I agree. If people understood the simple difference between strategy and tactic. this problem would not happen. Another important tool for identifying conflicts and dependencies between tasks and tactics is project management methodologies. I know it's not very hip and doesn't get the hackers among us excited, but: Like Steve Blank I once had a job and a boss I didn't get along with perfectly. I managed a huge IT project for Renault-Nissan with developers in 2 continents, 3 time zones, and some very crucial strategic goals to attain. I am not an entrepreneur and I use the principles of project management (PRINCE, PMP, and countless other similar methodologies) every day in every aspect of what I do.
The difference between tactics and strategy is like the difference between design and implementation: it's relative to scope. If your marketing strategy is to provide the best software for older, resource-limited hardware, then writing memory-efficient code is a tactic for implementing that strategy. But if you're hired to make a piece of software run on a particular resource-constrained device, writing memory-efficient code will be part of your strategy for accomplishing that task. The closer something is to being a global consideration in a scope, the more strategic it is in that scope.
If you broaden your scope to your entire life, one part of your life strategy might be to succeed at your job in order to feel pride in your work and economically support support other aspects of your life. In that scope, designing a good marketing strategy would be a tactical consideration in implementing your life strategy.
Tactics are concerned with the conduct of an engagement, while strategy is concerned with how different engagements are linked in a bigger overall plan of action.
The right strategy makes tactics work better. The right strategy puts less pressure on executing your tactics perfectly.
You should really put those two lines in quotations. I know the second line is word for word from Seth Godin's blog (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/01/the_differen...), and quick check had your first line pretty close to word for word from Wikipedia.
I don't think that's the author's point. Strategy is the war while tactics are involved in individual battles. If anything, I would argue that strategy is more amenable to todo lists because it involves planning. Tactics require you to move quickly and generally is less amenable to things like todo lists.
I think what the author was getting at is that a todo list is simply that: a list of tasks. It doesn't really capture why you're doing those tasks. If you just take jobs as they're handed to you, you're not strategizing. You're turning yourself into an automaton.
