10.10.2026 Diary XL Metis: the mind of the winding road

10.10.2026 Diary Page XL

The straight road is often the shortest road. But not every obstacle lies on a straight line.

Saturday. A half-assembled weekend morning. There is nothing on the calendar; there is nothing on the desk. What interests me this morning is a question whose answer I have not known for years: why does my mind not work in a straight line?

When I have to solve a problem, first I walk past the solution. I look somewhere else, I get interested in something else, and then the solution arrives through a side door. For years I counted this as a flaw. The Greeks gave it a name, and they did not think of it as a flaw.

A book from fifty-two years ago

The French classicists Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant published a book in 1974 called "Yunanlarda Zekanın Kurnazlıkları" (Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society). The book examines one concept: metis.

Metis, in Greek, means cunning intelligence, practical skill, a mind that adapts. A kind of knowledge separate from straight logic. Not a calculation but an intuition; not a principle but a skill of the hand. The sailor rowing with the current, the hunter reading a track, the weaver adjusting the warp.

The Greeks describe the owners of metis with animal images. The fox and the octopus. What the two share is changing shape: the fox changes its trail, the octopus takes on the colour of the rock. Metis is adapting to an obstacle instead of going straight through it.

Odysseus

The most famous owner of metis is Odysseus. Homer calls him "polymetis": of many metis. In the same epic there is another epithet: "polytropos", that is, many-turning, many-sided.

This is exactly what sets Odysseus apart from Achilles. Achilles is the hero who fights head-on and wins with his strength. Odysseus is the man who took Troy not with strength but with a wooden horse. The man who escaped the giant Polyphemus by saying his name was "Nobody".

What is striking is this: the Greeks did not look down on this kind of mind. It is also the closest epithet of the goddess Athena. Athena is the daughter of Metis, Zeus's first wife. Zeus swallowed Metis while she was pregnant; Athena was then born from Zeus's head. This story, told by Hesiod, is counted as one of the oldest examples of cunning intelligence being taken inside by power.

Against the straight mind

This part changed something in me.

In philosophy two kinds of reason are usually discussed: theoretical reason and practical reason. Metis does not quite fit either. It is not theoretical, because it is not knowing general principles. And when it is called practical reason, it is likened more to the moral judgment I described in the phronesis entry. Metis is more a skill of manoeuvre.

There is a detail that Detienne and Vernant emphasise: metis works in situations that are uncertain, changeable, without clear limits. In situations that cannot be measured, cannot be repeated, cannot be solved with a rule. That is, exactly where the straight mind is not enough.

This description felt familiar to me, and I do not want to exaggerate it. But the way an ADHD mind produces solutions is, most of the time, a way that enters through a side door, winding, making connections. This is not a strengths narrative; in the strengths article I wrote about why that narrative is dangerous. What I am saying here is something narrower: this way exists and it has a name.

In strategy work

Building a digital strategy often enters the territory of metis.

A client has a goal, has a budget, has competitors, and the market keeps changing. The straight mind suggests writing a plan from start to finish. But the plan hits reality in the first three months.

In strategy theory this is nothing new. From Sun Tzu to Clausewitz, writers on war say a plan breaks at first contact. What needs developing is not the plan but the ability to change the plan. This could be called the modern name of metis.

In Strategy is choosing what not to do I wrote about another side of it: the heart of a strategy lies in what you do not do. Metis puts the side of action next to that: once you know what you will not do, deciding how to do the rest according to the shape of the situation.

Winding road versus avoidance

Here is a place where I have to be honest.

It is very easy to confuse metis with avoidance. "I enter the solution through a side door" is a sentence that someone running away from the solution could use too. A winding road is metis if it arrives at the goal; if it moves away from the goal, it is something else.

The way to tell them apart is in Odysseus: his detours always return to Ithaca. His route is curved, his direction is fixed. The goal is clear, the road is flexible.

My test is this: does the detour arrive at a piece of the work? Does the solution that comes through the side door leave something on the table? If it does, it is metis. If it does not, it is a story I am telling myself.

In Procrastination or avoidance I wrote this distinction from the side of avoidance. Here its counterpart is the opposite of that: being curved is not a crime, but the curve must have a direction.

Room for straight systems

None of this is a defence against building systems. Quite the opposite.

The owners of metis were masters. A sailor can read the current because he knows the sea; a weaver can adjust the warp because she knows the loom. Agility rides on top of basic knowledge.

In the same way, to be able to manage procrastination I first need to know what straight systems are for. The single list rule or the weekly review is my baseline. Metis works on top of that base.

Agility without a base turns into disorder that takes itself for creativity. Agility with a base is a skill.

The mind of the weak

One of Detienne and Vernant's most striking findings is this: metis is the weapon of the weak against the strong.

Someone with strength, height and speed does not need metis. They go straight through. The weak one has to read the surroundings, watch for the opportunity, go around the obstacle. The fox cannot beat the wolf; but it can set a trap.

This idea fits the business world very well. A small team facing a big competitor loses if it clashes in the same field with the same weapons. The way to win is to enter through a door the competitor does not see: another audience, another channel, another language.

In the article on the invisibility of thinking labour I described the invisible side of strategy work. Metis explains that invisibility: the winding mind looks, from the outside, as if it is not working, because it does not follow a direct line.

The wooden horse

The wooden horse of Odysseus is the best example of metis, and why it worked is often overlooked.

The walls of Troy had not been breached for ten years. Strength was not enough. Odysseus's solution was not to use force against the walls but to understand what the walls let in: a gift. He used the enemy's own rule, opening the door to a guest, against them.

This is a third way of getting past an obstacle. First there is crashing into the obstacle, then going around the obstacle. The third is reading the obstacle's own logic and finding the key that opens it.

In daily life its counterpart is this: finding my own logic around a task I cannot start. Reframing the task not as "what I have to do" but as "a question that interests me". In the motivation article I described this as attaching interest.

Nobody

The Polyphemus episode shows the subtle side of this mind. Odysseus tells the giant Cyclops his name is "Nobody". When the Cyclops is wounded and shouts to the other giants "Nobody is wounding me", no one comes to help.

It looks like a pun but it describes a principle: hiding identity, making yourself small, is sometimes the strongest move. Metis is also knowing how not to be visible.

In ADHD, masking seems like the dark side of this episode. Masking is hiding identity. But Odysseus's hiding is for a purpose, short-lived and in his own control. The masking I described in the masking article is continuous, automatic and costly.

The difference is in purpose and in control. When Odysseus comes out of the Cyclops's cave he says his real name, and that has a cost. Hiding is a tool; not a permanent state.

Recording the winding road

It is said that metis cannot be taught, because the master passes on not the rule but the way of looking, by standing beside the apprentice.

For me there is a practical way: noting the solutions that come through the side door. When a problem is solved in an unexpected way, writing in two sentences how that way was found. What was I doing? Where did the inspiration come from? What opened the solution?

A month later, looking at these notes, it is possible to see the pattern of my own metis. In which settings does the side door open? While walking, while busy with another task, while talking with someone?

This is not a method; it is an observation notebook. But knowing how my own mind works is the first step to using that mind.

What I listened to today

Arvo Pärt: Mozart-Adagio.

Pärt takes one of Mozart's slow movements and rebuilds it with his own method. The notes are mostly Mozart's; but he steps in and removes some, pauses some, leaves silence in some places.

I chose the piece for the end of this morning because it enters through a side door. It does not play Mozart directly, it approaches him by an indirect road, and the destination is still Mozart. Going around an obstacle does not mean changing the goal.

Toward tomorrow

Tomorrow is Sunday. At the end of the week, I see that this week has completed a cycle. I began with phronesis on Tuesday, I end with metis on Saturday. Both are kinds of mind that work where the rule is not enough.

I have no plan for Sunday. My plan is to make sure I have a base.