This guide is drawn from Think Like a Strategist, and gives you a taste of it. For the full toolkit, read the book, listen to the audiobook and work through the free PDF study guide.
1. Look past the first move
The usual planning mistake is stopping at the first consequence. You take the job, send the email or cut the price, and only then discover what happened next. A strategist asks "and then what?" at least twice. That's the idea behind thinking two moves ahead and second-order thinking: the effects of your choice often matter less than the effects of those effects.
The book makes anticipating outcomes the starting point, before you commit your time, money or reputation to a plan.
Try this: Before your next decision, write down the most likely result, then write what that result will lead to.
2. Understand what drives the people involved
Almost every plan depends on other people, and people act on their own incentives, fears and constraints, not on yours. A proposal that looks obviously good to you can be refused for reasons you never considered, which is why good deals get rejected so often. Before you act, ask what each person is trying to achieve and what they stand to lose, and learn to read the room as well as the numbers.
Think Like a Strategist treats other people's motivations as part of the map, not an afterthought.
Try this: Pick one person your plan depends on and write, in their words, what a good outcome looks like for them.
3. Spend your limited time, money and energy on purpose
Resources are finite, so every yes is also a no. Strategists choose where effort goes and protect it. That means saying no to good options in favour of the best one, keeping your plans simple enough to carry out, and treating rest as part of the plan rather than a reward for finishing it, since recovery improves the quality of your decisions.
In the book, allocating time, money and energy is treated as the core of planning, because a plan you can't resource is only a wish.
Try this: List your commitments for the next month and mark the one or two that deserve most of your effort.
4. Weigh the risks before they become problems
Our instincts about risk are unreliable. We fear dramatic, unlikely things and overlook quiet, likely ones, as this piece on estimating risk explains. Two habits help. First, ask how reversible a choice is: cheap, undoable decisions can be made fast, while one-way doors deserve more time. Second, work backward from the failure you most want to avoid and ask what would have caused it.
The book shows how to assess and manage risk early, while there is still room to change course.
Try this: Imagine your plan has failed a year from now. Write the three most likely reasons, then act on the first.
5. Adapt when circumstances change
No plan survives contact with reality unchanged, so strategy has to include the ability to adjust. Hold your goal firmly and your route loosely. Cognitive flexibility is the skill behind that, adaptive intelligence is what it looks like in uncertain times, and plans built with optionality keep working when life moves the goalposts.
Think Like a Strategist covers how to adapt your plans without abandoning them.
Try this: For your current plan, write the one change in circumstances that would make you revisit it, and decide now how you would notice it.
6. Use game theory for everyday choices
Game theory is the study of decisions where the result depends on what other people choose too, and it is more useful than it sounds. You don't need the mathematics. You need its questions: who else is choosing, what does each of us want, and is this a one-off or something we'll repeat? In repeated situations, trust and reputation count for more than any single win, which is why long-term thinkers play a different game.
The book applies game theory to daily situations, not only to boardrooms and economics.
Try this: Next time you negotiate something, such as a deadline, a price or who does what, ask whether you'll deal with this person again, and let that shape your move.
7. Plan for more than one future
A single forecast is a bet. Scenario planning turns it into a plan: describe the future you expect, a better one and a worse one, and for each, name one early warning sign and one response. You won't predict correctly, and you don't have to. You only need to have thought it through, which is the thinking behind patience as a strategy and what generals and chess players can teach everyday planning.
The book walks through building scenario plans and contingency plans you can use in everyday work and life.
Try this: Pick a decision with real stakes and write three short scenarios (expected, better, worse), each with one warning sign and one response.
You don't need to adopt all seven at once. Choose one, try it on a real decision this week, and see what it changes. When you want the fuller toolkit, Think Like a Strategist is Book 2 of the Sharper Thinking series. It's written for anyone planning a career move, leading a team or simply wanting steadier decisions, and no background in strategy is needed. You can read it, listen to it, and work through the free PDF study guide alongside it.