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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
I went for a while without reading any news but my grandmother told me I should always stay informed. I figured she was right so I at least keep abreast of things but don't read too deeply.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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" :-)
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.
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 :).
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
> 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.
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 ;-)
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 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.
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.
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.
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".
I have a nice application of this technique: when I saw some good discount of something online that I'm not sure whether I really need, I put it aside. Later when I looked at it again, it is often out of stock, so nothing to think about anymore.
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.
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!
Hello! Have you ever felt like too important to answer questions? Guess what! This one weird trick will turn you into a French General in the boardroom!
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
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.
> 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.
increase productivity in invading countries and killing their inhabitants? is there any Attila Method or Pinochet Hack i could complement the Napoleon Technique with?
Ozzie_osman|1 month ago
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|1 month ago
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|1 month ago
taydotis|1 month ago
PeterStuer|1 month ago
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|1 month ago
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.
im3w1l|1 month ago
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.
veunes|1 month ago
123pie123|1 month ago
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)
toyg|1 month ago
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.
HPsquared|1 month ago
JimDabell|1 month ago
Related:
https://structuredprocrastination.com
georgeecollins|1 month ago
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.
modeless|1 month ago
Ozzie_osman|1 month ago
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.
prof-dr-ir|1 month ago
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...
arjie|1 month ago
Gmail also has a built-in "Add to Tasks" but I never use that because it's too confusing for me.
aed|1 month ago
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.
darknavi|1 month ago
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.
veunes|1 month ago
reactordev|1 month ago
5d41402abc4b|1 month ago
udfalkso|1 month ago
Margaret Thatcher
(To which a clever friend of mine retorted: Because you know you can do nothing the next day)
jmward01|1 month ago
chrisjj|1 month ago
Kirr|1 month ago
jebarker|1 month ago
pinkmuffinere|1 month ago
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.
dinkleberg|1 month ago
I know people on both sides who have fallen prey to this and are no longer pleasant to be around.
kaffekaka|1 month ago
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.
LinuxAmbulance|1 month ago
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.
jamesfinlayson|1 month ago
vazkus|1 month ago
- 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.
cjs_ac|1 month ago
barrenko|1 month ago
madaxe_again|1 month ago
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.
rvba|1 month ago
After two weeks: it solved itself, he committed suicide.
monkeydust|1 month ago
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'
jackfranklyn|1 month ago
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.
theiz|1 month ago
Duanemclemore|1 month ago
I forget the source of that, but it makes me chuckle.
hulitu|1 month ago
wslh|1 month ago
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.
yarekt|1 month ago
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.
josefrichter|1 month ago
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" :-)
acc0362|1 month ago
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|1 month ago
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 :).
unknown|1 month ago
[deleted]
osullivj|1 month ago
ihtef|1 month ago
chrisjj|1 month ago
ridiculous_leke|1 month ago
toyg|1 month ago
fallinditch|1 month ago
CGMthrowaway|1 month ago
throwaway456754|1 month ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord#Cl...
xaoz|1 month ago
The article has about 90% more words than is required in my opinion.
ep103|1 month ago
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.
archi42|1 month ago
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 ;-)
wjnc|1 month ago
* 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.
veunes|1 month ago
rvba|1 month ago
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|1 month ago
unknown|1 month ago
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zoom6628|1 month ago
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.
upsuper|1 month ago
jdeibele|1 month ago
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.
sogjis|1 month ago
sjreese|1 month ago
kp1197|1 month ago
nottorp|1 month ago
Everything will suddenly become "URGENT" then.
franktankbank|1 month ago
shashanoid|1 month ago
misja111|1 month ago
hahahahhaah|1 month ago
bdcravens|1 month ago
xchip|1 month ago
ravedave5|1 month ago
emsign|1 month ago
koonsolo|1 month ago
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mzmzmzm|1 month ago
thelastgallon|1 month ago
Animats|1 month ago
unknown|1 month ago
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m3kw9|1 month ago
chrisjj|1 month ago
... and if you don't care what those people think of you.
memming|1 month ago
thedudeabides5|1 month ago
MORPHOICES|1 month ago
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bschmidt500|1 month ago
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fleroviumna|1 month ago
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bschmidt950|1 month ago
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croisillon|1 month ago