Skillful Action Only Comes From Knowing the Details of Your Situation

I used to think the secret to winning in life was finding someone else’s blueprint and copying it.

Find the person who’s already rich.

Find the writer who’s already viral.

Find the entrepreneur who’s already “made it.”

Then do what they did.

Sounds logical.

But we forget their reality is not your reality.

That’s why so many smart, ambitious people crash and burn. They try to run someone else’s play in a completely different game.

The trap of the “proven” model

We’re obsessed with models.

7-step frameworks.

10 blueprints.

“Do these 3 things and you’ll succeed.”

It feels safe. It feels certain.

But this quote smacked me in the face recently:

“Skillful action only comes from the knowledge of all the details that go to make up the situation. In other words, no previously successful models can guarantee success in our present realities.”

Ouch.

That sentence destroys a lot of the advice we see online.

It doesn’t mean models are useless.

It means:

• A model is a map.
• Your life is the territory.

If you use a map of Accra to navigate Lagos, you’ll get lost fast, no matter how “accurate” that map was for Accra.

Blindly copying is not skillful

There’s a massive difference between:

• Blindly copying a model and
• Using it as inspiration while you study your specific situation.

Most people do the first one.

They see “Gary Vee did X,” so they do X.

They see “Elon Musk wrote Y headlines, so they write exactly the same headlines.”

They miss the details.

The timing.

The platform.

The audience.

The personality.

The weird little quirks that made it work for that person.

Skill isn’t mimicry.

Skill is seeing:

• Where you are
• Who you are
• What the current moment needs

…then acting from there.

Skillful action is detail‑heavy

The quote mentions something subtle but huge: “knowledge of all the details that go to make up the situation.”

That’s not sexy.

People want the “one weird trick.”

The details feel boring.

But details are where the magic happens.

Let me give you a real example.

I once copied a marketing strategy from a 7-figure creator.

His exact emails.

His exact headlines.

His exact launch sequence.

He crushed it with that strategy.

I flopped.

Why?

Because:

• His list was 200k people. Mine was less than 20 people.
• His audience knew him for years. Mine barely knew me.
• He was selling to people who’d already bought from him. I was selling to strangers.

I didn’t look at the details of my situation.

I just grabbed his model and jammed it into my reality.

That is pure wishful thinking.

When I finally stopped copying and started studying the details of my own audience, my own niche, and my own strengths, everything changed.

The present reality is always changing

“No previously successful models can guarantee success in our present realities.”

Key word: present.

The internet changes fast.

• What worked on Instagram in 2018 barely works now.
• What worked on LinkedIn in 2020 doesn’t hit the same way today.
• What worked in the economy three years ago might be dead wrong now.

You can have a “proven” strategy that worked like crazy… five years ago.

But today?

It might be useless.

The world doesn’t care about your old success.

It only rewards the people who pay attention to what’s happening right now.

What real skill looks like

If skillful action comes from knowing details, then what does that look like in practice?

It looks like this:

• You stop asking “What worked for you?”
• You start asking “What works HERE, for ME, NOW?”

Real skill is:

• Understanding your audience’s current pains, not what they complained about two years ago.
• Noticing which topics people actually click on and share, not what you wish they clicked on.
• Seeing what algorithms favor right now, not what some guru says “should” work.
• Knowing your own energy levels, constraints, and weird personality traits—and working WITH them instead of against them.

Skill is being awake to the situation you’re actually in.

Not the one you read about in a case study.

Not the one you saw in a YouTube video.

The one in front of your face right now.

Use models, don’t worship them

Let’s be clear.

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel.

You can and should learn from others.

Read their stuff.

Study their systems.

See what’s underneath their success.

But then:

• Strip it down.
• Keep the principles.
• Throw away the tactics that don’t match your situation.
• Rebuild something that fits YOUR life, YOUR audience, YOUR strengths.

That’s how you go from being a copycat to being a creator.

From a blind follower to a skilled operator.

From someone who hopes it works to someone who makes it work.

I can keep going, but let's bring this home.

Skillful action only comes from one thing:

Deep knowledge of the details that make up your current situation.

No template can replace that.

No “proven” model can guarantee your success.

The world is too fluid. Your life is too specific.

So here’s what I’d invite you to do:

• Pick one area of your life where you’re trying to copy someone else’s model.
• Pause.
• Write down the exact details of your situation:
• Who you are
• What resources you actually have
• What your current audience / reality responds to
• What the present moment is asking for

Then, from that place, design your own move.

Not a perfect move.

Not a safe move.

But a move that’s grounded in reality.

Because when you stop chasing other people’s ghosts and start dealing with what’s actually in front of you…

That’s when your actions start to look like something we’d call “skill.”

Do this, And thank me later.