OODA loops are one of those concepts that sound like airport self-help nonsense until you realize they were invented for aerial combat and then quietly colonized everything from business strategy to meditation apps. Lucky you.

OODA stands for Observe → Orient → Decide → Act, a framework developed by U.S. Air Force Colonel John Boyd to explain how humans (and organizations) make decisions in fast-changing, competitive environments. The key idea is not the steps themselves—those are obvious—but the looping and the speed and quality of orientation.

Here’s the breakdown, with minimal hero worship:

1. Observe
   You take in information from the environment: sensory data, signals, feedback, anomalies.
   This includes what just happened and what is happening to you internally (fatigue, fear, overconfidence, doomscrolling).

2. Orient (the secret boss level)
   This is where meaning is made. Orientation is shaped by:

   • cultural traditions

   • prior experience

   • training and education

   • genetic and physiological constraints

   • implicit assumptions and mental models

   Boyd insisted this is the most important phase. Two people can observe the same facts and orient entirely differently, which is why one adapts and the other writes a postmortem memo.

3. Decide
   Based on your orientation, you select a course of action.
   Not “the optimal solution”—Boyd wasn’t a rational-choice fantasy nerd—but a good-enough move under uncertainty.

4. Act
   You do the thing.
   Then reality responds, often rudely.

And then—this is crucial—you loop back. Action changes the environment, which changes what you observe next. The loop never stops unless you freeze, panic, or die (all very human).

Why Boyd cared (and why people won fights)

Boyd noticed that winning wasn’t about having better weapons or more information—it was about cycling through the loop faster and more adaptively than your opponent. If you disrupt their orientation—by being unpredictable, ambiguous, or changing tempo—they can’t decide or act coherently. They fall behind reality.

In short:

Whoever controls the pace and coherence of the loop controls the situation.

Common misunderstandings (because of course there are)

• It’s not linear. You can act to learn. You can re-orient mid-action.

• It’s not purely cognitive. Bodies, emotions, and habits are doing a lot of the work.

• It’s not just for enemies. You run OODA loops when driving, arguing, parenting, or deciding whether to reply to that email.

You’re welcome.