Reading people
The Art of Worldly Wisdom
Concealment
The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647 · Baltasar Gracián) — Concealment.
What actually happened?
His own life is the book's footnote. He was a Jesuit priest, and the order forbade its members to publish secular work without permission. He used his brother's name and got the books out one at a time. Warned repeatedly, he did not stop. In 1651 he published the first part of El Criticon anonymously; the order was furious, and in 1658 it stripped him of his post, sent him to a remote town, and forbade him pen and paper. He died that year, aged 58. A man who wrote three hundred maxims about keeping something back was finished by the one thing he could not keep back.
Keep something in reserve
Do not play out all your cards. A capacity everyone has seen is discounted; a capacity nobody has measured still carries weight. Always hold a margin, so that nobody can work out where your limit is. This is not deceit. It is declining to become a quantity that can be fully calculated.
Deliver at a hundred and twenty per cent once and you are measured at a hundred and twenty from that day on, and nobody remembers it was ever extra.
Hide the effort, not the result
The height of skill is to conceal the skill. Visible strain subtracts from the thing achieved. His word for the quality he wants is despejo, an unforced ease. The modern form of the rule: the person who keeps mentioning how hard they worked is assumed to be short of ability.
Two people ship the same feature. The one who explains the weekend they spent on it is quietly marked down for it.
Leave while you are winning
Gamblers and reputations are both ruined on the last hand. What people remember is not your best moment but your final one. He reaches the same conclusion as Fan Li and Zhang Liang, from a completely separate tradition and with no contact between them.
The founder who sells at the peak is called shrewd. The same founder eighteen months later is called unlucky, for the same business.
Everyone has a handle
He says every person has an asa, a handle, and that gripping the right one moves them: vanity for some, fear for others, the wish to be recognised, the wish to avoid trouble. It is the nearest thing in the book to Cialdini, three centuries earlier and considerably colder.
Before asking anyone for anything, work out what the request costs them and which of those four it touches. Most refusals are aimed at the wrong handle.
How do I use it today?
Take the maxim that annoys you most and use that one first: do not spend your whole capacity on a single delivery. The point is not to work less, it is to separate finishing a task from spending your reserve. Keep the top fifth for the occasion that actually decides where you stand.
Deep read
Read alongside
Further
Lines to keep
Leave your luck while winning. All the best players do so.
Things do not pass for what they are but for what they seem.
What is not seen is as if it did not exist.