[HN Gopher] The Napoleon Technique: Postponing things to increas...
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The Napoleon Technique: Postponing things to increase productivity
Author : Khaine
Score : 234 points
Date : 2026-01-05 00:07 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (effectiviology.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (effectiviology.com)
| modeless wrote:
| I really miss Google Inbox, for the tasks feature (that was never
| brought over to GMail as promised when it was discontinued). It
| had a great implementation of a postponing feature. I liked
| having tasks as inbox items just like emails, as emails usually
| also represent tasks, so having them in the same place was
| perfect. I'm likely to ignore any other task app, but I always
| check my email, so I'd always see the postponed tasks when they
| came back around.
| arjie wrote:
| I use Gmail's Snooze feature quite extensively. I've forgotten
| Inbox's implementation since it's been so long. What did it
| have that is missing from the Gmail snooze feature?
|
| Gmail also has a built-in "Add to Tasks" but I never use that
| because it's too confusing for me.
| modeless wrote:
| The snooze feature itself was similar. What made it better
| was the ability to add tasks directly to the inbox and manage
| them with the same tools as emails, including snoozing. Kind
| of like sending an email to yourself but with fewer steps and
| a much nicer UI adding features like the ability to edit
| them. Also the ability to turn email threads into tasks by
| adding a quick note to them, to remind you what do do later.
| It made snoozing a tool you could manage all your tasks with
| instead of just email threads.
|
| Someone ought to make a Chrome extension that adds this
| feature back, at least in the web UI. It ought to be doable.
| Each task would be an email to yourself, and you'd just
| provide a streamlined UI for creating and managing them. I
| have half a mind to try it with Claude sometime.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Move to Fastmail. It has snoozing and memos
| https://www.fastmail.com/blog/introducing-memos/
|
| That's the ideal combination. I use it 20x a day.
|
| Got an email I can't act on now? Snooze it to when it's the
| right time and add a note with the reminder.
|
| eg
|
| - grandpa ask to bring a tool: snooze to early Saturday
| with a note "get him the tool"
|
| - send "GDPR art. 17 account deletion request email" and
| snooze in 2 months to check account deletion
|
| - recieve invoice due in a month, snooze in a month and
| write amount reminder in memo
|
| I have a Saved search also that look for memos with text
| "TODO". Fastmail shows the memo content in the email
| snippet list, so you can see and process everything at a
| glance. And you can further filter by labels and more.
|
| Gmail (which I've been using for 22 years) is just crap
| nowadays. If you can afford Fastmail (and Kagi), switch
| already. You will regret not to have moved earlier.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Yes! Fastmail is excellent. Pay a small / reasonable
| amount, be a customer (vs being the product). You'll
| never look back.
| modeless wrote:
| Hmm, can you create memos not attached to emails, as
| standalone tasks that you can edit at any time? Can you
| connect it to your Gmail address and how is the
| experience when doing that? Not interested in migrating
| to a new address.
| victorbojica wrote:
| I've built this kind of extension, but the backend being
| Linear (the issue tracker). I am able to mark an email as
| an issue, start it, complete it and see details about it,
| all within Gmail and synced with Linear. I guess using a
| local logic should also work - basically having everything
| inside the browser / extension.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| Have you tried Starred Inbox? That turned me from "person who
| often slips on requests" to "person who rarely ever slips on
| requests".
|
| Basically, keep your inbox as zero unread. If something should
| be dealt with it immediately, deal with it immediately. If it
| needs to wait, Star it. Now, your inbox has a list of all
| Starred messages at the top. At the start and end of work day,
| work through Starred items to either tackle them, or keep them
| Starred for later. But whenever you open your inbox, the
| starred items are at the top.
| modeless wrote:
| With inbox you could have multiple bundles, instead of one
| "starred" section, and each bundle could have a policy so
| that after you finished triaging it would automatically be
| hidden for a day or a week, so that it wouldn't constantly
| distract you by appearing at the top every time you glance at
| your inbox. This feature was also never ported to Gmail.
| prof-dr-ir wrote:
| > I really miss Google Inbox
|
| I very much agree. Also really miss the ability to quickly
| group related emails.
|
| (And no, that was not the same as adding a label; for one, the
| whole group simply appeared as one "bigger" email in the Inbox.
| It was a bit like a thread that you can manually add emails
| to.)
|
| When everybody got kicked out of Inbox I happened to have a
| group of about ten emails related to an upcoming trip. Those
| ten emails got de-grouped and scattered all around in the
| ordinary gmail interface. I would have appreciated a smoother
| transition...
| cjs_ac wrote:
| My first teaching job was at a prestigious boys' boarding school.
| A colleague who had the next desk in the staff room was also head
| of the first-formers' boarding house, which meant he received an
| awful lot of emails from anxious parents about their not-quite-
| so-anxious sons. He left all these emails unread for a fortnight,
| because after this time the issues (or non-issues) had usually
| resolved themselves.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Ah, for days of yore, when if the parents wanted to talk to the
| school, they could... write a letter.
|
| Honestly, I see no small part of the problem here as being that
| communication is _too easy_ , and it results in a lot of
| frivolity. Used to be that you had a problem, you figured it
| out - now you can send an angry WhatsApp message, and because
| some person hasn't responded to you within 20 seconds, _they_
| are now your problem, and any initiative to figure it out
| yourself has flown the coop.
| barrenko wrote:
| I am cross-quoting from N.N. Taleb, forgive my errors, but to
| me it's something in the line of "If you want to be cured from
| reading the newspaper, spend a week reading old newspaper."
| indigoabstract wrote:
| That's amusing. I remember there is this site where you can
| read 40 year old "news", as discussed here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46017175
|
| But I couldn't say how many people it cured of reading the
| news so far.
| rvba wrote:
| "Please help, my son is bullied"
|
| After two weeks: it solved itself, he committed suicide.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| Housemasters and housemistresses have a better idea of
| whether pupils are being bullied than parents, because they
| are physically present and receive reports from classroom
| teachers, tutors, games coaches, and so on. The 1970s are
| over and boarding schools are no longer run by rum, sodomy
| and the lash.
|
| The refusal of many twenty-first century parents to
| acknowledge that schoolteachers have at least two university
| degrees and consequently have expertise in their profession
| is the cause of the issue. If you're not willing to trust the
| professional educators and administrative processes at a
| school, why are you spending the median income on sending
| your child there?
| sokoloff wrote:
| It can be simultaneously true that 5% of educators are
| great, 20% very good, 60% are good, 13% are adequate, and
| 2% should have fired 5 years or more ago.
|
| If you're in the first three groups, it can be hard to
| understand the disrespect and vitriol which is
| overwhelmingly directed at experiences parents have with
| that last group.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| Prestigious boarding schools - the schools that I've been
| writing about - need not bother with teachers outside
| that top 25%.
|
| Non-selective government schools, like all public
| services, have inevitably become largely concerned with
| social work; teachers in those schools, regardless of
| their ability, have to respond to parents _immediately_.
| rvba wrote:
| Yes nothing bad has never happened in a _prestigious_
| boarding school, just because they charge more money,
| especially to kids of rich people.
|
| After all rich people and their rich kids never do
| anything wrong /s
| cjs_ac wrote:
| I'm talking about institutions and their internal
| processes, not some tedious nonsense about how money is
| intrinsically evil.
|
| Rich people have all sorts of problems. Part of the
| package in an elite education is that the school has a
| better capacity to sort those out by itself. Constant
| communication with parents undermines that.
|
| It's a question of values and understanding what you're
| buying into. These schools don't suit all parenting
| styles.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > teachers in those schools, regardless of their ability,
| have to respond to parents _immediately_.
|
| Or else what? Their union will hold them to account?
| Their colleagues? Their administration?
|
| I have two kids in such public schools and I can't think
| of anything I'd ask of a teacher that would require a
| _same-day_ response let alone an _immediate_ one.
|
| If I need an immediate response, it's not likely a topic
| I should be taking to a teacher in the first place. Their
| job is to teach, not to monitor for inbound comms from
| parents.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| By 'immediate', I meant same day. But you sound like a
| reasonable parent; you're writing in the hypothetical.
| It's the small minority of parents who are constantly in
| contact with teachers (because most legitimate concerns
| should be triaged by the school receptionist) and
| consequently cause the problems - it's no different to
| any other customer-facing role.
| waterhouse wrote:
| > need not bother with teachers outside that top 25%.
|
| To simply "not bother" with lower-quality teachers sounds
| like you find it easy, as an institution, to determine
| teachers' quality. That seems far from a solved problem,
| for teachers and indeed most employees in general. You
| can pick a particular metric, of course, but then people
| will try to game it, and in teaching, there seems to be a
| lot of room for gaming metrics...
| chrisjj wrote:
| > schoolteachers have at least two university degrees and
| consequently have expertise in their profession
|
| Utter fallacy. Expertise in teaching requires training,
| experience and/or natural talent.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| I'm intrigued as to what you think one studies as part of
| a Postgraduate Certificate in Education or a Masters in
| Education.
| paddleon wrote:
| I'm curious what you consider "training", and how this
| would be different than a vocation-specific university
| degree? Which typically also includes supervised real-
| world teaching experience?
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| This is something I've thought about a lot, and while I like the
| framing in the article, it's missing a few key dimensions.
|
| Optionality: In addition to "letting things resolve themselves",
| one benefit you can sometimes get by deferring a decision (esp a
| "one-way door" decision) is optionality (of learning information
| that might result in a better decision).
|
| Waffling: On the other hand, if you are a manager or decision-
| maker on whom others depend, one of the worst things you can do
| is waffle on a key decision (ie, be indecisive). Andy Grove has a
| paragraph on this in High Output Management as one of the highest
| negative leverage things a manager can do to their team, and in
| fact, often a wrong (but correctible) decision is far better than
| no decision.
|
| Good managers instinctively know how to navigate these tradeoffs.
| eszed wrote:
| You can defer the decision without waffling on the
| communication. Saying "we'll decide this later" (ideally with
| some reasons / parameters), _is_ decisive - and sometimes gets
| pushback. Going silent in order to avoid dissent is bad form.
|
| Not to say this "technique" isn't useful, but imo it should be
| super limited. I'll put off a reply when a) it's a non-urgent
| issue, where b) resources (documentation, or other local users'
| experience) exist, c) this user will be motivated to find them
| (by the nature of the issue, or because I know they are the
| sort of person who does that), and d) independent problem-
| solving will fulfill a teaching function. Even then, I will hit
| "Snooze" on the email and follow up a day or two later: if they
| haven't solved it I'll point them to a resource; if they have
| I'll praise them for figuring it out for themselves. People
| like both outcomes.
|
| I notice that many of the historical examples are a result of
| latency in communication, like people asking for things that
| had already been done. We don't often face that constraint.
| veunes wrote:
| From the outside, "strategic delay" and "indecision" can look
| identical, but they feel very different to the people depending
| on you
| hahahahhaah wrote:
| If most of the mail is junk (as in Napoleon's case - an ask is
| answered No, a missive is answered I Know!, then yes wait or just
| bin it all.
| croisillon wrote:
| increase productivity in invading countries and killing their
| inhabitants? is there any Attila Method or Pinochet Hack i could
| complement the Napoleon Technique with?
| 5d41402abc4b wrote:
| "Never do today what you can do tomorrow for tonight you might
| die" - Ajahn Brahm
| jmward01 wrote:
| Why put off until tomorrow what you can perfectly well do the
| next day?
| falcor84 wrote:
| I really like that one, but look at it in reverse - when
| faced with a task and wondering whether to do it now or
| postpone it to tomorrow, ask yourself "When faced with it
| tomorrow, am I as likely to postpone it again?" if so, I
| strive to explicitly choose one of the following:
|
| 1. Accept that it's just not important to me and consciously
| abandon it (perhaps with a quick WONTFIX update/handling, if
| needed).
|
| 2. Accepting that it is important and I'm as likely to keep
| postponing it, roll up my sleeves and do it now.
|
| 3. Accepting that it is important, but now is not a good time
| to tackle it, postpone it, but try to set things up such that
| I won't postpone it again. This includes blocking off
| dedicated time in my calendar for the new time, making sure I
| have the tools/prerequisites I'd need then, and if possible
| figuring out a motivational hack to prevent myself from
| postponing it again.
|
| It's still hard, and I'm constantly learning what works for
| me and what doesn't, but I like that I'm making these choices
| more mindfully.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| I was going to write a witty reply but I decided to put it
| off until tomorrow. /s
| chrisjj wrote:
| Like take your heart meds?
| Kirr wrote:
| "Never postpone until tomorrow what you can postpone until
| after tomorrow"
| udfalkso wrote:
| "Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end.
| It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's a day
| you've had everything to do and you've done it."
|
| Margaret Thatcher
|
| (To which a clever friend of mine retorted: Because you know
| you can do nothing the next day)
| PeterStuer wrote:
| This is ketamine for procrastinators. Use at your own risk, YMMV.
|
| We postpone not by choice, but by indecisiveness. Not just the
| 'things that will solve themselves', but also the things that
| will loom bigger and bigger over us until the built up stress
| breaks the veil.
|
| It works, even very well as long as you also have the right skill
| combinations to deliver very fast eventually, but the cost is
| stress and in the longer term burnout and depression.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| It's about being able to divine which will resolve itself vs
| which won't - and that's a balance of probabilities, rather
| than certainty.
|
| It's a bit like advanced chicken. You've gotta be _really_ sure
| that that 18 wheeler bearing down on you is Not Your Problem.
| veunes wrote:
| For a lot of people postponement isn't a strategic move
| im3w1l wrote:
| On the one hand I agree, but on the other hand I think it can
| be useful to examine both sides of ones vices. For instance, by
| studying delay as a legitimate technique you may come to
| realize that you have been subconsciously doing this. Just
| poorly and in the wrong situations. And you can ask yourself
| when you feel the urge to procrastrinate "is this the right
| time to delay? are there important things I should wait for
| before doing this?". And if there is then you can
| procrastrinate with good conscience and if there isn't then you
| have an additional argument for doing it now.
|
| Going out on a limb with my speculation, I think it could even
| remove psychological fuel from the fire. By more clearly
| knowing when the behavior is and isn't appropriate, it will
| mean that when it seems inappropriate it will also be
| inappropriate, so performing the behavior when it seems
| inappropriate wil not be successful or rewarded or
| strengthened.
| memming wrote:
| It would be terrible to be correponding with someone who
| implements the Napoleon technique, especially when they are your
| boss and a major bottleneck.
| shashanoid wrote:
| It has happened to me many times whenever I'm struggling with a
| solution, the next morning with little effort the problem becomes
| really easy.. it has happened countless number of times
| theiz wrote:
| It can be combined with rules as a pre-condition. For example: I
| have a CC box where mail is moved to where I am in CC. As I am
| mentioned in CC, I do not expect immediate action is required,
| and I will postpone the activity of reading or other action for
| that mail and 999 out of 1000 times it will resolve itself. Now
| this is a very easy and clear example of a rule, but there are
| many like this to manage the workload to manageable levels. It
| allows me to work part-time for multiple customers, while often
| being more productive then full time employees.
| rvba wrote:
| I know a manager who was master of this technique - he did not
| read any email, nor do anything.
|
| Would not make a single decision.
|
| All his projects failed and those around hated him, there was a
| lot of joy after he was fired. This lack of decisions costed the
| company a ton of money.
|
| This guife is maybe made for the rare few who end up with a clean
| inbox every day.
| djmips wrote:
| I don't think he was the master of this technique after all.
| Duanemclemore wrote:
| "Politics is the art of ignoring a problem until it goes away."
|
| I forget the source of that, but it makes me chuckle.
| hulitu wrote:
| Microsoft ?
| ihtef wrote:
| I asked for a help to my manager for some point in my job. He
| didn't respond to me for almost 4 hours than I figured out how to
| resolve the issue by my own. I noticed that when I read this
| article. He used this technique it actually worked in my case!
| chrisjj wrote:
| What makes you think you solution was as good as his?
| ihtef wrote:
| It's a good question. For that day I needed a solution, and
| when I went to him with a solution of my own he said it was
| fine. I'll never know if it was the best solution, but it's
| better to go with a solution than to have no solution at all.
| acc0362 wrote:
| I use this technique in Slack by setting a reminder on a message
| so I can follow up later.
|
| Sometimes I even push it to the next day or week by setting a
| reminder for 09:00. The only downside is that Slack doesn't seem
| to have considered this workflow. Instead of giving me a single
| notification that several messages are ready for follow-up, I get
| multiple push notifications on my phone. It's a bit irritating,
| but it's still the best option for now.
| msucorey wrote:
| Came here to make exact comment. I can't let anything fall
| through the cracks at my job but I don't necessarily need to be
| the one handling.
|
| Mondays I will typically have 30-50 of these waiting that
| sequentially get snoozed 3 hours, tomorrow, next week until
| resolved or first rights of refusal from others are exhausted
| and I handle myself :).
| acc0362 wrote:
| It's the same exact workflow I have. I repeatedly snooze 1
| hour, 3 hour, next day or next week. These are follow ups
| that doesn't quite belong anywhere like Jira or other
| systems.
| wslh wrote:
| The technique can be interpreted in different ways. One thing
| that definitely helps is when there's a strong hype cycle, like
| with AI, where you're tempted to build the next "super framework"
| only to realize that another team may develop it faster and
| better than you ever could.
|
| I have a friend who worked at an AI company before the current
| boom, and he once told me something along the lines of: we built
| several things over the past few years that could now be replaced
| by the new frameworks that keep appearing.
| nottorp wrote:
| > you can choose to let people know that if they absolutely
| require an immediate response then they should include "URGENT"
| in the subject line
|
| Everything will suddenly become "URGENT" then.
| franktankbank wrote:
| Just start marking your colleagues emails as spam then.
| MORPHOICES wrote:
| I've found that sometimes it's easier to put off a task. At other
| times, it simply becomes avoidance. ~
|
| I've been able to distinguish between the two by asking:
|
| Does the lack of information prevent the task from being
| completed?
|
| Will it be less expensive to complete the task later?
|
| Am I holding off to avoid discomfort or to obtain clarity?
|
| Delays typically pay off if they lower uncertainty. In most
| cases, it doesn't make anxiety worse.
|
| I've tried concrete things:
|
| Put my reasons for delaying something in writing.
|
| Instead of setting a date, set a "revisit trigger."
|
| Try it for five minutes to see what hurts the most.
|
| I'm curious what other people think of this:
|
| How can procrastination be distinguished from strategic delay?
|
| Do you put off making decisions longer than taking action?
|
| Do you use any heuristics?
| wjnc wrote:
| Napoleon ultimately was a master in Getting Things un-Done.
|
| * Many layers to this joke. Think about his imprisonment and
| escape. To keep it thoughtful: The impact of the Code Napoleon is
| massive. With a tad bit less expansionism and a tad bit more
| realism and economic development large parts of the world would
| be "more French" now.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| I hadn't realized there was a name for this! (i thought it's just
| procrastinating)
|
| This what I do 90+% of the time, I work with my ADHD and put off
| doing as much as I can until the last minute. Then do weeks worth
| of work in hours.
|
| To note: If you're thinking of doing this, be careful, it can be
| extremely stressful
|
| Only do it on stuff you're good at or understand the implications
| if it goes wrong, because this method doesn't allow much time to
| change your mistakes.
|
| If its something new i will not do this (or i'll break it down in
| chunks)
| HPsquared wrote:
| That's how I got through my engineering degree. Would not
| recommend.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| yep, the same - I got shit marks, but I was very efficient at
| getting my shit marks
| ahoka wrote:
| People who pass an engineering degree with only the minimum
| mark should get some kind of special cum laude.
| pandemic_region wrote:
| Cum Shite seems appropriate.
| ambicapter wrote:
| Anyone can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an
| engineer to build a bridge that _barely_ stands.
| HPsquared wrote:
| An engineer in and of oneself.
|
| (Always enjoy when that construction is actually valid,
| people often miss the reflexive part)
| gambiting wrote:
| It's that old joke:
|
| "What do you call a student who passed their medical exam
| with the lowest grade in their year?"
|
| "A doctor"
| user_7832 wrote:
| Not specifically the same but there's an adage, "C's get
| degrees". (I guess it's about how even if you got C's,
| you're still good enough to have a sheet of paper that
| even your class topper had?)
| toast0 wrote:
| I always went with C is for cookie and that's good enough
| for me. Along with D for diploma.
|
| But note, some schools require a C in prereqs to take
| further courses. And some schools may put you on academic
| probation/kick you out if your GPA falls below a C. So D
| for diploma is a sometimes grade.
| HPsquared wrote:
| C for competent (a higher level than 'degree')
| sublinear wrote:
| I agree. Not wiping is one of the most efficient ways to
| get shit marks.
| JimDabell wrote:
| > I hadn't realized there was a name for this! (i thought it's
| just procrastinating)
|
| Related:
|
| https://structuredprocrastination.com
| toyg wrote:
| No, this is not that.
|
| The Napoleon approach is intentional, borne out of belief that
| a lot of communication is actually meaningless waffle produced
| by people whose first instict, when faced with an issue, is to
| talk about it with someone, rather than putting some thought
| into it; and a lot of it is just people being impatient.
|
| Your thing is just procrastination. Although it can result in
| similar behaviour, in practice, it's a different thing.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| thanks for clarifying,
|
| my excessive procrastinating definitely overlaps with this
| (as I call it in project) meaningless bollocks. and I
| intentionally let people go on and on, until things
| stabilize. Endless meetings going around and around,
| discussing loads but coming up with nothing much
|
| Mostly I put it down to education/ understanding - eg people
| need around 5-10 repetitions to understand stuff.
|
| To combat this, I modify my documents and diagrams to show
| how simple things are, make sure all acronyms are explained
| properly (over and over again) and make 'solutions' into a
| "story" eg beginning, middle and end explaining how/ why /
| decisions.
|
| Meaningless bollocks still exist, I let other people run
| around like headless chickens - I think people like the chaos
| and fun (well I try and make it fun)
| georgeecollins wrote:
| This is something I learned from one of my (frankly fairly
| effective and powerful) parents. My wife, who is super
| conscientious just thinks its procrastinating, or worse, doing
| nothing until she does something. From experience in my own
| family acting like this can seem very selfish because usually
| if someone brings a problem to your attention they want you to
| show you are also concerned by acting and solving. Doing
| nothing can look bad.
|
| But it can be smart! It's not just that problems solve
| themselves, it's also that the best course of action becomes
| clear with time. The optics of inaction can be terrible, which
| is why junior people managing upward nearly always start trying
| to tackle a problem immediately. For senior people, you need to
| acknowledge you are aware of a problem and will do something. I
| think this is one of the reasons managers implement process
| that seems kind of useless. Like meetings to discuss a decision
| without making the decision. To participants it can be
| frustrating but it is a way for the person in charge to show
| they know a problem exists that also lets them put off doing
| anything.
| chrisjj wrote:
| > you could decide to wait a day before replying to emails that
| ask for your advice on non-urgent issues, if you believe that by
| then the people who send the emails will likely figure out how to
| resolve those issues.
|
| ... and if you don't care what those people think of you.
| monkeydust wrote:
| I do this at work and now I can put a name to it :)
|
| Its something I deploy to low-stakes instant messaging
| communications. So you might get a:
|
| 'Hey quick one can you help with <request>'.
|
| I can see the request but defer acknowledgement.
|
| If its low-stakes then I sometimes leave it for 15 minutes and
| then acknowledge it up and its amazing how many times I do that I
| get a:
|
| 'Ahh no prob, sorted it out'
| misja111 wrote:
| This works great when you're on the receiving end of e-mails/
| messages. However it is a pain to deal with when you are on the
| sending side and your issue is urgent.
| faidit wrote:
| Call centers that leave people on hold for a minimum of 10
| minutes are positively Napoleonic.
| sogjis wrote:
| All government officials know this technique, that is why they
| are so effective
| josefrichter wrote:
| Didn't he basically observe the second law of thermodynamics?
|
| The Second Law says an imbalance (like heat in one corner of a
| room) will "solve itself" by spreading out until the room is
| balanced. The Napoleon Technique assumes that a "social
| imbalance" (a crisis, a frantic email, or a minor conflict) will
| often "cool down" or reach a state of balance on its own if you
| simply wait.
|
| In my part of the world, we call this technique "let it rot out"
| :-)
| zoom6628 wrote:
| As a lifelong procrastinator this article reads like "that other
| Napoleon" aka Eisenhower and his "delegate" for anything neither
| important nor urgent. I use it when I'm one of several recipients
| in emails To: address.
|
| Other responders have also talked about Google inbox which I
| never used but even those of use locked away in enterprise
| fiefdoms with Outlook can make use of pinned messages (same as
| starting in Google Inbox) and recently also can be reminded about
| emails. I use both combined with the approach of trying to clear
| my inbox as close to zero unread each day as possible. I do same
| to slack messages as well. For all "messages" I ruthlessly delete
| or archive anything not needing action and with no legal or
| revenue impact.
|
| THats how I manage the torrent of comms. Need to improve my work
| on larger items to start earlier and produce in smaller chunks.
|
| For keeping track of all my work I used Obsidian with tasks and
| tags and put due dates on all. Helps me see what is due for each
| "project".
|
| My 2c.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Isn't the quintessential example of this putting off post-life
| choices like your will? At that point, it's no longer your
| problem.
| yarekt wrote:
| Since no-one mentioned the Cynefin framework yet: Notice that
| there's a little fold at the bottom centre of the diagram:
| Chaotic (unknowable unknowns, etc) things will always resolve
| themselves to simple states.
|
| Fires will eventually burn out, the result will be simple to
| understand. Simply your business won't exist anymore.
|
| There are more nuanced examples but I believe the above explains
| the principle.
|
| The Key is to handle things early, before the most
| probable/default resolution, if its one you're not happy with.
| osullivj wrote:
| In the 19th Century British Foreign Office the Napoleon Technique
| was called "masterly inactivity". For instance "the Russians are
| threating Afghanistan, so we must move troops up to the NW
| Frontier". No! Not every action merits a reaction.
| aed wrote:
| At work I call this "letting the fires burn."
|
| This works well with children too!
|
| And probably beneficial for them. Their natural instinct is to
| ask for help. Many times I can't get there immediately and so
| they ultimately figure it out themselves. Once I figured out this
| "trick" I started doing it more often. I suppose most parents
| figure this out along the way.
|
| My 9-year-old is playing Tears of the Kingdom right now and I've
| noticed he's getting better and better because I'm not jumping in
| to help him.
| reactordev wrote:
| Be prepared for the "You were never there for me" blame later
| in their lives. I had the same approach with mine (they were
| smart kids!) and when they grew up they blamed me for not being
| there and helping them more. Ce la vie.
| frogperson wrote:
| There is no way to win with kids, its just part of being a
| parent. Had you helped, you would have been acused of not
| giving them space to explore.
| reactordev wrote:
| Turns out the "correct" answer was to be there to help them
| cognitively figure it out by helping them ask the right
| questions. At least that's what the therapist said. I guess
| I don't mind as they both turned out fine. Way better than
| the trauma I had so I would say it's a win.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| What I imagine here is following a middle path between being
| too eager to help their kids to the point of doing everything
| for them, and being unhelpful and absent. Finding that middle
| path requires prudence and proper engagement, because you
| have to know when to let the bicycle go and when to hold on.
|
| Helicopter parents tend to fall into the former category,
| because they stifle their child's maturation and competence
| by depriving them of the challenges that build confidence and
| agency. It encourages dependence and self-centeredness. It's
| criminal and produces a class of people that will pay the
| salaries of therapists for decades.
|
| The opposite extreme is parental absenteeism which is like a
| football match without a referee. Someone always influences
| children - their habits, their worldview, their attitudes -
| and if a parent isn't doing that, then someone else is, and
| perhaps not someone who should. Absenteeism is thus a
| dereliction of parental duty, as parents serve as examples
| from whom children learn, even more by how they behave and
| live than by what they say. We are social animals, and a
| healthy family life produces healthy people.
|
| And by following this middle path well, you also teach your
| children to be able to be appropriately helpful to others
| themselves and in this manner, able to discern when help is
| appropriate and when it is not. Practical reason is central
| to the ethical life.
| veunes wrote:
| It's hard to imagine a parenting strategy with no tradeoffs
| veunes wrote:
| The tricky part (both as a parent and a manager) is knowing
| which fires are safe to burn and which ones will burn the house
| down
| darknavi wrote:
| It's definitely a balancing act.
|
| I remember part of my new manager training at my company
| started with "Be a lazy manager". The idea being that you
| should help your directs build muscles to try to help them self
| first, and then ask for help.
| toyg wrote:
| I'm a big believer in this. I called it "let them marinate". It
| works particularly well in the modern world of IMs, where a lot
| of people see a problem and go "oh, X will know why this is
| happening, let's ask him!" without even trying to get their
| brain-gears moving. After a while, you learn who you should
| ignore and for how long, and it reduces the incentive for the
| worst time-wasters to come to you. I used to worry that they'd
| find me less useful and hence stop liking me, but that doesn't
| really happen.
| vazkus wrote:
| One piece of advice I got from my manager early in my career that
| really stuck with me is this:
|
| - It's okay not to respond to emails/messages/requests
| immediately.
|
| - But if you know a response will take time, acknowledge the
| message and say so.
|
| It's simple: the sender gets a clear signal that their message
| was received and isn't left wondering whether it got lost,
| accidentally deleted or ignored.
|
| This doesn't actually contradict the Napoleon technique... if
| anything, it softens the "he's ignoring me" factor while still
| protecting my time and attention.
| ep103 wrote:
| > For example, in a situation where you can strongly benefit from
| the Napoleon technique, and all the potential negative outcomes
| are minor and unlikely to occur, you will almost always want to
| implement this technique. Conversely, in a situation where there
| is even a moderate likelihood that this technique will lead to
| serious negative outcomes, you will likely want to avoid using
| it, even if it has some potential positive outcomes.
|
| I swear, AI is decreasing everyone's reading and writing
| abilities.
|
| Well written language conveys maximum information (or emotional
| impact, or etc) with minimum verbosity. AI is incentivized to do
| the exact opposite, and results in slop like the above.
|
| The quoted paragraph above takes 71 words to say "You should do
| this technique if the positive potential outcomes outweigh the
| negative ones," which is such a banal thought as to have been a
| waste of the reader's time, the writer's time, and the
| electricity it took to run an AI to generate those sentences.
| veunes wrote:
| The technique is very role-dependent. It works well when (a)
| others are capable of resolving things on their own, and (b) the
| cost of delay is low and bounded. In environments with unclear
| ownership or asymmetric information, delaying can just push
| coordination costs downstream or silently create resentment.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| See also: Napoleon's "four types of soldiers":
| Clever & Lazy: Ideal leaders for high command, mentally sharp but
| avoid unnecessary action, making sound, difficult decisions
| Clever & Hardworking: Excellent for the General Staff, diligent
| and smart, ensuring details are covered Stupid & Lazy:
| Harmless for routine duties, don't cause trouble Stupid &
| Hardworking: Dangerous, must be removed as they create
| unnecessary work and cause damage
| throwaway456754 wrote:
| That was not Napoleon.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord#Cl...
| jebarker wrote:
| Is it the Napeoleon Technique or Ostrich Effect to decide not to
| read the news? I've been doing this for the past ~1 year and I'm
| much happier for it. I'm torn whether I'm just being a bad
| citizen/selfish or genuinely just not paying attention to things
| that I have no influence over.
| kaffekaka wrote:
| I do not read the news either. Reading about all the shit every
| day just makes me feel down, and I am fully aware of what is
| going on in the world without actively seeking out the news.
| Trickle down news is enough.
|
| One is not a bad citizen for not constantly swimming in the
| depressing narratives. In addition, a lot of news are spun to
| make you feel as bad as possible, just like social media
| thrives more the worse you feel.
| kurthr wrote:
| The news, and with it politics, have largely deteriorated to
| the point where only a few percent of the highest quality
| sources are worth any attention. It's all simple narrative
| grievance and entertainment. NYT in particular has fallen
| into oblivion resorting to typo clickbait and hate reads. The
| attention economy has defeated the information economy, with
| this one weird trick...
|
| My prediction for the New Year is that LLMs won't make it
| better.
| dinkleberg wrote:
| I would argue it makes you a better citizen by not falling prey
| to the emotional manipulation that all of the news sources
| blast us with non-stop. There is enough hate and anger in the
| world and the constant stoking of those flames is doing us no
| good. And unless you're actually going to take action and do
| something about it (and I'd argue that posting rants on social
| media does not qualify), then what is the point of absorbing
| that anger.
|
| I know people on both sides who have fallen prey to this and
| are no longer pleasant to be around.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| I basically have never actively sought out World News, and just
| find out "through osmosis" by talking to friends or hearing
| about things coincidentally. Then I go google specific events
| that interest me. I find that most immediate reporting is
| unclear anyways, and adding 2-3 months of hindsight generally
| results in more facts and less speculation. I think this has
| worked really well for me. If the world goes to shit within 3
| months I think I will notice even without reading the news.
|
| I'm not sure if this strategy can generalize to the entire
| population, since I am relying on my friends to mention events
| to me.
| jebarker wrote:
| I guess the counter-argument is that the world is slowly
| going to shit and it's only by paying attention and getting
| involved that we can prevent that. But I don't think that
| justifies daily news reading.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| Much news is biased towards specific political PoVs so that
| if you're not aligned with those views, it can be
| frustrating to hear the same opinions, day after day, on
| matters that should be solved differently.
|
| It takes a lot to move the needle, and I can understand
| anyone who simply doesn't have the energy.
|
| And then other folks ignore international law and simply do
| whatever they want, while others look on or pay the matter
| only lip-service.
| LinuxAmbulance wrote:
| I've been doing this for a little over a decade now and nothing
| bad has happened due to not keeping up with the news.
|
| In fact, my stress levels have declined significantly.
|
| It turns out knowing about events that you have no power to
| influence and do not directly affect you isn't even remotely
| useful.
| xchip wrote:
| That is how Napoleon got defeated in Russia. Russians decided not
| to engage in battle and let the winter solve the problem for
| them.
| sjreese wrote:
| yeah,, well ... a ticket comes in and you sit on it -- thinking
| the user can wait will get YOU cut from the team. We win when we
| all get to the top together -- we languish we some work and
| others do not. EG The question is the Russians are 40 km from
| Kiev -- what are your orders? -- fall back was too late.. ? The
| user have lost connect to the server 90 people are offline -- 8
| hours later -- they went home and reboot the server was too late
| ? you see -- every comms has value and you must act well before
| it is too late!
| mzmzmzm wrote:
| Surely you could have found a source for this concept not
| entirely generated by an LLM?
| jdeibele wrote:
| I'm doing the opposite: I respond immediately but use Gmail's
| scheduled send to send it at a later time.
|
| This does have two disadvantages: I do read everything and
| sometimes I see or talk to somebody before my response reaches
| them. But I'm also not Napoleon.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| Most problems die of old age - AI generated talking dog wisdom on
| youtube.
| jackfranklyn wrote:
| This resonates with something I noticed in client work. A
| surprising number of "urgent" requests resolve themselves if you
| wait a day - the person either figures it out, realises they
| asked the wrong question, or the underlying situation changes.
|
| The tricky part is building enough trust that people don't feel
| ignored. I've started replying with "I'll look at this tomorrow"
| rather than going silent. Same delay, but it signals
| intentionality. People seem fine waiting when they know you've
| acknowledged the request.
|
| Though I'll admit the line between strategic delay and just being
| slow is thin when you're managing multiple things at once.
| koonsolo wrote:
| Some problems solve themselves, and other problems multiply.
| Knowing the difference is key.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| only thing i'd watchout for is the bystander effect when doing
| this technique.
| fallinditch wrote:
| Reminds me of the Volcano Technique for filing (old school paper)
| - don't file it, as it piles up the 'hot' documents tend to end
| up in the middle of the pile near the top.
| ridiculous_leke wrote:
| Have used it quite often. It goes well with "pick your battles".
| As the article pointed out, the trick is to schedule the
| tasks(mostly non-urgent ones which fall into top-right of the
| Eisenhover matrix) and check the progress on it.
| Animats wrote:
| That's how bug reports work now. Stall, and the bug report goes
| away.
| thedudeabides5 wrote:
| told my VCs I was going Napoleon mode and they gave me secondary
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