The Best Productivity Tricks Used By Evil Dictators
I want to make a fun episode that isn’t really talked about amongst the people we learn productivity and motivational inspiration. Now these tips you can learn from people who have questionable morals are insightful and interesting. So even though you don’t necessarily want to ‘learn’ from an evil dictator, doesn’t mean it isn’t worth hearing about.
To be fair, a lot of the successful people we look up to such as Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos for their achievements but let’s not overlook that they too have questionable morals when it comes to business.
Now leaders can be manipulative and like to take advantage of other people’s minds when they are weak, remove them from their friends, and give speeches that empower them with what they want to hear.
There’s 6 things that evil dictators do in certain situations.
1. Bring only the difficult problems to people when their willpower is at their weakest.
As evident when you get tired, your mind is in a different place and you might not make the best decision available. A successful dictator knows when to use this.
The late Fidel Castro would purposely hold his meetings at 4am with people who had to get out of bed so they would be tired. Joseph Stalin of Russia also used this tactic during WWII.
Now the idea is to work with people when they are tired or not at 100% of their best. Fatigue is real and why we value resting as much as working hard. It’s easily exploitable especially if you have meetings that really early or late so you can work at your best.
2. Have a 5 year plan
The 5 year plan was created by Stalin who used this to keep track of his economical policies and readiness of future problems. It was widely used throughout Russia in politics and was adopted in other Asian countries.
While your 5 year plan will be a lot smaller than a dictator’s the actual idea of having one is great. This is similar to asking yourself to where do you see yourself in 5 years? It’s a question that everyone should wonder.
So here’s some questions to ask yourself:
What will your typical day look like?
What would your house be?
What would you be looking forward to?
Who would be your friends?
Write your answers down of where you see it being in the next 5 years.
Planning ahead of 5 years is plants a strong end goal that you can be working towards right now. It’ll give yourself meaning if you don’t have so already.
3. Remove threats of your power
Dictators have to hold their power in order to do their job, and there’s tons of problems that arise that can take that away. This could even mean removing their friends and families who probably want their power.
What dictators do is to make an outer circle want that power while having an inner circle praising them constantly.
Fidel Castro was well known for this as he purposely left Che Guevara stranded after the revolution of Cuba because he didn’t want him to take his power.
Now what can we learn from this? Is being knowledgeable about your competition wether its for your business or a position that you want to be in. Not saying you should do bad things to people, but rather acknowledge the threats that preventing your dream from happening.
4. Have a ‘Cult of Personality’
Now a cult of personality is a tactic that dictators use which is to present themselves as the best person they can be. To an extent, they show themselves as gods. This is through propaganda and being widely known everywhere.
We see it with Kim Jon-il of North Korea. As point out in many book about his doctrines with his people, they actually believe that he can control the weather with his clothes.
Nicolae Ceaușescu, a dictator of Romania would call himself the “The Genius of the Carpathians” and Benito Mussolini of Italy would always look taller than he actually is in his photo to look more powerful.
Now what can you learn from this? Being a cult of personality isn’t always a bad thing. You can be likeable, charismatic, and trusting without manipulating or telling lies. It’s about showing yourself in the best light, but no need to try to be something that you aren’t.
5. Make powerful and eccentric speeches
Now Adolf Hitler was one of the worst people to live yet there’s a lot to learn from him. One was his ability to make the most influential speeches of all time. He broke the mold of what people expected from speeches at the time.
They looked at speeches as complexed and highly intellectual. what Hitler did was to make them exciting with emotions and stories. He was able to talk about the problems on a personal level and made him like able.
While the content was horrible, his delivery was astounding. He used ways to plant ideas into people’s minds. He obsessed over the speeches to make them perfect.
What you can learn from this is remember the audience when you’re talking to. Why are they listening? What should they get out of it? How can you keep their attention? These are the questions that made hitler and other well known speakers so great.
6. Learning from experiences is better than learning from books
Practice makes perfect is a strong mantra all the dictators learned to love. Julius Ceasar fought on the frontline with his soldiers so he had first hand experience of the situation. He even lived with them as they go about their days and believed in the experience is the greatest teacher.
The infamous Napoleon Bonaparte did the same as he worked him self up in the french army. Mao also with his peasants that he wanted to control.
You can learn from this is by knowing how things work by doing it yourself. They practiced what they wanted to rule.
As we may have learned in our first jobs that gained more knowledge than school. Likewise this is why internships are so important. When you have experience, you have qualifications.
Now you have the power to become a dictator, but you can be something more and be remembered for a having a better impact. So be courageous without the negativity.
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