position

Flexibility matters.

My father loves to play chess. I seldom win when we play. He often said “Угроза сильнее ее исполнения” which in English variant is commonly rendered as “The threat is stronger than the execution”.

What does it have to do with life? Of course it can be applied to negotiations and other confrontations but more broadly it hints at the fact that the position from which you can control how the future unfolds is often more valuable than any particular, even conventionally favorable future. Because we don’t know all the things at play! We don’t know how the market will react. We don’t know if your new job will be intrinsically satisfying. Position must be guarded with the utmost care.

What does it mean in practice? Being able to break golden handcuffs. Being able to walk away from money. In the job market people reduce their options by considering themselves entitled to certain things. Levels, titles, compensation packages, size of an organization they want to lead. That means that for some people, each promotion reduces optionality in the job market. This is a completely self-inflicted limitation. When the mind is freed from rigid preconceptions, things can be thought through from first principles.

One implication for relationships is a preference for orthogonalization. For example being more conservative, not less conservative when you hire friends or family members with whom you have never personally worked before. Not trying to court your kids' school teacher or the barista in your favorite coffee spot (also known as “don’t shit where you eat”).

And often having a better position means not sharing information. In the words of Robert Greene: powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less.

A caricature example: let’s say there are three dudes with knives after you and you have a double-barrel shotgun with just two rounds. Can you make it out of the room in one piece? Not if you fire twice. But maybe -- just maybe -- if you keep at least one shot.

Image: a boulder at the top of a mountain. Ready to release potential energy and go down fast, but at the moment nobody can tell where it will go.