« Four Questions Rule Part II | Main | When To Stay The Course »
September 11, 2004
Four Questions Part III
Strength and weakness is relative to your goals. Sometimes, no matter where you are strong or where you are weak, you'd best be served by not playing to or against them.
If you're strong at embezzling, I can't recommend you play to your strengths. If you're strong at embarrassing people, you might want to play to this if you're Simon Cowell, from American Idol, but in most instances, this strength should be redirected.
As we saw in Four Questions Part II, the Four Questions can help you win a duel with an opponent with known strengths and weaknesses relative to yours. But what if the point was not to win. What if you wanted to get better at boxing? Challenging a relatively friendly opponent to a boxing duel, is bound to be the right choice, not the wrong one. If your time frame and long-range thinking is "how do I get better" then who cares if you lose twenty duels. If you can learn more from losing than winning, you win, not lose, if your goal is to learn.
To make the Four Questions work, well, you need to know what your goal is. If your goal is to win one match, one time, and never have to compete again, the temptation to cheat, lie, steal, etc. might seem strong. Of course, who you are and what you are and how people see you will be impacted.
In Go, there are dispicable players who attempt such trickery and foolishness. For the sake of the win, they'll do virtually anything. They suggest you take back their moves. They miscount the board intentionally. They mess up the board so the final count cannot be done. This short time thinking way is not a recommended way for gaining in strength and, in the long-term, will tend to keep them at the strength they are.
The Four Questions, as easy as they are, are no simple task. You need to constantly reevaluate where you are strong, where you are weak, where the opponent is strong, and where the opponent is weak. Moreover, you need to keep in mind your own goals. Am I focused on the long-term? The short-term? Learning or winning? Better myself? Better my world? Better my soul?
Posted by wayofgo at September 11, 2004 05:10 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.wayofgo.com/MT/mt-tb.cgi/28
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)