That is not to saying having diverse skills won't help you get a job, but you have to diversify your skills in a smart way. In business, you have to choose battles all the time, whether it be choosing between project proposals, prioritizing requests for renegotiations, or choosing when to challenge a counterpart. Much of content in 'The Art of War' is dedicating to advising how to pick the right time and place for your conflict to occur (it if really needs to occur at all). Similarly, in your career, if you spread your skills over too many diverse areas, you won't be able to specialize in anything.

As such, we should know what we can achieve and in which areas we will be most successful to take full advantage of the time and resources that are available. Sun Tzu recommends that military commanders avoid spreading their forces too thin, as that would make an army weaker throughout. A child may fantasize about becoming a professional sports player, firefighter, a CEO, and the president all at the same time, but as we get older, we realize there are time and resource constraints to what you can achieve. In the same way that Sun Tzu argues armies should only engage when they have a clear advantage, we have to pick our battles in real life.

'He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.' However, it is now celebrated by today's business gurus and even sports coaches as guidance for dealing with conflict of all sorts. When Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel felt threatened by the encroachment of Facebook into Snapchat's market, he gave each of his team members a copy of 'The Art of War' in order to have them think in terms of ruthlessness competition. Whether it is internal or external to an organization or an individual's battles with themselves, competitors, or nature, 'The Art of War' gives comprehensive advice on how to approach conflict. Let's take a look at 10 life lessons that can be taken from this broadly universal work. 'The Art of War' remains on of the world's most famous military texts, 2,500 years after it was published by Sun Tze (孙子 Sūnzi) an adviser who probably lived during the Spring and Autumn Period (776-471 BCE).

The art of battle