The Napoleon Technique: Postponing things to increase productivity
effectiviology.com
effectiviology.com
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
(Always enjoy when that construction is actually valid, people often miss the reflexive part)
"What do you call a student who passed their medical exam with the lowest grade in their year?"
"A doctor"
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.
These days a 3 is no longer a conceded pass, it's a failure that entitles you to re-attempt your final exam.
Related:
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.
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)
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.
Gmail also has a built-in "Add to Tasks" but I never use that because it's too confusing for me.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Margaret Thatcher
(To which a clever friend of mine retorted: Because you know you can do nothing the next day)
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.
My prediction for the New Year is that LLMs won't make it better.
I know people on both sides who have fallen prey to this and are no longer pleasant to be around.
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
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.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46017175
But I couldn't say how many people it cured of reading the news so far.
After two weeks: it solved itself, he committed suicide.
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?
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.
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.
After all rich people and their rich kids never do anything wrong /s
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.
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.
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...
Utter fallacy. Expertise in teaching requires training, experience and/or natural talent.
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'
I forget the source of that, but it makes me chuckle.
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.
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.
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" :-)
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.
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 :).
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 damagehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord#Cl...
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.
The paragraph you criticized was part of the original text: https://web.archive.org/web/20200909104647/https://effectivi...
So: Yes, it could have been more concise. Nope, we humans can write much too long text for the sake of writing text, which some of us can do better than others (e.g., better than me), and we can do that with no artificial assistance or substitute - we do it just fine using our own (in)ability ;-)
* Many layers to this joke. Think about his imprisonment and escape. To keep it thoughtful: The impact of the Code Napoléon 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.
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.
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.
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.
Everything will suddenly become "URGENT" then.
The article has about 90% more words than is required in my opinion.
... and if you don't care what those people think of you.