Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment — that which they cannot anticipate.

Although widely attributed to Sun Tzu, this wording reads like a modern paraphrase of ideas found in The Art of War: shaping an opponent’s expectations with the “ordinary” (predictable, legible actions) so their attention and decision-making become routinized, then exploiting that mental fixation with the “extraordinary” (a sudden, unanticipated move). The strategic significance is psychological: victory comes not only from force but from controlling perception and tempo—feeding the enemy signals they think they understand, thereby narrowing their imagination and slowing their adaptation. The quote captures deception as a method of managing the opponent’s cognition, creating the conditions for surprise to be decisive.