The Best Productivity Tricks Used by Evil Dictators
History is full of evil dictators, and while they had their share of bad qualities, it cannot be denied that they were effective in achieving their goal. This is what we can learn from them, despite their evil nature.
This post, originally published in 2012, is part of our Evil Week series on Lifehacker where we take a look at the dark side of goal achievement. Sometimes evil is justified, and sometimes knowing evil means knowing how to defeat it. I want more? Visit our wicked week tags page .
Dictators manipulate people when their willpower is weak, they get rid of close friends and give incendiary speeches that can convince people to do anything. Here are six things, both good and bad, that we can learn from how dictators dealt with situations.
Forcing people to make difficult decisions when their willpower is weak
As we said earlier, working when you are tired and suffering from decision fatigue leads to poor decision making. A good dictator knows exactly how to take advantage of this.
Cuban dictator Fidel Castro loved 4am meetings, in which he often lifted people out of bed to put them at a distinct disadvantage. Russian dictator Joseph Stalin would have used this tactic as well, even meeting with Winston Churchill late at night to devise plans for an attack on Germany .
How you can use it : In both of these cases, the idea is to catch your enemies (or allies) when their willpower is low and they are willing to do anything to work with you. On the other hand, it’s a reminder that decision fatigue is real and easy to exploit in many ways, so avoid meeting your boss at 4 a.m. if possible (or give yourself plenty of time to wake up early). Photo by Harry Knight .
Make a “five-year plan” for achieving personal goals
The Five Year Plan, popularized by Joseph Stalin, was an economic plan that aimed to achieve a specific end goal such as industrialization, lower unemployment, and a general preparedness for possible problems. The idea of a five-year plan was not only adopted in Soviet Russia, but also used in the People’s Republic of China, Cuba, Pakistan, Vietnam and other countries.
How you can use it : While your five-year plan is likely to be less ambitious than most dictators, the idea is still solid. In fact, we’ve already talked about drawing up a five-year financial plan and “how do you see yourself in five years?” is a popular interview question you should answer .
To understand what you want and how to work towards those goals, the financial blog The Simple Dollar recommends that you create a five-year sketch :
Here are some elements to think about when creating this sketch: What will your work be like? What will your family be like? What will your appearance be? What will your home be like? What would a typical day be like? Will you be looking forward to? What will your social circle look like? I encourage you to try and write down at least ten traits for each of these questions, which describe how you would like your life to be five years from now.
Planning five years ahead is a great way to understand what you want and how you want to get it. We’ve shown you how to prioritize these goals using hierarchy , how to resist when your brain gets in the way of you reaching your goals , and even how working towards your goals in public can help . Photo by Pascal .
Eliminate threats to your power
To retain power, a dictator often needs to get rid of threats. This means getting rid of your closest friends and advisors when they get too close to you or you feel they need your authority. Threat alone makes those outside the circle vie for power and attention, while the inner circle gets stuck sucking up to you.
Almost every dictator uses this tactic to one degree or another, but Fidel Castro and Alberto Fujimoro from Peru are especially good at it. As Stephen Lewitzki points out in the Journal of Democracy , Fujimori is best known for his suicide in 1992 when he closed Congress, suspended the constitution, and shed the judiciary in order to gain control.
In their book A Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Policy, authors Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith describe this idea as “Rule 1: Keep your victorious coalition as small as possible.”
In this respect, Fidel Castro was a legend. After the Cuban revolution was successful, 12 of its 20 ministers resigned (or were expelled). This included the revolutionary Che Guevara, Comrade Castro. Castro sent Guevera to Bolivia on a mission in 1967, then cut his funding and left him there because Castro saw Guevera as a threat.
How it can be used : If someone is challenging your authority, the easiest way to deal with it is to get rid of that person. Be careful and take care of everyone who attacks your position. On the other hand, if you want to move up the corporate ladder, you will either want to be especially polite with the person you work for so that he does not feel threatened. Alternatively, you can try to get rid of them before they get rid of you, but this is much more risky (and not so good). Photo by Corey Doctorow .
Embrace your personality cult
The personality cult is a well-known dictator’s ploy. The idea is to present yourself as the most amazing possible. To do this, dictators acquired ridiculous habits, posted their photographs all over the country, or even gave themselves nicknames.
The most striking (and perhaps over-the-top) example of this was Kim Jong Il of North Korea, also known as the supreme leader of North Korea. Chen Il’s personality cult had risen to such an extent that, according to authors Chol-Hwang Kang and Pierre Rigulo in their book Pyongyang Aquariums: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag , people truly believed that Chen Il could control the weather with his outfits.
This is a common practice among dictators. Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu gave himself the title “Genius of the Carpathians”, Benito Mussollini from Italy made himself taller by allowing only certain angles to be filmed , Muammar Gaddafi in Libya hired only female bodyguards known as the “Amazon Guard” , and Cambodia – Pol Pot rarely allowed himself to be photographed.
How it can be used : Your personality cult is unlikely to become as vast as the cult of a dictator, but an idea you can embrace and control is essential to things like finding a job. As we mentioned earlier , shameless self-promotion during interviews is not a bad thing. More important is establishing and maintaining your online identity , which is essentially a non-dictatorial version of the “personality cult.” If you control what others see, you can control their perception of you and look much better than you are in real life.
Speak directly and powerfully
By many estimates, Adolf Hitler of Germany was one of the best public speakers in the history of a dictator. This was at least partly due to his timing. Before Hitler came to power, public speaking was often an intellectual pursuit filled with challenging lectures. Hitler’s speech, on the other hand, was agitated, emotional and filled with slogans. In Richard Evan’s book The Coming of the Third Reich, he describes Hitler’s public speeches as follows:
[Hitler] got most of his oratorical success by telling his listeners what they wanted to hear. He used simple, understandable language, understandable to ordinary people, short sentences, strong, emotional slogans. Often he began his speech quietly to grab the attention of the audience, he gradually climaxed, his low, rather hoarse voice rising in pitch, rising in a crescendo to a ranting and screaming finale accompanied by carefully rehearsed dramatic gestures … while he drove the audience into a frenzy. There was no qualification in what he said; everything was absolute, uncompromising, irrevocable, unchanging, unchanging, final … he radiated self-confidence, aggression, faith in the final triumph of his party, even a sense of destiny.
Of course, all of Hitler’s speeches were about rhetoric and absolution. While the content itself was terrible, it undoubtedly had a knack for convincing people to agree with it – even when he openly called them stupid. Bruce Lobs of the Department of Communications and Rhetorical Studies at Idaho State University notes that Hitler used several tricks to win people over to his side . This included arguments that used passion above reason, black and white reasoning as propaganda, and, of course, repetition.
How it can be used : In a way, Hitler’s speeches were similar to what we talked about when we showed you how to put ideas in someone’s minds , but Hitler was much more over the top. However, there is a lot to learn from his style of speech. Hitler was an obsessive editor of his speeches, and he constantly delivered them in simple language that everyone could understand. Keep this in mind when giving a presentation at work, building morale in the office after a hard day, or even presenting an argument to a friend. Simplify your speech (as opposed to trying to sound smart), put some emotion into it, build it up slowly, and the audience will eat your hands. Photo by Liton All .
Learn from experience, not books
The strongest and most persistent dictators embraced the idea of ”practice leads to excellence” and at some point stepped forward to gain experience. Julius Caesar , for example, fought on the front lines with soldiers, slept in the same beds and learned from them before he came up with the quote: “Experience is the teacher of everything.”
Napoleon Bonaparte , of course, did the same while he went through the French Revolution (before eventually becoming a dictator).Vladimir Lenin was very well-read, but still spent time practicing his craft, writing brochures and talking to his people. Mao went even further and used his peasant upbringing not only as an excuse for not taking a shower , but also as fuel for his control over the peasants.
How it can be used : The point is, experience is more important to getting a good job than a ton of reading material. New experiences are important , and with deliberate practice, you will eventually become the best.
As we know, in the labor market, hands-on experience is often better than grades or books. Internships are more valuable than grades because if you have experience but no direct qualifications, you are the best candidate for the job. Heck, even when we’re hiring here at Lifehacker, running a personal blog with writing examples is way more rewarding than previous, irrelevant work experience. If you don’t have this experience, do it yourself. Photo by @sculp_official .
The title image was illustrated by Dominique Rabrun. You can find his illustrations on his personal website or blog .