I'm sure some of you remember the 48 days of power posts that we enjoyed a couple of months back. These posts certainly inspired some interesting discourse in the comments, but there is one I would like to address and go into in more detail:

Rule 48: Assume Formlessness

In my mind, this is one of the most useful laws in day to day life in terms of power in social interaction, to paraphrase, this law states that if nobody knows what you're going to do, nobody can try and stop you.

This is extremely true in a hostile environment such as a workplace where every advancement you make is a coworkers loss. In these environments, if you're viewed as a threat, people will try to circumvent and undermine you, and do anything to keep you from rising. Worst of all, these actions may not come from enemies, but from your closest friends, whose actions may be well-meaning, but ultimately detrimental. Essentially, this application of the law is about reducing the resistance from your surroundings so that you may succeed.

But think about it. How the hell can you be 'formless' in every situation? In order to attain some goals, sometimes people have to know what you're trying to do. I just want to fuck girls, and this subreddit tells me that I need to make my intentions clear for that, so this law doesn't apply to me.

Bullshit it doesn't.

Rather than spell out the direct strategies, We're going to discuss the two aspects you can question to become more formless.

  • Your Actions
  • Your Goals

These two are intrinsically linked. People are going to infer your goals based off your actions, and are going to guess your actions based off the inferred goal.

So how do I stop people from knowing what I want? It's simple. Perform actions that don't make sense for your actual goal. Be creative. You game people out there are probably already doing this: Pattern disrupts, and the occasional 'just walk away'. For the rest of you, this is situation dependent, but think 'large scale pattern disrupts'. Be unpredictable. If people can't predict your actions, they will constantly be one step behind.

Now, I hate using fictional examples for these sorts of things, but think of the Joker in the Dark Knight films. He is about as formless as it gets. He leads people to think one thing, while simultaneously doing another (the disappearing pencil is a good example).

tl;dr: Be unpredictable and people won't know what to expect. It makes you both interesting and powerful.