Ask HN: How do you apply Boyd's OODA Loop in your life?
How do you apply Boyd's decision making strategy in your life? Do you apply it to one, or more, dimension(s) of your life? How do you make day-to-day decisions? How does your personal security look like?
I first heard of Boyd my senior year of college. We got a new NROTC commanding officer who was one of Boyd's acolytes in the 1980s. It changed my life.
I discovered that being a good military officer wasnt about following orders. It was about doing what was best for your country. Sometimes the two coincided. Sometimes they didnt.
While the OODA loop is usually applied to outpacing an adversary, I applied it in a macro sense to my entire career.
I spend the first 8 years of my fighter pilot experience "observing and orienting" myself to the culture I found myself in. I saw good and bad leadership, useful and wasteful strategies.
Then, in year 9, I "decided and acted." Within two years, I had built three organizations that infused DoD with a mindset of innovation.
Then I left the military and started over. I went to graduate school and now find myself in consulting. In many ways, I'm Observing and re-orienting myself. I'm waiting for the right moment to "decide and act."
I find this mindset infuses nearly every problem I attempt to tackle. And as my pattern recognition increases from frequent observations and orientations, I can decide and act effectively ever more quickly.
This is the first time I read a macro application of the OODA loop, I somehow only saw it on the micro level. How do you observe and orient on a macro level with respect to culture? Or to be precise, how would you observe and orient in a new country that you moved into on a cultural level? Also, what other ideas from Boyd did you find useful in your everyday life?
For me, to Observe, you have to be willing to be a blank slate. You have to suspend all "knowledge" and absorb as much as you can. You need to reserve passing judgment.
When you have an inkling of understanding, you begin probing to validate your understanding. This is the start of the Orient phase. You may be wrong or right in your assessments - but you iterate from the small experiments. You hone in on what is actually true, which takes some iteration.
As for other Boydian ideas...here are a few:
Broadly applied synthesis: What made Boyd powerful was his deep intellectual curiosity. His broad understanding of history and thermodynamics made for a unique and insightful combination. He frequently quoted and made use of Heisenberg, Godel and other philosophers in his engineering work.
E-M diagrams: As a fighter pilot, I used his "Energy-Maneuverability" diagram literally every day. It's the foundation of all dogfighting across the world. And it was created from the computer time he stole from Wright Patterson AFB...and was then courtmarshaled because of it. E-M is closely tied to the OODA Loop, although the latter is far more broadly applicable.
Dont Forget Your Family: This was "anti-lesson" from Boyd. He immersed himself in his work. But it absolutely destroyed his family. He left them penniless because he refused to take any meaningful money from the government as a contractor in his post-military career. He was a Lion - but all men have their flaws.
My degree is in Information Systems with a concentration in Emergency Management. OODA is one of the concepts I took away from school and internalized. I don't even think about things in terms of OODA anymore, I automatically assess and dissect the situation at hand or the information presented. Essentially, OODA is a clean framework for critical thinking. It's a gut check to ensure you take into account all known factors.
Taking OODA literally in your day to day would likely be burdensome but learning to build mental models that allow you to quickly connect dots is a huge asset. I oftentimes opt to not worry about things but I do it consciously, I have a mental model for cost (i.e. risk) and often I put things into the rounding error bucket.
A more concrete example is when I'm networking: Once I hear what a person does I quickly assess what I know about their industry, what I consider to be most niche or cutting edge about that knowledge, and then riff on it to establish that I am a person worth talking to. From there it's a constant loop of "what can I do to help this person?", "how can I leverage this connection to help my business?", with the occasional "who could I introduce this person to for some sort of mutually beneficial win?"
This mental framework for networking allows me to quickly get to meaningful dialogue, get to a point of action, and part ways. At events my contacts tends to be high quality as a result and I can work a room faster which allows me to make more connections.
Having a similar frameworks for business decisions, meeting management, sales, etc allows me to manage a lot of areas of my life relatively effortlessly.
edit: By effortlessly I mean stress free. I essentially go on auto-pilot.
I had to look up OODA, because I had never heard of it. But I have to say that this has been a personal strategy of mine as long as I can remember. And I think it has been mostly fueled by a constant desire to learn. Just sheer curiosity.
I think building up a massive collection of mental models and consciously linking new concepts to previous knowledge where it might be valuable has allowed me to quickly grab ideas from varying sources to solve problems in novel ways. In my opinion, the enabling factor to this strategy is to continually amass a wide range of theories, ideas, strategies, etc and imagine how they might help each other. Like building up a great lego collection. You have all these parts from various sets, so when you want to make something new, you have all these pieces that didn't come together originally, but you can create novel solutions with.
Having all of these strategies in your arsenal, allows you to more quickly iterate on actions, while continuously learning more about your problem, allowing you to zero in on a best strategy.
It's a feedback loop, and everyone uses feedback loops. What most people don't do is analyze their feedback loops and work to improve them.
To take advantage of the concept of OODA you need to shorten the loop. That doesn't, strictly, mean acting faster (though it can). What you really want is to make smaller decisions, but make them more frequently. This is the same principle as Lean production and software development.
When you decide on an action it should be something that can be immediately carried out. You don't decide on an action like: I'll take the ball down the field, pass the 2 defenders, and kick it into the top left corner of the goal.
You decide to take the ball down the field. As you approach the defenders, you decide how you will pass them or who you will pass the ball to. If you pass them you decide how you will get past the goalkeeper, will you feint and misdirect? Will you use your strong and precise kick to get it in the corner he's not? You can't know that until you get there so the decision isn't made until you arrive there.
==============================
A distinction has to be made, and many do not, between the goal and the action. You can decide on a goal, but it is not an action itself. Instead you have to start making a series of decisions that lead to that goal. As you make each of those decisions you'll have more information, you'll see shortcuts or delays that have to be worked around. You decide on a next action, and you execute. And you repeat. This is the OODA loop.
==============================
I do use this, in sports (soccer and BJJ for me), in driving (particularly the aspect of deliberate action, once I've decided I do not slowly drift into a new lane, I make the action deliberate and clear so no one else is confused). I try to use it at work but I'm surrounded by Waterfall Worshippers so that's a frustration. I do use it with my own work assignments and projects, but I cannot get my organization to make use of it themselves.
==============================
Edit: To add, like brd, I don't actually think in terms of OODA, but it is something I learned a long time ago. My dad was a pilot, and he drilled the concepts (though not the term) into my sister and I just in daily life. I use the concepts of it, but actively only think of it when trying to convey it to others or to integrate it into something beyond my own efforts.
Cool. How do you apply the OODA loop in a BJJ fight or sparring session? Would you be aware of all the loops you'd be going through? If you were to transfer your knowledge of the OODA to a colleague or a friend, how would you do it?
> How do you apply the OODA loop in a BJJ fight or sparring session?
By drilling until the target action is nearly automatic and fluid. Start with the opponent in my guard, practice getting their arm over and over. Then practice moving from that to having a leg over their upper back. Then from that to the arm bar. Repeat all steps until I can start with them in my guard and end with them in an arm bar as one fluid (or more fluid) motion rather than 3 or 4 stilted motions. In the drill they're passive or semi-cooperative. Step it up with them resisting more. In rolling they're deliberately countering so learn how to adjust mid-motion.
> Would you be aware of all the loops you'd be going through?
As a novice, I'm very much aware of what I'm doing at each step. I still have to think about things too much. But after practice, something like changing my hip position, getting a grip on their collar or sleeve, and changing how my legs are gripping them, all becomes one action instead of three or four. My decision then is to do one thing (that is three concurrent actions) rather than three decisions. I can't go all the way from guard to arm bar with one decision, but I can get parts of it done more easily.
===================
To qualify this. I do not think strictly in terms of OODA loops. But I do think in terms of internalizing the decisions I need to make, which is an aspect of improving your feedback loops. By gaining muscle memory and learning to recognize my opponent's advantages and disadvantages in any moment more quickly I can improve my overall response time.
===================
> If you were to transfer your knowledge of the OODA to a colleague or a friend, how would you do it?
I don't speak in terms of the OODA loop, but I'm doing this with my girlfriend. She doesn't know how to drive and will be learning soon. I focus on situational awareness. When she's in the car with me I ask her where things are around us. I ask her if there will be a vehicle two lanes over once we pass a semi truck that's in the center lane. These are things a driver has to be aware of, and is something like what my dad did with me as a kid. Just asking what I noticed and what I remembered. This wasn't a constant routine, but it was moderately frequent and helped me internalize the idea of maintaining situational awareness. I do it now without thinking that I'm maintaining SA.
I'm also telling her, and demonstrating, that when she commits to an action like changing lanes she needs to do it deliberately. And that she should make smaller (at first) individual choices. You don't decide a mile out that you're turning left at the next light. You decide that you need to be in the left lane and get there. Then you decide that you need to be in the turn lane, or to slow down, or whatever is appropriate along the way, then you decide to make your turn. The turn was always the goal, but it was not the action you were committing until the end.
And the other reason to avoid hesitation is to avoid conflict with other drivers. When I signal a lane change and see a gap, I take it. I don't hem and haw over it because then the other driver doubts my intent and may close the gap. When I then change lanes I create the potential for an accident.
After a period of time, once she has a license and can start practicing, then I will have her making compound decisions. Instead of deciding to check the mirrors and blind spots. Turn on the blinker. Check the mirrors and blind spots. Change lane. She will learn to do those things simultaneously or as a smooth fluid action from one decision, rather than as a sequence of decisions. This will, by its nature, free up her mind to be more attentive to the other elements of the road and start being a better and more fluid driver, and become more proactive rather than reactive to the other vehicles on the road. An experienced driver can plan miles ahead. An inexperienced driver can plan for the next three seconds.
But in all things, it requires practice to improve. Either real world, practice courses, or mental simulation.
My understanding of the importance of OODA Loops influenced my approach to data analysis and the tools I build to analyze data. My goal is always to build fast and flexible tools. This allows me to explore the data quickly from many different angles.
Boyd's key insight isn't that we should use OODA loops to make decisions. His genius is that OODA loops should exist, and you should set yourself up to go through the loop as quickly as possible and as many times as possible. This means designing tools or systems that can quickly go through that process. The end result is a more agile and adaptable person or organization.
I read this book years ago and it changed my life. Great understanding of the man and his life.
I discovered that being a good military officer wasnt about following orders. It was about doing what was best for your country. Sometimes the two coincided. Sometimes they didnt.
While the OODA loop is usually applied to outpacing an adversary, I applied it in a macro sense to my entire career.
I spend the first 8 years of my fighter pilot experience "observing and orienting" myself to the culture I found myself in. I saw good and bad leadership, useful and wasteful strategies.
Then, in year 9, I "decided and acted." Within two years, I had built three organizations that infused DoD with a mindset of innovation.
Then I left the military and started over. I went to graduate school and now find myself in consulting. In many ways, I'm Observing and re-orienting myself. I'm waiting for the right moment to "decide and act."
I find this mindset infuses nearly every problem I attempt to tackle. And as my pattern recognition increases from frequent observations and orientations, I can decide and act effectively ever more quickly.
When you have an inkling of understanding, you begin probing to validate your understanding. This is the start of the Orient phase. You may be wrong or right in your assessments - but you iterate from the small experiments. You hone in on what is actually true, which takes some iteration.
As for other Boydian ideas...here are a few:
Broadly applied synthesis: What made Boyd powerful was his deep intellectual curiosity. His broad understanding of history and thermodynamics made for a unique and insightful combination. He frequently quoted and made use of Heisenberg, Godel and other philosophers in his engineering work.
E-M diagrams: As a fighter pilot, I used his "Energy-Maneuverability" diagram literally every day. It's the foundation of all dogfighting across the world. And it was created from the computer time he stole from Wright Patterson AFB...and was then courtmarshaled because of it. E-M is closely tied to the OODA Loop, although the latter is far more broadly applicable.
Dont Forget Your Family: This was "anti-lesson" from Boyd. He immersed himself in his work. But it absolutely destroyed his family. He left them penniless because he refused to take any meaningful money from the government as a contractor in his post-military career. He was a Lion - but all men have their flaws.
Taking OODA literally in your day to day would likely be burdensome but learning to build mental models that allow you to quickly connect dots is a huge asset. I oftentimes opt to not worry about things but I do it consciously, I have a mental model for cost (i.e. risk) and often I put things into the rounding error bucket.
A more concrete example is when I'm networking: Once I hear what a person does I quickly assess what I know about their industry, what I consider to be most niche or cutting edge about that knowledge, and then riff on it to establish that I am a person worth talking to. From there it's a constant loop of "what can I do to help this person?", "how can I leverage this connection to help my business?", with the occasional "who could I introduce this person to for some sort of mutually beneficial win?"
This mental framework for networking allows me to quickly get to meaningful dialogue, get to a point of action, and part ways. At events my contacts tends to be high quality as a result and I can work a room faster which allows me to make more connections.
Having a similar frameworks for business decisions, meeting management, sales, etc allows me to manage a lot of areas of my life relatively effortlessly.
edit: By effortlessly I mean stress free. I essentially go on auto-pilot.
I think building up a massive collection of mental models and consciously linking new concepts to previous knowledge where it might be valuable has allowed me to quickly grab ideas from varying sources to solve problems in novel ways. In my opinion, the enabling factor to this strategy is to continually amass a wide range of theories, ideas, strategies, etc and imagine how they might help each other. Like building up a great lego collection. You have all these parts from various sets, so when you want to make something new, you have all these pieces that didn't come together originally, but you can create novel solutions with.
Having all of these strategies in your arsenal, allows you to more quickly iterate on actions, while continuously learning more about your problem, allowing you to zero in on a best strategy.
For others: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act
It's a feedback loop, and everyone uses feedback loops. What most people don't do is analyze their feedback loops and work to improve them.
To take advantage of the concept of OODA you need to shorten the loop. That doesn't, strictly, mean acting faster (though it can). What you really want is to make smaller decisions, but make them more frequently. This is the same principle as Lean production and software development.
When you decide on an action it should be something that can be immediately carried out. You don't decide on an action like: I'll take the ball down the field, pass the 2 defenders, and kick it into the top left corner of the goal.
You decide to take the ball down the field. As you approach the defenders, you decide how you will pass them or who you will pass the ball to. If you pass them you decide how you will get past the goalkeeper, will you feint and misdirect? Will you use your strong and precise kick to get it in the corner he's not? You can't know that until you get there so the decision isn't made until you arrive there.
==============================
A distinction has to be made, and many do not, between the goal and the action. You can decide on a goal, but it is not an action itself. Instead you have to start making a series of decisions that lead to that goal. As you make each of those decisions you'll have more information, you'll see shortcuts or delays that have to be worked around. You decide on a next action, and you execute. And you repeat. This is the OODA loop.
==============================
I do use this, in sports (soccer and BJJ for me), in driving (particularly the aspect of deliberate action, once I've decided I do not slowly drift into a new lane, I make the action deliberate and clear so no one else is confused). I try to use it at work but I'm surrounded by Waterfall Worshippers so that's a frustration. I do use it with my own work assignments and projects, but I cannot get my organization to make use of it themselves.
==============================
Edit: To add, like brd, I don't actually think in terms of OODA, but it is something I learned a long time ago. My dad was a pilot, and he drilled the concepts (though not the term) into my sister and I just in daily life. I use the concepts of it, but actively only think of it when trying to convey it to others or to integrate it into something beyond my own efforts.
By drilling until the target action is nearly automatic and fluid. Start with the opponent in my guard, practice getting their arm over and over. Then practice moving from that to having a leg over their upper back. Then from that to the arm bar. Repeat all steps until I can start with them in my guard and end with them in an arm bar as one fluid (or more fluid) motion rather than 3 or 4 stilted motions. In the drill they're passive or semi-cooperative. Step it up with them resisting more. In rolling they're deliberately countering so learn how to adjust mid-motion.
> Would you be aware of all the loops you'd be going through?
As a novice, I'm very much aware of what I'm doing at each step. I still have to think about things too much. But after practice, something like changing my hip position, getting a grip on their collar or sleeve, and changing how my legs are gripping them, all becomes one action instead of three or four. My decision then is to do one thing (that is three concurrent actions) rather than three decisions. I can't go all the way from guard to arm bar with one decision, but I can get parts of it done more easily.
===================
To qualify this. I do not think strictly in terms of OODA loops. But I do think in terms of internalizing the decisions I need to make, which is an aspect of improving your feedback loops. By gaining muscle memory and learning to recognize my opponent's advantages and disadvantages in any moment more quickly I can improve my overall response time.
===================
> If you were to transfer your knowledge of the OODA to a colleague or a friend, how would you do it?
I don't speak in terms of the OODA loop, but I'm doing this with my girlfriend. She doesn't know how to drive and will be learning soon. I focus on situational awareness. When she's in the car with me I ask her where things are around us. I ask her if there will be a vehicle two lanes over once we pass a semi truck that's in the center lane. These are things a driver has to be aware of, and is something like what my dad did with me as a kid. Just asking what I noticed and what I remembered. This wasn't a constant routine, but it was moderately frequent and helped me internalize the idea of maintaining situational awareness. I do it now without thinking that I'm maintaining SA.
I'm also telling her, and demonstrating, that when she commits to an action like changing lanes she needs to do it deliberately. And that she should make smaller (at first) individual choices. You don't decide a mile out that you're turning left at the next light. You decide that you need to be in the left lane and get there. Then you decide that you need to be in the turn lane, or to slow down, or whatever is appropriate along the way, then you decide to make your turn. The turn was always the goal, but it was not the action you were committing until the end.
And the other reason to avoid hesitation is to avoid conflict with other drivers. When I signal a lane change and see a gap, I take it. I don't hem and haw over it because then the other driver doubts my intent and may close the gap. When I then change lanes I create the potential for an accident.
After a period of time, once she has a license and can start practicing, then I will have her making compound decisions. Instead of deciding to check the mirrors and blind spots. Turn on the blinker. Check the mirrors and blind spots. Change lane. She will learn to do those things simultaneously or as a smooth fluid action from one decision, rather than as a sequence of decisions. This will, by its nature, free up her mind to be more attentive to the other elements of the road and start being a better and more fluid driver, and become more proactive rather than reactive to the other vehicles on the road. An experienced driver can plan miles ahead. An inexperienced driver can plan for the next three seconds.
But in all things, it requires practice to improve. Either real world, practice courses, or mental simulation.
Boyd's key insight isn't that we should use OODA loops to make decisions. His genius is that OODA loops should exist, and you should set yourself up to go through the loop as quickly as possible and as many times as possible. This means designing tools or systems that can quickly go through that process. The end result is a more agile and adaptable person or organization.
I read this book years ago and it changed my life. Great understanding of the man and his life.
The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security https://www.amazon.com/Mind-War-John-American-Security/dp/15...