closed behind the scenes for ten years, and I'm watching advice like this destroy an industry I love.
Here's the problem and why I made the comment.. Sometimes doubt is fear. But doubt can also be discernment, and you can't always tell which one it is from the outside. That makes the person selling to you the last one who should be deciding for you. A therapist can't date their client. A doctor can't be paid for picking one drug over another. Not because those people are bad, but because we know what happens when someone gets to define your need and also gets paid for the answer. Sales has never had a rule like that.
And that's why I have a problem with presenting it as the buyers problem. It’s not the patients problem in other industries.
And I think there's a better way, not just a kinder one. In my experience more people buy that way, not fewer, and they stay. And again, I say that having been on and reviewed the actual calls for tens of thousands of hours.
Getting out of your own way is a beautiful thing. Being sold the getting out of your own way, by the person who decides you're in it, is something else.
hey Dan, isn't it inevitable that over 90% of society won't be able to achieve material success or whatever their definition of success is? after all, human civilization was built upon a rigid social pyramid of economic and social inequality. it's impossible for the majority to achieve material success. the systematic inequality exists for a reason and likely won't change in the near future.
I think the people selling “online success” have their days numbered. More of us are starting to see the game without the rose-coloured glasses of longing and chasing the carrot.
What is success anyway?
After 7 years in the online jungle and burning out badly, I can say this with some authority:
Success is not what they are selling.
Success is living a life worth living.
Constantly chasing numbers, engagement, growth, productivity and the next goal is not freedom. It becomes just another hamster wheel.
And there is something deeply shitty about successful entrepreneurs getting richer from other people’s hopes while knowing that most will never achieve the dream being sold to them and then making them feel they simply didn’t work, believe or execute hard enough.
Planning makes you fail. The moment you try to take actionable steps to complete a goal, those actionable steps become the goal. A very huge huddle to get over, this is why a lot of people find it difficult to. Tactics give you an illusion of a sense of control over your fears. Those same tactics are then become the conditions necessary for you your fears to come true. Really great read. I’ve been thinking about this concept for weeks and didn’t have a coherent view but things are changed now.
All these pretty words with the end goal of simply trying to sell a slightly different plagiarism robot to the masses than the bigger ones everyone already knows. Now with even more sophisticated plagiarism features than the big guys! Can I agree with you on almost everything you have written here and still be disgusted with the reason you are writing it? As a systems thinker myself, the disingenuous nature of all of this is really depressing to behold. How can you simultaneously claim to be a champion of the human spirit and so aggressively promote the use of the only technology ever invented specifically to diminish and permanently destroy it? Can you not feel the contradiction in your very soul? I feel genuinely sick even typing a prompt into these things. This isn't something you can merely have a difference of opinion on, you are either pro humanity or you aren't. We all know where the sociopathic billionaires behind this tech fall on that spectrum, these things only exist because they intend to use them to further enslave us all. Watching you twist genuinely useful psychological information and esoteric wisdom towards this perverse end goal is utterly baffling to me. I cannot wait for this mass delusion of AI to collapse in on itself. I have been feeling lost and unsure about what to do with the rest of my life for a while now so I must thank you in a way. After reading this, my new life's purpose is to do everything in my power to ensure you self deluded silicon valley types do not succeed in destroying whatever is still left of what was once a a messy and vibrant human culture under a mountain of AI generated bullshit such as this post.
This newsletter opened my mind and made me see exactly where I am, where I want to go, and what I need to do to get there. Thank you so much for that, Dan.
One of the best ways I learned to think strategically was when I heard Robert Kiyosaki say that a lot of people say 'I can't afford this' and to start asking 'how can I afford this?'. That reframe applies to so many things. The problem with knowledge acquisition is we often take it at face value and create boundaries that don't need to be there and certainly aren't the true boundaries. The simple question of "how can I" using our mind and also paired with AI unlocks so many levels of critical thinking, and its so fun to do.
This is such an important distinction, especially the emphasis on learning to think strategically rather than simply collecting tactics.
If you’re looking for somewhere to start putting this into practice, my work explores this through daily pattern recognition: examining how you( and humans in general) think and behave, understanding why those patterns formed, and building your interiority from there.
The aim is to bring transformation, expansion, alchemy, and systems thinking out of the abstract and into everyday life.
If that’s the kind of work you’re looking for, I invite you to follow me here or on X: @redPanther444.
I find it fascinating that you haven't yet extrapolated the arrival of AI and its impact on content creation a few years into the future. It has changed the entire game for online content creators and most are not yet aware.
For 3000 years, a piece of writing was evidence of human thought, and the fluency of that writing was a loose proxy for the quality (or at least degree) of thought that went into it. For the most part, good writing meant there was a mind behind the scenes that had done a lot of work.
AI broke writing as proof-of-thought.
Now that anyone with an internet connection can *manufacture* and share fluent content, the "value" of fluency drops to zero. A new signal needs to emerge.
There is a layer beneath strategy that matters even more: diagnosis.
Tactics ask, "What should I do next?"
Strategy asks, "How do I position myself to win?"
Diagnosis asks, "What game am I actually playing, and what is really constraining the outcome?"
Get the diagnosis wrong and even brilliant strategy becomes disciplined effort in the wrong direction.
Perhaps the highest form of strategic thinking is knowing when to stop optimising the game in front of you and question whether it is the right game at all.
Hmmm…I respectfully disagree. Neither tactics nor strategy will lift you out of the self-generated rat-race of competition. There will always be 99% left - you'll never run out of people you have to beat. The answer is evolving, from the competitive mindset to the creative one. When you finally let go of comparison and competition as motivators, you become a powerhouse of sovereignty with unlimited creative capacity.
I don’t think this is what he meant. Being better than others is an innate desire and he uses it to keep attention and drive his point home. It’s not about beating anyone but yourself, as Dan says, and by doing that, you actually start living better than 99% of people. But it can’t happen without a long-term strategy.
If that's not what he means, he should say it. What i mean is that as long as you remain a slave to that innate desire to compare yourself to others and be "better" than them, you'll never be more than a better slave. If the point of this article is to focus exclusively on beating yourself, then he lost the plot because thats not what this piece is about. There's a whole world of work that has to come before strategy, otherwise you end up building a strategy that serves your illusions instead of your genius.
that's such a good perspective
I believe this is the future of entrepreneurship in general - we have to get past making stats matter. If the goal is happiness and creative satisfaction, then stop using an irrelevant conventional "bro"-style yardstick to measure how you're doing...
Thanks for this Tracy. Saved me a bunch of time and rewrites to basically summarise what you've articulated perfectly here
Ah, a voice of reason. That is the true source of wealth: a life of curiosity, contribution and creativity. Striving to be the 1% will actually cannibalise those attributes. Better to be aware of this at the start before you embark on a long journey, get to the end and realise you were driven by the wrong things the whole time.
(I actually just wrote an essay about this balance between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and would love your take if you get a spare moment: https://hereisyourbrain.substack.com/p/three-kinds-of-motivation)
I guess you are right.... Tactics doesn't work if you are thinking about the compititer...
I don't think so , either I'm a bad reader or you took that on the 1rst degree. Competition & opponents was just mentionned to put on the table the reality of the business word & inner conquest or self mastery.
I agree that you have not to be drive by the competitive mindset , but only in real life thinks such as : personal achivements , wealth .... and so on . However when it comes to business you have to , because the only way to take the place of the1rst is to beat him.
"the only way to take the place of first is to best him". If this is your mindset, then do like that. I don't believe it can lead to ultimate success because there's always someone else to "best". You're giving your power away to a measurement that's fundamentally an illusion. Decide if you're invested in yourself or in comparing to another - you can't do both at once.
Not always creative mindset will make success. Need to create right one which market adapts. Creation still needs money as well
That depends on your timeline and your definition of success…I would argue that bringing forth an expression of your highest potential is more important to your ultimate feeling of life satisfaction than winning at the money game - beyond providing for your needs, of course. The market will follow real innovation, which is not just making a better widget than the other guy.
You missed it Dan.
Anybody can learn strategies.
You mastered marketing.
Online economy persuasion.
You did it at the right time.
It’s a hustle factory.
Not a business system.
My first company.
In the 90s.
Was a freedom business.
How?
I hated selling clothing.
Driving door to door.
Why did I succeed.
My destiny was to dare to dream big.
I didn’t care about business.
I wanted to watch cool films.
Drive around Chile.
Spend a month in Poland.
I liked like a local.
Followed my bliss.
Then worked myself out of all the jobs.
We were the smart strategists.
At the top of our market.
That’s when I walked.
You may be surprised at what’s next.
Follow your own dream.
Don’t learn strategies.
Ask yourself one question.
What do you want.
Then go for it.
All dreams come true.
Only for those who take action.
Despite the pain, pressure, and obstacles.
The online economy is getting old.
Don’t think Dan made it.
He is figuring it out.
Despite it having worked.
Years ago.
What you know what to do matters.
I’m not a professional writer.
I’m an expert in freedom businesses.
Don’t be lost in virtual space.
The answers are inside.
All human beings.
Instead of strategy.
Tactics.
Old ideas.
Look there.
Take action
Find your direction.
Thanks for the point out. Larry, could you please put some words for me? I'm about to start my app business creation to build my freedom and to retire my mum, although I'm still learning Flutter ( a programming language).
I will gladly appreciate your tips here.
Merci.
Happy to help. Putting out a guide on Sunday. It’s not easy but trust your vision. Avoid spending money. Invest when it’s right.
I will look forward to it.
If the problems generated on Platform A cannot be solved, they cannot be easily solved when you are on Platform B either.
On the contrary, you can notice that someone who does well on one platform can very easily do well on other platforms, while people who get stuck on one platform will keep looking for other solutions.
Do not spread yourself too thin.
Yes, that’s why I’m always so baffled when people focus on acquiring platform-specific knowledge only, then complain when that platform tanks or algorithm changes. I’ve been through enough platforms to know that’s inevitable.
Hey Maya, thank you for replying to me. 💯 aligned. People keep pursuing platforms, which is really just the “how.” Instead, I think the real question we should be asking is: “Why is someone doing this?” In my opinion, some fundamental skills are highly transferable across almost any social media platform. The platform may change, but the underlying principles don’t.
What fascinates me about Miyamoto Musashi's Art of Strategy is that even though he's quite prescriptive (he defines the five "Ways" as the Way of Farming, the Way of Business, the Way of the Warrior, the Way of Technical Skill and the Way of Strategy), he also cautions that you must fall in love with the Way you choose with your heart - otherwise, it's not your Way. I love this so much.
Here it is in his own words from The Book of 5 Rings (David Groff translation):
In all Ways and in every instance, there are thoughts that "deviate from the Way", as they are called. Even if you can say that you are striving hard every day on a particular Way, if your heart strays from it, though you may think it is a good path, when viewed objectively it is not the true Way. (from the "Ground" scroll).
The way I connect this to your essay, Dan, is that it is more valuable to follow one Way (let's say that of Business) and get so obsessed with that Way that you really learn the strategy principles that drive it. Even though Musashi did see value in what you say: "get acquainted with every art" and "know the Way of all professions", I don't think he advocates such breadth. In the book he shows how one can master the principles through any ONE Way, as long as you're committed in their heart to that Way and stick with it to achieve the depth of understanding that you talk about in your essay.
With all due respect, I was disappointed by “it's not the internet marketers fault you can’t control your own mind.” What many marketers do to people’s minds and emotional states would be considered barbaric if done to another human beings body.
I hear your point, but I don’t think it’s fair to assume most are sophisticated enough in advertising to spot manipulation.
I predict the same people who succeeded on “if you can’t beat em, join em,” will also be the ones reaping what they sow, in the end. @DAN KOE
This is the new and improved form of marketing apparently. Negging desperate people looking for help into thinking they need to pay for an AI subscription forever in order to ever have security in their life ever again. I honestly do not know how marketers live with themselves. It's the most spiritually debased and nihilistic occupation anyone could possibly have outside of the military.
💯 and I guess cognitive dissonance.. They've convinced themselves they know best and their tactics are ethically persuading people to better their lives.
I just went on a whole fucking rant about how inherently hypocritical this post is, but I hid it because I don't want pro AI chuds harassing me. Probably should just delete it but it felt really good to get off my chest. I agree the cognitive dissonance it must require to post shit like this is breathtaking though. Citing the work of genuinely enlightened humans like the Tao which means an enormous amount to me in the service of selling yet another fucking AI is deeply offensive to me in a way that words cannot fully express. Humanity is honestly going backwards as a species, what a joke.
I feel you!!!!!! And rants are good purges. I love that you're expressing how you really feel too, it's needed. The Tao, is remarkable.. and what I saw when reading humanity is going backwards, the image of a seed growing its roots down before coming back up into the light. We'll get there. You are proof. Thank youuuuuu 💫
But don’t you think us taking control over our minds will allow us to decide what we really need vs falling for everything? I don’t think I want to be immune to all kinds of advertising because I find good marketing is a lot about getting me out of my own way. But if I have a strategy and think for myself, I can notice which ads make me feel FOMO and which make me feel genuinely curious and excited to try it: I don’t think this requires marketing know-how to recognize.
Thank you for saying this @Maya Say truly. I know exactly what you mean, and I do agree with you with one caveat..
I love sales and marketing without manipulation. Sometimes the right message lands at the right moment and helps you do the thing you already wanted to do. That's real, and it's one of the good parts of this work.
But I've closed behind the scenes for ten years, and I'm watching advice like this destroy an industry I love.
Here's the problem and why I made the comment.. Sometimes doubt is fear. But doubt can also be discernment, and you can't always tell which one it is from the outside. That makes the person selling to you the last one who should be deciding for you. A therapist can't date their client. A doctor can't be paid for picking one drug over another. Not because those people are bad, but because we know what happens when someone gets to define your need and also gets paid for the answer. Sales has never had a rule like that.
And that's why I have a problem with presenting it as the buyers problem. It’s not the patients problem in other industries.
And I think there's a better way, not just a kinder one. In my experience more people buy that way, not fewer, and they stay. And again, I say that having been on and reviewed the actual calls for tens of thousands of hours.
Getting out of your own way is a beautiful thing. Being sold the getting out of your own way, by the person who decides you're in it, is something else.
hey Dan, isn't it inevitable that over 90% of society won't be able to achieve material success or whatever their definition of success is? after all, human civilization was built upon a rigid social pyramid of economic and social inequality. it's impossible for the majority to achieve material success. the systematic inequality exists for a reason and likely won't change in the near future.
Irrelevant. What life do you wish?
Not with an attitude like that
The best article ive read on substack. Huge insights and value
Love this. There’s a reason why fortune tends to favor the bold.
I think the people selling “online success” have their days numbered. More of us are starting to see the game without the rose-coloured glasses of longing and chasing the carrot.
What is success anyway?
After 7 years in the online jungle and burning out badly, I can say this with some authority:
Success is not what they are selling.
Success is living a life worth living.
Constantly chasing numbers, engagement, growth, productivity and the next goal is not freedom. It becomes just another hamster wheel.
And there is something deeply shitty about successful entrepreneurs getting richer from other people’s hopes while knowing that most will never achieve the dream being sold to them and then making them feel they simply didn’t work, believe or execute hard enough.
Maybe the problem isn’t the person.
Maybe the game itself deserves questioning.
Truth always finds a way out.
Planning makes you fail. The moment you try to take actionable steps to complete a goal, those actionable steps become the goal. A very huge huddle to get over, this is why a lot of people find it difficult to. Tactics give you an illusion of a sense of control over your fears. Those same tactics are then become the conditions necessary for you your fears to come true. Really great read. I’ve been thinking about this concept for weeks and didn’t have a coherent view but things are changed now.
"The moment you try to take actionable steps to complete a goal, those actionable steps become the goal." >>>> never thought of it this way
All these pretty words with the end goal of simply trying to sell a slightly different plagiarism robot to the masses than the bigger ones everyone already knows. Now with even more sophisticated plagiarism features than the big guys! Can I agree with you on almost everything you have written here and still be disgusted with the reason you are writing it? As a systems thinker myself, the disingenuous nature of all of this is really depressing to behold. How can you simultaneously claim to be a champion of the human spirit and so aggressively promote the use of the only technology ever invented specifically to diminish and permanently destroy it? Can you not feel the contradiction in your very soul? I feel genuinely sick even typing a prompt into these things. This isn't something you can merely have a difference of opinion on, you are either pro humanity or you aren't. We all know where the sociopathic billionaires behind this tech fall on that spectrum, these things only exist because they intend to use them to further enslave us all. Watching you twist genuinely useful psychological information and esoteric wisdom towards this perverse end goal is utterly baffling to me. I cannot wait for this mass delusion of AI to collapse in on itself. I have been feeling lost and unsure about what to do with the rest of my life for a while now so I must thank you in a way. After reading this, my new life's purpose is to do everything in my power to ensure you self deluded silicon valley types do not succeed in destroying whatever is still left of what was once a a messy and vibrant human culture under a mountain of AI generated bullshit such as this post.
This newsletter opened my mind and made me see exactly where I am, where I want to go, and what I need to do to get there. Thank you so much for that, Dan.
One of the best ways I learned to think strategically was when I heard Robert Kiyosaki say that a lot of people say 'I can't afford this' and to start asking 'how can I afford this?'. That reframe applies to so many things. The problem with knowledge acquisition is we often take it at face value and create boundaries that don't need to be there and certainly aren't the true boundaries. The simple question of "how can I" using our mind and also paired with AI unlocks so many levels of critical thinking, and its so fun to do.
This is such an important distinction, especially the emphasis on learning to think strategically rather than simply collecting tactics.
If you’re looking for somewhere to start putting this into practice, my work explores this through daily pattern recognition: examining how you( and humans in general) think and behave, understanding why those patterns formed, and building your interiority from there.
The aim is to bring transformation, expansion, alchemy, and systems thinking out of the abstract and into everyday life.
If that’s the kind of work you’re looking for, I invite you to follow me here or on X: @redPanther444.
I find it fascinating that you haven't yet extrapolated the arrival of AI and its impact on content creation a few years into the future. It has changed the entire game for online content creators and most are not yet aware.
For 3000 years, a piece of writing was evidence of human thought, and the fluency of that writing was a loose proxy for the quality (or at least degree) of thought that went into it. For the most part, good writing meant there was a mind behind the scenes that had done a lot of work.
AI broke writing as proof-of-thought.
Now that anyone with an internet connection can *manufacture* and share fluent content, the "value" of fluency drops to zero. A new signal needs to emerge.
(I wrote about this a little more here if curious: https://hereisyourbrain.substack.com/p/ai-generated-content-mind-virus)
There is a layer beneath strategy that matters even more: diagnosis.
Tactics ask, "What should I do next?"
Strategy asks, "How do I position myself to win?"
Diagnosis asks, "What game am I actually playing, and what is really constraining the outcome?"
Get the diagnosis wrong and even brilliant strategy becomes disciplined effort in the wrong direction.
Perhaps the highest form of strategic thinking is knowing when to stop optimising the game in front of you and question whether it is the right game at all.