Thursday, November 13, 2014

Tactical Foresight: Planning And Thinking Ahead

Tactician Practices

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A good tactician generally can see or map out events which are in a possible future.  Much to the chagrin and embarrassment of whom it is used against when the tactician is proven right these events usually have a high probability of occurring when most of the facts of the situation are known.

For instance, in a chess game, master players usually see and calculate a number of moves ahead.  Thus they have an advantage over those that only see the one they are in or perhaps a couple of their next turns. The board is set up in a way that often is able to give a decent prediction of what can happen if one knows the game well enough.

There are those of us that can do the same thing in our lives and often treat every day living as a giant chessboard.  This is not to trivialize how we or others live but give them a working strategy that they can employ with some success on how things are going now and how they can be positioned for a better future.

A number of things can be picked apart in those that play around us. There are many more I am sure that could be given but I will give a few that I think cover the majority of things you ought to understand if you intend to use this type of thinking.

Motive

What is it that the players, opponents, or allies want or need?  What drives them to obtain these things.  How badly do they want or need them?  Do they understand or know these needs or wants?

Capability

What aspects about these people allow them in some way to obtain their needs and wants?  What gifts do they have known or unknown that can be of help to them.  Can they sustain the actions they are involved in?  Do they have the resources to allow them to continue carrying on?

Gain to Risk Factor

In everything there is risk, There is no action in which any of us participate in that there isn't any risk of failure.  The probability of failure however for most of our mundane things we do is very low.  Most large ventures however have a larger risk factor as the gain from it increases.  How much of a risk will these people take will usually show how much gain there is to be gotten.  Are these people gamblers?  How far will they go?  Can they bluff well?  Can they afford to lose?  All of these questions should be looked at in order to pursue a more accurate prediction.

Insight and Cautions

Knowing the people around you will allow you to better make judgements on the different decisions they will be making, thus increasing your awareness of the decisions you will make and perhaps decreasing the risks involved.

I would warn you though in using these techniques and being too vocal you may end up upsetting those around you with the tactical predictions that you make.  I myself made vocal to someone  that I saw as weak and would falter in time in the hopes that they would be able to improve their situation and thus correct their position.  However it only angered them and they detached perhaps faster than they would have I hadn't of said anything at all.  They then fell directly into the pit that I had foreseen through my tactical foresight.  However perhaps if they had been stronger in some respects or valued my judgement a little more without being enslaved by their pride, they could have become something more and shown me how fallible my foresight was.  Once again we look at the aspect of gain to risk.

However in accounting for their lack of strength we were able to safeguard ourselves from any larger risk later on.  For instance we could have given them more power or control only to have it lost or used against us later.  Therefore trust is given to those that not only have a common interest but to those that are tactically in the right perspective and place on the board we are playing on, never forgetting though once again there will always be risk in everything we do.

Some people may find this way of thinking too structured and too ordered for them to pursue.  Calculating every move and every position that you are in can become tedious.  However once a practiced mind starts doing so patterns usually develop in various situations.  These patterns can become shortcuts and allow a less focussed mind to actively pursue different options in order to gain benefit from.  When a more difficult scenario shows itself on the board an accomplished tactician may then wish to go over every small detail in order to gather as much information as they can as to see every movement that would make up the similar pattern that you have seen before.  As everything isn't always the same, just using the pattern could possibly be a huge mistake if the risk you are involved in is great.

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