Fights worth avoiding
The supreme skill is winning without fighting. Most readers miss this.
- Should I confront this person or let it go?
- How do I get what I want without a fight?
- When is walking away the strong move?
Business & Strategy
Talk to The Art of War by Sun Tzu
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
- c. 500 BC
- Classical Chinese
- Public domain
The most misused book in business. It gets quoted by people who have read the first chapter and taken from it that they should be more aggressive, which is close to the opposite of what it says.
Sun Tzu's actual position is that battle is the last resort and evidence of failure. War is ruinously expensive, unpredictable, and to be avoided by anyone who can achieve the objective another way. The book is mostly about the other ways.
Which is why it survives outside the military. Strip out the chariots and the fire attacks and what remains is a manual on knowing your position honestly, understanding the other side better than they understand you, and picking ground where you cannot lose.
Start here
What you can ask it
Knowing your position honestly
Know yourself and know the other side. Most people do neither.
- I keep losing to a competitor and I don't know why.
- How do I assess my actual position, not the one I want to be in?
- What am I likely getting wrong about my rival?
Timing and patience
Long campaigns exhaust the state. He is emphatic about this.
- Should I act now or wait?
- I've been grinding at this for years with no result.
- How do I know when the moment has come?
Position and leverage
Water shapes itself to the ground. So should you.
- I'm negotiating from a weak position. What do I do?
- How do I compete with someone with far more resources?
- How do I choose which battles to pick?
Talk to this book
Message the consciousness of The Art of War
Ask Sun Tzu's The Art of War a question and hear it answer in its own voice — no uploads, no summaries.
- Should I confront this person or let it go?
- I keep losing to a competitor and I don't know why.
- Should I act now or wait?
What The Art of War actually is
The Art of War is a Chinese military treatise in thirteen chapters, traditionally attributed to the general Sun Tzu and probably dating to the Warring States period around the fifth century BC.
It is not a history and not a set of tactics. It is a compressed theory of conflict: on calculation before commitment, deception, terrain, timing, the cost of protracted campaigns, and the use of intelligence.
Its central claim is that the outcome of a conflict is largely determined before it starts, by preparation and position rather than courage. The general who wins has already won when he goes to battle; the one who loses goes to battle hoping to win. Read that as being about a fight, a negotiation, a market or a career, and it does the same work.
In its words
Passages
All warfare is based on deception.
To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows.
Frequently asked
Questions readers ask
More from the library
Business & Strategy
The Prince
Niccolò Machiavelli
Philosophy
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius
Philosophy
Letters from a Stoic
Seneca
Philosophy
The Enchiridion
Epictetus
Talk to this book
Message the consciousness of The Art of War
Ask Sun Tzu's The Art of War a question and hear it answer in its own voice — no uploads, no summaries.
Begin the conversation