Something I feel like I’ve learned over the years is this: When in an adversarial situation, don’t worry too much about what the adversary is trying to do, and instead try to know accurately what they can do.
Some examples:
Board games, like Chess or Go. I can drive myself crazy trying to figure out my opponent’s plan, or I can just “play the board”–in other words, know what my opponent can do and plan accordingly.
Similarly in Poker–I don’t even worry about trying to figure out if somebody’s bluffing or whatever, I just try to play according to my knowledge of how the cards could turn out. (Of course, I’m no good at the game, but neither is anyone I ever play with…)
Office politics: You could drive yourself nuts trying to figure out who’s “out to get you”*, but my strategy is to not worry about this at all, and just have a thorough knowledge of policy and job descriptions.
I’m blanking now on exact scenarios but I feel like this has come up in tiffs I have had from time to time with my wife. Situations where it seemed to me she was “overplaying” in a sense, jumping on perceived motivations behind something I said or did, when in fact if she’d just responded to the literal meaning or the actual effect of the action things would have been fine. (TMI I know… 
) Actually I know I have done this too, and have regretted it, reminding myself afterwards that I shouldn’t assume I know what’s going on in her head other than what she has actually said is going on in her head.
(Ahah I just remembered one situation. We were mad at each other about something or other, I forget, and we were also cooperating to clean up the kitchen. The high chair had food on it, I thought I’d totally cleaned it but she found some spots I’d missed. Then, later, as I happened to be in the area again, I saw that she’d missed some spots as well, so I cleaned them. Of course, knowing people are people you can guess she got angry at this, expressing the view that I was being petulant and taking out aggravation at her having caught me in my own initial failure. And indeed, I may have been thinking about that as I cleaned the spots she missed. But importantly, I didn’t say anything about it, and was carefully neutral in my manner as I cleaned it. The fact was, it had to be cleaned. We had like this big argument (which led to making up etc so please don’t worry, we’re fine…) which to this day I think was unnecessary because she had worried too much about trying to figure out what I was thinking, when we could have simply allowed the action to speak for itself, as one which caused the chair to be clean. So, as in the above scenarios, this seemed to me to be a case of someone overplaying, letting themselves get “out of position” so to speak, as a result of jumping at percieved plans or intentions when things could have gone better if they’d simply paid attention to actual possibilities and results.)
Here’s another: There was a recent thread involving a cop and a 12 year old, where the 12 year old was asking why the cop felt free to park on the sidewalk. The cop was clearly reacting to the boy’s perceived intention, and in my opinion embarrassed himself as a result, when the cop could instead have simply answered the request for a badge number and been on his way–because seriously, what could the kid actually do? Nothing. The cop overplayed and overreacted. Responding in the right way, btw, would have helped send a valuable message (whether the kid got it or not) involving respect for law and how to handle situations maturely (which, btw, I haven’t made this clear, but I do find I associate the principle I’m trying to articulate with a kind of maturity, but maybe I’m being a little judgmental or self-congratulatory when I think that way…).
Anyway, this (the idea of thinking in terms of possibilities and results instead of plans or intentions when in an adversarial situation) seems to be a general principle for living, but I don’t know that everyone agrees with it, and I don’t know for a certainty that it’s always the right idea. And it may be that it works for me because I’m not much of a mindreader, but others who are better at mindreading would need to use a different strategy.
I don’t know, I’m just throwing remarks out there. Is this something people discuss in some context or other? Am I on to something? Am I badly mistaken? What do you think?
ETA: It’s been years since I fenced but I seem to recall that in fencing, if you think you know what you’re opponent is intending, then you are likely setting yourself up for failure.
*Anyway, I know several people with this mindset at work. I myself sometimes think a person maybe has a grudge against me or something–but I make myself ignore this because either I’m right and I need to have a thorough knowledge of policy and job descriptions which will lead me to “victory,” or I’m wrong and I’ll have created an enmity where none needed to exist and I still needed a through knowledge etc etc.