GHDR 0606 Appendix: Asymmetric Approaches to Work

Asymmetric Productivity

Asymmetric Productivity is an idea I got from listening to way too many SF Humanity, Fuck Yeah! (HFY) stories on YouTube.

A common trope is these stories is how Elder Alien races of the Galactic Commune feel they are militarily superior to the newcomer humans, and they send an invasion fleet that is trained in thousands of years of military doctrine that has brought non-stop expect. Instead of the easy win, humanity surprises them by thinking outside the box with thorough preparation, adaptivity, and unpredictability.

There is a military name for this: asymmetric warefare. It’s applied in situations when one side is outmatched in convention terms, but survives by operating differently. Examples of this are guerrilla tactics that thumb their nose at established military patterns of engagement. The canonical US example is the image of American revolutionaries fighting the British redcoats by hiding out, not engaging in disciplined advancing firing lines. Not fighting where the foe is strong, but attacking where it is weak. David and Goliath is another example. In a more general sense, asymmetric warfare is also the genesis of the OODA Loop which comes from US Air Force doctrine in the 1970s. The key idea is that victory in air-to-air encounters is predicated on assessing and reacting to conditions faster than your opponent. It’s also relatable to Sun Tzu’s Art of War chestnut, “Therefore the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy’s will to be imposed on him” which is often rephrased into something like “He who controls the pace of battle controls the fight.”

Non-Military Application

While I have not extensively read the entire corpos of Creativity and Productivity literature, I don’t think asymmetric approaches are mentioned. This is also true in neurodivergent literature in both lived-experience and clinical framings.

Looking back at my years of Groundhog Day Resolutions goal settings, I see that my approach has been asymmetric. In my case, the battle is that I am a neurodivergent person with limited ability and resources that nevertheless wants to have a happy and fulfilled life. There is a lot of advice out there on how to that, but they assume what I’ll call traditional doctrine: follow this recipe that works according to existing authority figures who assume that everyone wants to follow the rules to happiness, as the rules encode that success as followable steps.

I do not have the neurological hardwre to meet the baseline requirements for following rules. I thrive on observation, experimentation, and movement through unfamiliar terrain until I am comfortable enough there to predict and react accordingly to what is actually happening in front of me, not what is predicted in a book by a person who isn’t me in this time and place. In this sense, asymmetric approaches are much better suited to me.

Connecting GHDR History with Asymmetric Productivity

A lot of my productivity tips and tricks seem to draw on asymmetric principles, and this made me curious just how far back this went. I spent a day listing the key ideas that defined me or my context from the beginning of Groundhog Day Resolutions.

The result is this diagram, a history of foundational shifts that I have continued to cling to. The color coding is a work in progress, but here is roughly how I think they are grouped:

Observations:

• There appears to be a major reset every 8-9 years. The first reset is in 2016 after I started doing more development work and was finding myself starved for communication. The second reset starts somewhere around 2022, when I was deep into gender transition and figuring out the ADHD/ASD diagnosis.
• The period from 2022 onward is notable for the emphasis on personal world building, likely due to gender identity and neurodivergent self-diagnosis work.
• By 2025, deeper understanding of my neurodivergent cognitive profile gave me the confident to try inverting expectations of my productivity systems, which has lead to the new Ship Hospitality and Asymmetric Productivity doctrines.

See Also

• Timeline of GHDR Evolution for an expanded explanation of the timeline diagram.