Asymmetric Productivity Doctrine 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.
Sri’s Practice of Asymmetric Productivity Doctrine
The victory condition is sustainable creative independence with people that I like, thriving together. It is up to me to identify and refine the actual path to reach there, based on my experience, and crystalize this into a doctrine that can be taught.
Here are some starting doctrinal insights that I apply:
- I trust myself to find the path, not adhere to someone else’s imprecise procedure
- I learn the terrain by mapping its features and identifying useful patterns.
- I bypass difficult terrain when possible through domain hopping. This is not avoidance. This is strategy.
- I constantly imcorporate new data into my strategy. It changes. The tactics change accordingly.
- I try to priotize movement ahead of prediction when prediction is uncertain.
- I believe that movement of any kind generates data, which enriches the historical record for future analytical insight.
- I am seeking to develop sensitivity to patterns of terrain and timing; the moves are the practiced techniques to adapt to as many situations as possible that serve the path and the goal of the moment.
WIP CLAUDE SALAD
- The story is stable: sustainable creative independence with people she likes, thriving together
- Each campaign/expedition/mission/sortie is a sprint: bounded attention and effort, not a guaranteed deliverable
- The sprint review is not “did we ship” but “what did we learn, and what changes next”
- The backlog shifts continuously as terrain is revealed through movement
- Doctrine refinement is the retrospective: accumulated insight from what happened and what it means
- Sri holds all agile roles simultaneously — practitioner, manager, product owner — running the full loop internally
- The cognitive load of holding all roles is high; the compensating output is developed sensitivity to terrain and timing