The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Take the L, but do it well

I got obsessed with Go a few years back, mainly because my wife kept beating me.

I am a huge baby about losing anything, ever.

The more I read ancient Chinese philosophy about how to properly place tiny monochromatic stones on the battlefield to crush my wife and win back my honor, the more I realized that Go concepts are weirdly relevant to life.

I lost a lot of games. So, I learned a lot about losing.

I also learned about losing strategically.

When trying to get what you want from other people in life, you will take Ls.

In a negotiation, like in Go, you can make your Ls strategic by anticipating them ahead of time, trading losses successfully, and managing timing to turn losses to your advantage.

Or more importantly, finally beat your wife at a board game to regain your masculinity.

Whichever.

“The greedy do not get success”

This is literally the first rule of a thousands year old master text from before Jesus Christ about a game used to train generals about war and politicians to lead the unwashed masses.

It tells you the best way to fuck up your strategy: Being Greedy.

In working out any deal to get what you want, you probably cannot have everything you want.

How do you know if you’re being greedy? If you’re repeatedly refusing to give the other side real wins, you’re probably being greedy.

Giving up real wins, to be clear, hurts your feelings.

Imagine you’re playing a game against your wife and you’re finally winning after an entire weekend of obsessive studying. You see she’s making progress on the left corner, so you respond, and she demolishes your lead because her tactical game is better than yours.

Shamed, you consider filing for divorce or performing ritual seppuku.

That’s what giving an opponent a real win feels like. That’s why it’s easy to be greedy.

The thing you should have done in that game (you note as you replay the game over and over in your head failing to fall asleep), is let her take the fucking corner.

I have seen this so much. In almost every story of a negotiation that goes off the rails, you will find someone stonewalling, being overly picky about details that don’t really matter, getting in a big-ol righteous huff about “what they deserve”.

You don’t deserve shit. You play some moves and try to get more points. If you’re unfocused you get wrecked.

Being greedy fails because it clouds your focus.

“Lose fights sooner”

In Go, the sooner you accept you’ve lost a fight, the less you typically lose.

A high-level player describes the breakthrough: “I crushed an opponent stronger than me by giving way at every fight… It was all about paying attention to what I could gain while giving up original aims… winning by losing: lose every fight but win the game”

Picture you lost a battle: Idk, say you got told you can’t have the promotion.

Accepting the loss, and moving forward will reduce the damage you take.

You don’t really gain anything by being salty for months that you didn’t get the thing, even if you deserved it. Even if it doesn’t effect your performance, your salty demeanor now gives your boss a reason to be more critical of your work. He will then find more problems, and retroactively use that to justify why you don’t get the next promotion either.

Unaccepted losses compound.

More importantly, accepting the loss early allows you to switch focus to figuring out how to use it to gain advantage in the next round.

An employee of mine once faught hard for a HUGE raise. Unreasonable. She was the best on the team though and she fucking knew it.

We gave her a good raise, but not the XXL pants-suit-made-of-money she asked for.

She said “I’m okay with that, thank you.”

Then she went back to crushing at her job. She waited.

Suspiciously, months later after we had raised more money, she asked again. She mentioned she didn’t get what she wanted before, had done great work since, the company had more resources so the timing was right, and she didn’t want to go looking for other jobs but would if we didn’t give her the raise this time.

Fuck. She got me. She got the raise.

“Be unhurried to enter opponent’s territory”

One time, I was coaching a very smart, but also very dumb, friend of mine through a negotiation with a boss in a tough company.

She felt she was mistreated, maybe had a legal claim, blah blah blah.

The point is she had really good leverage. She talked openly about compensation for her gripes with her boss. It actually went pretty well. He told her he could probably get her at least some of what she wanted.

AND THEY ALL LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER….

JUST KIDDING, MOLTOV COCKTAIL

Then, out of spite and principle and rage and stupidity she sent the bombshell email. Every claim she could level against them, every horrible thing she’d witnessed, several larger structural issues she’d flagged previously.

It was a masterpiece of threats and grievances followed by a conclusion that went something like:

“Now give me my fucking money, please”

Her thinking was something like: I told them what I want, and so I should show them all the ammunition I have all at once so they will give me what I want before they push back and I lose any ground.

***SIGH***

Welp, this caused her bosses org to go into a hardcore war footing. Lawyer the fuck up and burn the fields.

She was fired for “unrelated” reasons shortly thereafter.

When you’re trying to get what you want from people, don’t rush in to attack them because you think you might lose something along the way.

You will lose some stuff along the way, sure, but you will probably come out better if you pace your advances.

Giving Up

I hope at this point you are drinking green tea with your pinky up like the Go scholars of yore.

Look, I fucking hate losing.

But getting trounced at Go and doing countless negotiations has taught me that losses are starting points for future victories.

Now when I have to take an L, I try to accept it quickly, and start asking “how can I use this to my advantage”.

This has made losing less painful…

Because I know I can always STILL win.