- You’d Be Speaking German Right Now If…
- Don’t Be The Kaiser or the Fuhrer
- The Art of War (Sort Of) Applied to Learning A Language: Logistics, Supply Lines and Force Concentration
- War! What Is It Good For?
- The Forever War and The AJATT Way
- What Being In A Forever War Means For You
- The Myth of Invincible (Asian) Languages
- How (and Why) to Make and Use Entropy Bombs
- Entropy: Fight the Power
- How and Why the Principle of Proportionality Works
- You’ve Got 99 Million Small Problems — Not a Big, Single One
- Remember That You Are, Were and Will Always Be Human: Infinite in Possibility and Finite in Action
- How Learning a Language is Like Conquering a Country (But Not in the Way You’re Thinking)
- Why America Doesn’t Win Wars Any More and What (Ironically) That Can Teach You About Learning Languages
- The Art of the War of Learning Languages: Sun Tzu on Immersion
- Fight Battles, Not Wars
- How to Worry Correctly
First, let’s review what the principle of proportionality, as elucidated by John Lewis Gaddis (“Grand Strategy”), teaches us:
1. Never expend unlimited resources pursuing a limited gain.
2. Oversize your dreams and undersize your goals.
3. Align your goals with your dreams.
All failure stems from mis-sizing and/or misalignment of goals. All success comes well-sized goals that align or are aligned with dreams. Even serendipity is subject to this principle, because only a well-aligned individual can even appreciate and exploit the serendipity that comes her way.
This is really good! I especially like number 3.