Josh Kaufman

Josh Kaufman is the bestselling author of books on business, entrepreneurship, skill acquisition, productivity, creativity, applied psychology, and practical wisdom. About Josh »

Victory Through Clarity

“Recipes tell you nothing. Learning techniques is the key."

Tom Colicchio, chef

I firmly believe in the benefits of bulk positive randomness. By being exposed to many random influences, you inevitably find resources directly related to your interests.

Today, this article by Garry Kasparov popped up in my feed reader: The Bobby Fisher Defense.

It’s worth a read.

Chess has little to do with the practice of business, but there’s a great deal of overlap in thinking objectively, managing internal states, reading the opponent correctly, and updating your strategy as the environment changes.

Here’s the part of Kasparov’s essay that jumped out at me:

In his play, Fischer was amazingly objective, long before computers stripped away so many of the dogmas and assumptions humans have used to navigate the game for centuries. Positions that had been long considered inferior were revitalized by Fischer’s ability to look at everything afresh… Fischer’s modern interpretation of “victory through clarity" was a revelation.

Victory through clarity. Now there’s a phrase worth remembering.

How to Achieve Victory Through Clarity

“Victory Through Clarity" describes the focus of my work. As you’ve probably noticed, I don’t write posts like this:

Tactics are useful… but only to a point. Learning how to think like a successful businessperson is how you select the useful tactics.

Do you ever wonder how successful business leaders consistently make good decisions? There are no magic businesspeople - they’ve simply internalized a set of mental models that accurately reflects how the world really works. They achieve victory through clarity.

That’s why…

Business is actually an applied subset of a much larger subject: human rationality. The more accurate information you have about the world, the more clearly you think, and the better you manage your internal state, the better you’ll ultimately do.

The objective of the Personal MBA is to help you achieve victory through clarity - to help you fully understand how the business world actually works.

That’s why we focus on principles, not tactics.

Read more essays by Josh Kaufman »
The Personal MBA
The First 20 Hours
How to Fight a Hydra