Sun Tzu's Four Methods for Improving Your Life

"Methods include the organization, the official code, and the management of expenses."
- Sun Tzu

For Sun Tzu, Methods (fa) operate in the realm of organization and execution. They encompass the principles, practices, and rules that help the army survive and achieve its objectives. The Art of War itself is designed to communicate "military methods" (bing fa) to rulers and generals so that they understand how to organize, mobilize, and win.

In your own life, you need methods in order to move forward and create the life you want. You need rules, habits, practices, tactics, and techniques that are going to help you achieve your goals and improve your situation.

In reading and applying Sun Tzu, I've identified four general types of methods that you should have in your life. These methods include:

1. Principles. These are guidelines that protect you from bad consequences.
2. Practices. These are activities that keep you sharp and ready to face life's challenges.
3. Systems. These are processes that help make sure important things get done. 
4. Tactics. These are actions, techniques, or tools that reliably give you the same results.

These methods should support your overall purpose. Let's go into each in depth.

Method 1: Principles
Principles are general rules or guidelines that provide limitations on behavior. Based on experience, they are designed to help decision-makers avoid bad consequences. Principles are so essential to Sun Tzu that whenever he presents a set of principles or guidelines, he usually calls them bing zhi fa - which can be translated as "the military's method" or "the military's approach."

In your own life, you need core rules or principles that guide your behavior. I've already outlined Sun Tzu's top ten rules for personal success that I try to follow in my own life, but some examples of principles or rules include:
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• No phone or social media after 9 pm
• Wait 72 hours when purchasing something above $100
• Always maintain respect in relationships - no yelling or name-calling.

The point of having core principles is not to put you in a straight jacket, but to guide you and save you from bad results.

Method 2: Practices
Practices are activities you do on a regular basis to develop your skills and keep your mind sharp and prepared for stressful situations. Sun Tzu calls them liàn, which means both "drill," which reflects regularity, and "training," which reflects learning. Officers and soldiers both need to be highly trained and drilled​ in order to be sharp and responsive to the enemy.

Likewise, you need practices that keep your mind straight and prepared to deal with life's many challenges. In my own life, the following are three critical practices that I use on a regular basis:
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• "High ground" practices. These are practices that help to keep my mind clear and focused. Taking long walks, writing my thoughts, and playing my piano or ukulele help me clear my mind.
• Reviewing personal philosophy statement. I regularly review my personal philosophy statement to keep my mind focused on my values, priorities, and purpose.
• Active reading. I try to read all the time, whenever I can. I try to read whatever interests me, which ranges from strategy to self-improvement to personal finance to history to philosophy. Even more, I try to be actively engaged when reading, underlining, writing down questions, and taking notes. 

The point of these practices is not to simply fill up time or make yourself feel "productive." It's not to make you "own the morning" or feel good about yourself for making your bed. It's to help get and keep your mind in a place where it can handle different challenges without feeling overwhelmed.

For example, my high ground practices help to keep my mind calm if I'm handling a stressful situation. Reviewing my personal statement regularly helps to keep me focused on what's important and what's not. And actively reading helps to keep my mind sharp and open to new ideas.

Method 3: Systems
​Systems are processes you implement in order to help make sure certain actions get done. The simplest example of a system is an alarm clock: you set a time on the clock, and when that time comes, the clock will alert you in order to wake you up.

For Sun Tzu, systems, or zhì, are essential to make sure that an army's communication and management of expenses run smoothly. This allows the army to focus on their mission and adapting to the enemy.

In your life, systems are in place to help make sure that the mundane, yet critical tasks are taken care of so that you can focus on the things that are really important. In my own life, I use a number of systems to ensure that I have this freedom. These include:

• Automated billing (so I don't have to worry about paying my bills on time)
• Automated saving (so I don't have to worry about having enough to cover emergencies or for retirement)
• Electronic calendar with automated notifications (so I don't have to worry about missing an important event or meeting or special date like a birthday)
• Inbox Zero (so I don't have to worry about missing important info from an email) 

You can go crazy with building systems, so it's important to understand their place and purpose. Systems aren't there to ensure you don't have to do any work. They aren't there to manage your life. Systems are there to handle details that must get done, but that can take your valuable time and energy away from your top priorities if they aren't managed properly.

Method 4: Tactics
The last type of method is what I call "tactics." These are actions, techniques, or tools that, when applied, consistently give you the results you want or fix the problem you need solved. Sun Tzu's word for tactics is gong, which means "attack." It is the specific way in which an army takes action against the enemy.

In Sun Tzu's time, there were a number of tactics the armies would use, from stealing from the enemy living off his land to using fire to destroy equipment or storehouses to using the ground to trap the enemy. But the number of military tactics are endless and must be adapted to the army's situation.

In life, you also will need to have a number of tactics you can rely on to help deal with challenges and fulfill your purpose. The following are three tactics I try to use regularly that are inspired by Sun Tzu:

1. Premortems - a thought exercise in which you imagine everything that could go wrong with an idea or project, and then create a plan to avoid this.
2. The Socratic method - a communication technique when having a debate where you use clarifying questions on a person's position to expose potential weaknesses or areas of exploration.
3. The 5 Whys - a simple questioning technique that allows you to get to the root of a problem you face. Basically, you ask "Why did x happen?" five times (or until you get to a root cause you understand).

It's important to remember that no one tactic or tool is going to solve your problems. You need a number of tools in your toolbox in order to handle life's many diverse challenges.