If you're looking for an article with an answer at the end, I don't think this is it.
This is more of a personal exploration, which you may or may not find useful.
In the last few days, I've been asking myself whether I have a strategy, an overall plan, a big picture.
In fact, I've probably been been asking myself whether I have a strategy ever since I read about what the difference between strategy and tactics was in a book about the Iraq War. Non-military scaredy-pants pacifist that I am, what did I know?
Anyway, it turns out that strategy is your overall goal, so it takes into account things like your political ends and the political ends of your adversaries. It asks big questions like "What the heck am I fighting this war for, anyway? What am I trying to accomplish?"
Tactics, on the other hand, are either means to achieve a strategy, or just things you end up doing in the absence of a strategy. So tactics are things like, "We'll move a bunch of tanks five clicks west of here, and lob some artillery shells toward those fortifications over there." And so on.
One of the biggest over-reaching strategies I had four or five years ago was to slug it out to the tops of the search engines. For certain areas, I've done that now. What's interesting to me is that what was once a strategy now feels a lot more like a tactic. Don't get me wrong, I still have to do it, but now it seems to me that I have to do other things better than I do now, without losing sight of what allowed me to do what I've done already.
I'm beginning to think I understand some of the things I have to do going forward. I think I'm beginning to forumlate a strategy.
I should probably formulate it much more precisely than I have so far, but I think the rough outline is here: (wav file).
OK, I admit, it needs a little tweaking.
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