[arizen]

Great framing. I'd add a strategic layer to this.

From a purely strategic perspective, as in military doctrine or game theory, expanding your set of viable options is almost always advantageous.

The goal is to maximize your own optionality while reducing your opponent's.

The failure mode you're describing isn't having options, but the paralysis of refusing to commit to one for execution.

A better model might be a cycle:

Strategy Phase: Actively broaden your options. Explore potential cities, business models, partners. This is reconnaissance.

Execution Phase: Choose the most promising option and commit fully. This is where your point about the power of constraints shines. You go all-in.

The Backlog: The other options aren't discarded; they're put in a strategic backlog. You don't burn the bridges.

You re-evaluate only when you hit a major "strategic bifurcation point" - a market shift, a major life event, a completed project. Then you might pull an option from the backlog.

This way, you get the power of constraints without the fragility of having never considered alternatives.

[keiferski]

The opponent part could use one extra point: reduce your opponent’s options to the range you want them to have, not to none at all.

From Sun Tzu, and put into practice frequently by the Mongols:

When you surround an army, leave an outlet free.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mohi

Finally, the demoralized soldiers decided to flee. They tried to escape through a gap left open on purpose by the Mongols, and almost all of them were slaughtered.

[rawgabbit]

Sun Tzu was talking about human psychology not about making a strategic choice.

Sun Tzu was saying it is better to give your enemy the illusion of a path to retreat. If you don’t, the enemy will fight to the death. It is for the same reason why you should treat your prisoners humanely. You want them to surrender and end the fighting as quickly as possible.

Choosing a strategic plan only works if you follow through and execute. What is worse than paralysis by over analysis is a boss who constantly changes strategy. That is a sure path to ruin.

[keiferski]

Not sure how that is a contradiction. My point was that the goal isn’t necessarily to reduce the options the opponent has, because if you remove all options it’s actually not a good move - as the enemy will then fight to the death, literally or metaphorically.