Sun Tzu and the Art of Focus
What history's greatest military strategist can teach us about productivity
When Sun Tzu first came to the land of Wu, the king was skeptical. The Spring and Autumn Period was a time of unrest. War was inevitable. But like many royals and aristocrats, lifelong exposure to political machinations and murderous intrigues had inured him to the seriousness of real warfare. Now here was a young legend who claimed to know more about strategy than the king himself. So he set a prank disguised as a test. The first troop Sun Tzu would lead would be the king’s harem of 360 concubines.
When Sun Tzu ordered them to face right, the courtesans merely giggled. It was a fine game. Their one job was to put the king at ease. How preposterous to take orders from a stuffy general! But when Sun Tzu’s next order was again rebuffed, he followed military law and sentenced the two harem leaders to death. Shocked, the king tried to pardon the offenders, but Sun Tzu refused. It was the general’s duty to carry out his mission, even if the king protested. The best way to get something done is to accord it the utmost seriousness. For Sun Tzu, taking charge was a matter of life and death.
Over two millennia later, Stephen Pressfield would write The War of Art, in which he described creativity as an epic struggle. For him, the reason why so many fail to achieve anything meaningful is because of this force, “resistance”, which foils our attempts to get anything done through inertia, distractions, and the lures of instant gratification. Like Sun Tzu, Pressfield saw the carrying out of one’s life goals as a matter of utmost seriousness. But where Pressfield invokes religion and spirituality as a means of overcoming the enemy force, Sun Tzu’s advice is much more practical.
While Sun Tzu’s book, The Art of War, was not intended as a tome on productivity, some strategies can apply to any struggle. Even internal ones.
The Art of War Lies in Deception
Deception is a major reason why we don’t finish what we set out to do. We convince ourselves the task can be accomplished much faster, cheaper, and with less difficulty than it does in reality. When things get hard, we amplify the importance of trivial tasks. We take unneeded breaks. Waste time playing. Do unnecessary research. Soon so much time has elapsed that the project no longer seems worth doing. So we halfheartedly tell ourselves, “someday…”
The good news is that we can use deception as well. We might tell ourselves that the video or article will be consumed after completing the important tasks. Only to discover later that there are better things to do with our leisure time than waste it on pointless distractions. We might set personal deadlines a day or two before the actual ones so that we leave ourselves ample time to look over our work.
Focus and Victory are Both About Concentration
Victory on the battlefield is about concentrating one’s forces upon a weak point in the enemy’s defenses until morale breaks. Focus is the ability to concentrate effort on a task or goal over an extended period of time. The two are similar.
Whether we’re talking armies or productivity, the ability to concentrate force is self-reinforcing. Your continued rehearsal of the habit causes it to become stronger and more sustained. Kind of like how soldiers who drill more can mass at crucial points on the battlefield faster and withstand adversity longer. Plus, the more train your focus, the easier it gets to drop into a focused working state the next time you come back to it.
Thus, it pays to practice.
Concentration is About Combination
Sun Tzu placed great importance on the environment and the army’s morale. Achievement is ultimately psychological. It’s nearly impossible to win if you don’t believe victory’s possible. So there is the soldier’s experience, and then there’s everything that can affect it. This is why ancient armies had marching songs and battle cries and went into battle with music playing. It was all to fire up their hearts and bolster their morale.
This also explains why Sun Tzu advocated that his soldiers set fires when attacking encampments to sow as much confusion as possible in the enemy. While you may not want to set fire to your office just yet, it is worth considering the environment in which we work. Ask honestly whether the music you work to is actually conducive to clear thinking or whether it’s distracting. Ask the same question about the lighting, furniture, wall colors, and any other aspect of your workspace that could combine to help you achieve the day’s objectives.
Concentration is Also About Avoiding Dissipation
For Sun Tzu, a protracted war was never a good thing. The longer an army spends in the field, the more resources it consumes, the more its soldiers long for home, and the greater will be the destruction to both sides. Likewise, just because you can concentrate on one task for a long period of time, doesn’t mean you should. Prolonged concentration on any task brings about fatigue. It’s in those moments that you’ll want to check your Instagram or watch a cat video. So we should aim to get tasks done as quickly and efficiently as possible.
This is why you shouldn’t multi-task. Like trying to fight two enemies at once, there’s a cost incurred in switching between tasks that leads to them all taking longer than if you had focused on one task at a time.
This is also why it’s so important to minimize distractions. You don’t want to dissipate the mental force you need to exert on a single task and run out of time and energy to finish the job.
Fight As Little As Possible
The best generals aren’t the ones who win the most battles, but the ones who win without having to fight them. Likewise, the most productive people get the most work done with the least amount of effort.
Thus, knowing what not to do is as important as knowing what to do. Whenever you can, delegate. And when you can’t delegate, do it well but do it fast.
Know Who Leads
Sun Tzu meant it when he told his king that the conduct of war should be left to the generals. Likewise, we should reconsider the modern trend of trying to infuse everything with fun. Stephen Pressfield didn’t believe in fun. For him, what separates a professional who completes the project from an amateur who forever talks about how great his or her project will be is this: the professional shows up and works whether they feel like it or not.
We, humans, are complex. We have within us the archetype of the pleasure-seeking king and the determined warrior. But when it’s time to slog, you know who should be in command.
Routines Aren’t So Rigid As to Forego Opportunities
After a certain point, the returns on work diminishes and we must rest. This is why a schedule helps. At the same time, there are moments we find ourselves with time to spare and a desire to work. These should be seized. It doesn’t make sense to put off doing something to adhere to a schedule. After all, great generals are flexible. They don’t just make plans, but they also know how to change them when a better opening presents itself.
Create Your Own Death Ground
Similar to the idea of taking work utterly seriously, Sun Tzu noticed that soldiers fought hardest when the only alternative was death. Hence the reason why Sun Tzu always left the enemy at least one path of escape. He knew cornered animals were the most dangerous.
As with many of the principles we’ve discussed here, what works against our opposition can be made to work in our favor. It’s why generals would burn their own ships. They were essentially saying, there’s no way out but through. Sun Tzu called this “death ground” because he and his men had no choice but to fight or die. Flight wasn’t an option.
We can create our own death grounds. By declaring our intentions publicly, setting fixed deadlines, and promising friends that we’ll do what we say we will or pay them sizeable sums, we raise the stakes. Fear of shame may not be as great a motivator as the fear of our demise, but it’s pretty close.
Conclusion: Treating Art as War and Approaching Work Strategically
Work and war are very different things. Previous attempts to equate the two have led to some very silly results, like when 80s businessmen tried to apply Sun Tzu’s advice for besieging cities to hostile corporate takeovers (remember, always bring at least 3-5 times more people to a meeting than your enemy!)
I don’t want to make light of war any more than I want to make work harder than it already is. But just as the Chinese and Romans knew that if you want peace, you have to prepare for war, those without a strategy for focus will find themselves defeated by resistance more often than they’d care to admit.
As Sun Tzu says, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
True as always, even when the war is with ourselves.
"…if you want peace, you have to prepare for war, those without a strategy for focus will find themselves defeated by resistance…" So true. You're kinder than I am. I don't think that failure to act is due just to resistance or self-deception. Rather, it's often influenced by selfish-motivations, incompetence, and laziness. Still, Sun Tzu championed using deception against the enemy, and it's interesting how your appropriated this as a warning against confusing ourselves.