A Spy's Guide to Thinking

by John Braddock

Thinking, in its simplest form, looks like this: Notice the end: Action. If thinking doesn’t end with action, it’s useless. Taking action is why we think. If you’re thinking just to think, that’s useless, too.

When thinking about what someone else will do, it’s easy to ask the wrong question first. We might ask something like, “What’s the other side trying to achieve?” Or “What’s their endgame?” Good questions for later. Not first. The first question should always be, “What kind of game do they think we’re playing?”