"You must develop these instant reflexes." Sun Tzu's The Art of War 11:3:3

"When a warrior learns to stop the internal dialogue, everything becomes possible; the most far-fetched schemes become attainable." Carlos Castaneda

General Rule:

We must instantly recognize and respond to situations to complete a move.

Situation:

When we move to pursue an opportunity, we cross a critical threshold from simple decision-making to executing decisions. Sun Tzu called this movement "armed march" but we understand it more broadly as a competitive move or action. To pursue an opportunity, we must move into a region outside of our control. Once outside of controlled areas, we must respond instantly to the situations that we encounter. As important as reaction time is quickly deciding how to pursue opportunities, it is many times more important in responding to the immediate situations in which we find ourselves. Our range of potential actions collapses because the situation limits our options. If we don't know the best responses to those situation, we are going to get into serious trouble.

Opportunity:

Starting this new section, we move our discussion to the Move skills of Sun Tzu's Progress Cycle (1.8 Progress Cycle). Aim skills choose the highest probability opportunities (4.0 Leveraging Probability) and the best actions to explore them (5.0 Minimizing Mistakes). Move skills execute our aim decisions. Sun Tzu described in detail how they do this through situations response. These responses are required by situations that arise in the course of our move. There are nine classes of competitive situations that we encounter. Each of these classes has one best response. It gets even easier. While these any of these classes of situations can arise in any move, they are most commonly found at certain stages of a competitive campaign.

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