I’ve heard two approaches to dealing with all of the tasks work and life through at you. Both seem to be championed by modern thinkers and yet they are diametrically opposed.
Supposedly Napoleon would wait a week or two before opening any letter he received. The idea was that most problems would resolve themselves, and there’s no sense wasting time on something that doesn’t actually need your help.
It makes sense when you think about it, and in my experience is absolutely true.
It’s easy to assume it’s just a terrible idea and that Napoleon happened to succeed in spite of this poor strategy. You’d think that in war, particularly, having rapid knowledge and acting on it would be a game changer. And my understanding is that it was once it was possible.
And yet, there’s some logic to it.
It is completely contrary to what I’d consider to be a considerably more popular idea among efficiency experts and self-help gurus. The idea that you need to proactively manage everything so that you avoid ever having to put out fires.
This is certainly more of the approach I’ve attempted to adopt in my life, and it does seem to be effective at making things calm and predictable and also allowing me to be as productive as possible.
It’s one of the primary components of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and basically every clone of that book ever released. Supposedly most people are just flying by the seat of their pants and simply react to avoidable emergencies as they come along.
So what do I make of this?
I want to believe there is some kind of middle ground between the two concepts. However I think the reality may be a bit more nuanced.
I’m not sure you have to be one or the other.
Something tells me that it’s more an issue of figuring out the things that are in your control, important, and also your responsibility.
Napoleon choosing to remain ignorant of problems within his empire sort of feels like procrastination. He could have simply read the letters right away and determined that he could ignore them. Or had one of his people simply respond and say that it’s their responsibility to solve it.
Or perhaps, had he delegated and established roles and responsibilities better from the start, he would have never even received the letter to begin with because the issue would have been dealt with locally.
I think there is a very small amount of middle ground for some things, however. For example, my recent post suggesting that responding to emails within a day is just fine, and that responding in an hour is totally unnecessary.
I receive emails several times a week with people having issues with their devices or their website that they quickly resolve on their own and let me know they don’t need me.
I think there’s room for that.
But for the most part, if I’m focusing on things that are important, in my control, and my responsibility, I shouldn’t be wasting too much time on other tasks regardless.
I suspect that people who employ the Napoleon strategy really only benefit from it because they end up only putting time towards the really important things, and end up ignoring most of the distractions.
That feels like more of a side-effect than the actual intention.
I have plenty of posts discussing more about that.
So overall, I’d say I can safely ignore the Napoleon approach and focus on being proactive.