Calculating the Path and Winning the Game: 16 Action Strategies to Achieve What's in Your Mind

Author: Zi Gaojie
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-10-01
Features: As everyone knows, not everything in the world can be achieved with ease. More often, success requires continuous "struggle" against it. Therefore, the extent of your mastery of the "art of calculation" often plays a decisive role—use it well, and nothing can stand in your way; use it poorly, and all attempts will fail. So, how should the "art of calculation" be applied? This is one of the key questions addressed in this book. To this end, the book analyzes many types of "art of calculation" for reference:
1. Attacking Calculation: It emphasizes not only offense but also defense. Achieving a balance between offense and defense is key to securing a decisive victory. To neglect either offense or defense is to violate the path to victory.
2. Skillful Calculation: It refers to using intelligence to determine which steps to take and which to avoid. Without skill, there will be mistakes, and mistakes lead to defeat. Without skill, there can be no great victory.
3. Strategic Calculation: It means acting with wisdom. Great achievements in the world all stem from the single word "strategy." Without strategy, there can be no plan, and without strategy, there can be no success. Learning to strategize in planning can reduce many unnecessary "flaws."
4. Detailed Calculation: "Without detail, there is defeat"—this is an obvious truth. Therefore, detailed calculation is the secret to winning or losing in your endeavors. What is detailed calculation? It means dividing the larger and smaller situations you face into parts and calculating each one individually.
5. Indirect Calculation: It means avoiding direct confrontation when it is not necessary. Indirectness leads to passage, and passage leads to victory. In most cases, if you do not approach things this way, your actions will be shallow.
When you think about these calculations, do not merely grasp them theoretically. You should apply them in practice and bring them to their full potential in real-world situations. That is the true art of victory.
To this end, the book also analyzes and deepens the experiences of many successful figures in ancient China who were highly skilled in the "art of calculation"—such as Su Qin, Sun Bin, Liu Bang, Cao Cao, Liu Bei, Liu Yuan, Zhao Kuangyin, Genghis Khan,, Zhu Yuanzhang, Yongzheng, Qianlong, Liu Yong, Zeng Guofan, Hu Xiyin, and Li Hongzhang—from multiple perspectives and levels. The purpose is to fully reveal the role of these "calculations" in practice and to provide you with inspiration.