Nietzsche
Fighting monsters, and the bill for it
The method you borrow grows into the person who borrows it
Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 146
Two sentences, and between them a complete occupational hazard notice. The question is how the change actually happens.
What actually happened?
Aphorism 146 of Beyond Good and Evil. He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you. This is not horror-story decoration. The first sentence is about the contagion of method: to beat the thing you take up its methods, and methods grow into the people who use them. The second is the price of attention. Study something long enough and it is shaping you back while you believe you are only observing it.
The method grows into the user
Against an opponent who will do anything, what works is usually the same thing. The first time is an exception, the second is fluency, the third is your style. Adoption is close to irreversible: once a method has worked, it arrives first at the next difficulty.
You smeared them back once and won that round. Two years on it is a standing option in the communications plan.
Whatever you watch for long enough calibrates you
People who study fraud all day begin to assume everybody is running one. People who analyse failures all day stop being able to place a bet. Attention is a loop: choosing what to look at for years is choosing what gets to set your defaults.
Put someone on the competitor full time for six months and he becomes the most competitor-like person in the building. That is why the post gets rotated.
The defence is a line drawn early
He gives the warning and no remedy, but the warning locates one. Before it starts, write down which things you will not do even to win. The line has to be drawn while you are not yet cornered, because the person doing the drawing at the wall is no longer you.
Alongside the list of tactics keep a page of what this company does not do, and require a higher approval to change that page than to approve a tactic.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: locked into a long fight with somebody who does not keep to rules.
Ask first: which of his methods have I picked up this year, and which one is now my first move?
Where it goes wrong: using he started it to retire your own limits; or turning the warning into never engaging at all, including where you should.
Lines to keep
The method you borrowed to win once is now your first move.
Draw the line before you are cornered. At the wall it is too late.
Same situation, other people are asking
I keep winning these and I'm more tired every time.We're all fighting hard and nobody in this market is making money.My clever move didn't land. Was the idea wrong?They set the agenda every week and I just respond.Winning is costing too much · all 7 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.