5 ms·

“ I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking;

“ I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage.“ - General and Commander-in-Chief Weimar Republic https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord

zwnow 1y ago
Guess I fit the stupid and lazy category, interesting thoughts though. I act like I work half of the day and the other half I procrastinate and work simultaneously. Part of it may be ADHD but somehow it works out for me... Still getting my work done.
- repeekad 1y ago
  Or you’re clever and lazy but haven’t found the right general to promote you to high leadership yet. I think of Sir Ken Robinson whenever I hear anyone say ADHD is synonymous with “stupid” https://youtu.be/iG9CE55wbtY https://youtu.be/iG9CE55wbtY
- rigrassm 1y ago
  I had to double check that I wasn't sleep posting or something cause that's literally what 90% of my days are like. Probably 5% of the time I'll get stuck completely and those days are immensely stressful but on the flip side, the 5% of the time I actually am able to silence the procrastination demon in my ear, those days are so satisfyingly productive.
- apercu 1y ago
  That kind of work avoidance sounds like a lot of work. Advice would be to try to find a job or role doing something you’re interested it. A lot of the subject matter of my work is not that interesting to me, and the politics and lack of any sort of vision or leadership at most organizations these days makes project work sometimes stressful. But (maybe as a survival mechanism?) I’ve found that focusing on improving how I do my work and taking pride in my output (even if no one else notices) is a way for me to have some control over my work day. This way it’s about me and I’m not looking for external validation (which isn’t coming for a myriad of reasons that would be exhausting to list here). My point is that we all (most of us anyway) have to work so my theory is that it’s best to try to find some balance of interesting, pays ok and you’re good enough at it that you can find some meaning in your work. To me, work avoidance sounds mentally draining.
  - fc417fc802 1y ago
    > work avoidance sounds mentally draining. Procrastination isn't an active thing, it just happens. If that doesn't make sense to you that probably means you don't have that particular issue.
    - apercu 1y ago
      I do, only I've spent a lot of time the last 15 years thinking objectively about my strengths and weaknesses. I am so "lazy" that I work hard nearly every day. Let me explain. 1. Big tasks are stressful because, well, they're big. So I break them down in to components and chip away every day at them so that I am not overwhelmed. I call this taking care of my future self. 2. I love to have days where I get to wake up and do whatever I want to do that day. But I can't enjoy that freedom with bad conscious tasks hanging over my head, so I work my ass off to have those days. For example, my goal for the ENTIRE summer was to spread a yard of mulch, re-build two firewood racks, re-stack and move the logs that are in different areas to keep them seasoning, split and stack a cord of wood for next winter, lay posts for a fruit tree espalier, rebuild shed doors, cut back the wood line 10 feet. These are all already done because we had a nice weather spring. On top of that I changed the fluids on the tractor, the lawnmower, the riding lawnmower and cleaned the gutters. 3. Future proof my job. I got ISO 27001 certification in the spring during dry project spell, and I'm now doing my CCP certification. I have also made it a goal to do 2 hours of business development and networking every week. 4. I do billing on weekdays now, no longer on the weekends. 5. Exercise and sleep. Eat healthy. Don't drink alcohol. This means I wake up early and fresh and motivated to do a couple hours of early work every day. This usually means I'm done with my workday by 2:00pm. 6. Remove toxic relationships from your life. This could be friends, an employer, a client, whatever. They suck your happiness which impacts your productivity. 7. Don't keep up with the Jones's. Figure out what makes you happy. I've never cared about how people view me, I wear jeans and t-shirts mostly. Fancy cars & houses do nothing for me (I live in a great house on an amazing property in a very special area next to a city I have always loved even though it wasn't my "home", but it's not a McMansion). My car is low mileage and 10 years old. 8. Don't do ALL the hobbies. Find the one or two that you really get a lot out of and focus on those. For me it's music. Did I know or do much of this when I was 20? no. 30? not really. Maybe some of this just comes from experience. But mostly, don't believe the hype.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- bitwize 1y ago
  Sounds like upper management material!
ionwake 1y ago
I worked as a small elite unit in a world leading airline, team of about 5 poeple that went down to basically 1 ( after I was finally labelled as "difficult to work with" - ( I actually was always quiet calm friendly used to working in critical teams and worked basically close to 12 hour days. Eventually a deadline was missed and "someone had to be blamed". Having worked in countless companies I was ready for this and calm, basically fine with it, just kept working hard. But I always remember of this one "middle manager" product lead or something, was constantly interrupting people, sitting with them, walking through what they were doing, following them, and eventually made a private accusation that I was "insulting other members of the team". ( I was basically silo'd knew no one, and also knew better than to criticise anyone). Stay with me... I got chewed out by a seemingly random , mild mannered usually polite manager who never had a problem with me, infront of a few people ( I didnt say anything - instinctively I just knew this mean I was about to be let go, nothing I would say would help, and tensions were high due to deadlines ), accused of being troublesome etc. I calmly said I didnt know what he was stating, he calmed down and left. Then I was "released from my contract". As a consultant I don't get upset by these things, I am fine with it, I work as hard as I can and when the contract is over I leave. However I will never forget how the one man, who never actually did any work, who interrupted everyone, and who made these accusations, was basically doing everything he could do "seem like he had a job". He was infact, not quite the "hardworking and stupid". My only amendment that perhaps he was a special version of this, the "hardworking and unethical". Only ever saw that once in nearly 2 decades of working but Im sure there were many more I didnt pick up on, He stayed on, causing trouble, disrupting etc, and I always realised its because he kept a close profile to his superior, who had no eyes on the ground, and blindly trusted him due to an overload of work. EDIT > Sorry I want to emphasise the main take away in my rant, is that the polite quiet well meaning, happy, working, well adjusted polite english gentleman behind me who was in management was suddenly shouting at me in front of others because he felt shocked at the accusation that I was a bad person, obviously which mean I deserved a dressing down, stood up and just starting shouting at me. This was a calm, relatively intelligent person, with his things in order, not affiliated with my project. Yet he just assumed an email chain from management around him, possibly with a very accusatory snippet from the trouble maker, was enough to convince him to act unprofessional and give me the dressing down. If anyone would have got into trouble or sued, it would have been this well meaning "smart" individual. That was my other main point. In the end, there were no moves I could have made, but it was incredibly surprising how many poeple were easily manipulated into being unprofessional etc because of false information coming from their tier / one tier up. Whole narratives painted. It was quite interesting. Eventually that individual must have been let go, but what a desperate, unethical way to live.
gadders 1y ago
It's almost like you could create a 2 x 2 matrix of Useful Vs Valued - Not Useful, Not Valued: Get good or change jobs/industries. - Not Useful, Valued: talks a good game (or is doing useful stuff that is not apparent) -Useful, Not Valued: Could be useful at non-strategic stuff, or does good work without self-marketing, or has bad management and needs to leave. - Useful, Valued: Ideal situation.
- steveBK123 1y ago
  Some of these may also work in different life stages. Want reasonable job security & compensation but currently pursuing a masters / raising an infant / dealing with elderly parental care - "useful&not valued" may not be so bad for a few years.
  - JadeNB 1y ago
    Isn't "not valued" at odds with "reasonable job security?"
    - steveBK123 1y ago
      If there's a grid of 4 types of people, the two boxes of "not useful" are usually let go first
      - closewith 1y ago
        That's missing the point here completely, as it's not the useless who are let go first, it's the unvalued.
      - lovich 1y ago
        You respect your managers a lot more than I would. The not valued column is let go first via the fact that the value function is what decides if their managers care or not
        steveBK123 1y ago
greatgib 1y ago
And guess which ones got hold of most leadership positions in current days...
- thewileyone 1y ago
  It's always been that way ...
temporallobe 1y ago
In reality it’s more like a line graph with stupid to clever on the Y axis, and lazy to hardworking on the X axis.
- jrvieira 1y ago
  Yeah that general doesn't seem too clever
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
MrDrDr 1y ago
Thank you for posting this. Someone had told me this and attributed it to Clausewitz - so I've never been able to track it down. I've used it to make the case that laziness is not always a bad thing - i.e. lazy people find it easier to delegate.
Archelaos 1y ago
Beware: anyone who confuses bourmonts with management rules belongs in the last category.
stanford_labrat 1y ago
Love this quote and tell it to friends often. I strive to be the clever and lazy officer. It was also eye opening to meet the first hardworking+stupid individual of my career and see just how much damage they really could do.
nand_gate 1y ago
My experiences track this, being lazy and clever is a cheat code in many ways.
roncesvalles 1y ago
Unfortunately I've found that big tech companies are stuffed with "stupid and hardworking", an inevitable consequence of perf eval cultures that value work output over anything else.

zwnow 1y ago

Guess I fit the stupid and lazy category, interesting thoughts though. I act like I work half of the day and the other half I procrastinate and work simultaneously. Part of it may be ADHD but somehow it works out for me... Still getting my work done.

repeekad 1y ago
Or you’re clever and lazy but haven’t found the right general to promote you to high leadership yet. I think of Sir Ken Robinson whenever I hear anyone say ADHD is synonymous with “stupid” https://youtu.be/iG9CE55wbtY https://youtu.be/iG9CE55wbtY
rigrassm 1y ago
I had to double check that I wasn't sleep posting or something cause that's literally what 90% of my days are like. Probably 5% of the time I'll get stuck completely and those days are immensely stressful but on the flip side, the 5% of the time I actually am able to silence the procrastination demon in my ear, those days are so satisfyingly productive.
apercu 1y ago
That kind of work avoidance sounds like a lot of work. Advice would be to try to find a job or role doing something you’re interested it. A lot of the subject matter of my work is not that interesting to me, and the politics and lack of any sort of vision or leadership at most organizations these days makes project work sometimes stressful. But (maybe as a survival mechanism?) I’ve found that focusing on improving how I do my work and taking pride in my output (even if no one else notices) is a way for me to have some control over my work day. This way it’s about me and I’m not looking for external validation (which isn’t coming for a myriad of reasons that would be exhausting to list here). My point is that we all (most of us anyway) have to work so my theory is that it’s best to try to find some balance of interesting, pays ok and you’re good enough at it that you can find some meaning in your work. To me, work avoidance sounds mentally draining.
- fc417fc802 1y ago
  > work avoidance sounds mentally draining. Procrastination isn't an active thing, it just happens. If that doesn't make sense to you that probably means you don't have that particular issue.
  - apercu 1y ago
    I do, only I've spent a lot of time the last 15 years thinking objectively about my strengths and weaknesses. I am so "lazy" that I work hard nearly every day. Let me explain. 1. Big tasks are stressful because, well, they're big. So I break them down in to components and chip away every day at them so that I am not overwhelmed. I call this taking care of my future self. 2. I love to have days where I get to wake up and do whatever I want to do that day. But I can't enjoy that freedom with bad conscious tasks hanging over my head, so I work my ass off to have those days. For example, my goal for the ENTIRE summer was to spread a yard of mulch, re-build two firewood racks, re-stack and move the logs that are in different areas to keep them seasoning, split and stack a cord of wood for next winter, lay posts for a fruit tree espalier, rebuild shed doors, cut back the wood line 10 feet. These are all already done because we had a nice weather spring. On top of that I changed the fluids on the tractor, the lawnmower, the riding lawnmower and cleaned the gutters. 3. Future proof my job. I got ISO 27001 certification in the spring during dry project spell, and I'm now doing my CCP certification. I have also made it a goal to do 2 hours of business development and networking every week. 4. I do billing on weekdays now, no longer on the weekends. 5. Exercise and sleep. Eat healthy. Don't drink alcohol. This means I wake up early and fresh and motivated to do a couple hours of early work every day. This usually means I'm done with my workday by 2:00pm. 6. Remove toxic relationships from your life. This could be friends, an employer, a client, whatever. They suck your happiness which impacts your productivity. 7. Don't keep up with the Jones's. Figure out what makes you happy. I've never cared about how people view me, I wear jeans and t-shirts mostly. Fancy cars & houses do nothing for me (I live in a great house on an amazing property in a very special area next to a city I have always loved even though it wasn't my "home", but it's not a McMansion). My car is low mileage and 10 years old. 8. Don't do ALL the hobbies. Find the one or two that you really get a lot out of and focus on those. For me it's music. Did I know or do much of this when I was 20? no. 30? not really. Maybe some of this just comes from experience. But mostly, don't believe the hype.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
bitwize 1y ago
Sounds like upper management material!

ionwake 1y ago

I worked as a small elite unit in a world leading airline, team of about 5 poeple that went down to basically 1 ( after I was finally labelled as "difficult to work with" - ( I actually was always quiet calm friendly used to working in critical teams and worked basically close to 12 hour days. Eventually a deadline was missed and "someone had to be blamed". Having worked in countless companies I was ready for this and calm, basically fine with it, just kept working hard. But I always remember of this one "middle manager" product lead or something, was constantly interrupting people, sitting with them, walking through what they were doing, following them, and eventually made a private accusation that I was "insulting other members of the team". ( I was basically silo'd knew no one, and also knew better than to criticise anyone). Stay with me... I got chewed out by a seemingly random , mild mannered usually polite manager who never had a problem with me, infront of a few people ( I didnt say anything - instinctively I just knew this mean I was about to be let go, nothing I would say would help, and tensions were high due to deadlines ), accused of being troublesome etc. I calmly said I didnt know what he was stating, he calmed down and left. Then I was "released from my contract". As a consultant I don't get upset by these things, I am fine with it, I work as hard as I can and when the contract is over I leave. However I will never forget how the one man, who never actually did any work, who interrupted everyone, and who made these accusations, was basically doing everything he could do "seem like he had a job". He was infact, not quite the "hardworking and stupid". My only amendment that perhaps he was a special version of this, the "hardworking and unethical". Only ever saw that once in nearly 2 decades of working but Im sure there were many more I didnt pick up on, He stayed on, causing trouble, disrupting etc, and I always realised its because he kept a close profile to his superior, who had no eyes on the ground, and blindly trusted him due to an overload of work. EDIT > Sorry I want to emphasise the main take away in my rant, is that the polite quiet well meaning, happy, working, well adjusted polite english gentleman behind me who was in management was suddenly shouting at me in front of others because he felt shocked at the accusation that I was a bad person, obviously which mean I deserved a dressing down, stood up and just starting shouting at me. This was a calm, relatively intelligent person, with his things in order, not affiliated with my project. Yet he just assumed an email chain from management around him, possibly with a very accusatory snippet from the trouble maker, was enough to convince him to act unprofessional and give me the dressing down. If anyone would have got into trouble or sued, it would have been this well meaning "smart" individual. That was my other main point. In the end, there were no moves I could have made, but it was incredibly surprising how many poeple were easily manipulated into being unprofessional etc because of false information coming from their tier / one tier up. Whole narratives painted. It was quite interesting. Eventually that individual must have been let go, but what a desperate, unethical way to live.

gadders 1y ago

It's almost like you could create a 2 x 2 matrix of Useful Vs Valued - Not Useful, Not Valued: Get good or change jobs/industries. - Not Useful, Valued: talks a good game (or is doing useful stuff that is not apparent) -Useful, Not Valued: Could be useful at non-strategic stuff, or does good work without self-marketing, or has bad management and needs to leave. - Useful, Valued: Ideal situation.

steveBK123 1y ago
Some of these may also work in different life stages. Want reasonable job security & compensation but currently pursuing a masters / raising an infant / dealing with elderly parental care - "useful&not valued" may not be so bad for a few years.
- JadeNB 1y ago
  Isn't "not valued" at odds with "reasonable job security?"
  - steveBK123 1y ago
    If there's a grid of 4 types of people, the two boxes of "not useful" are usually let go first
    - closewith 1y ago
      That's missing the point here completely, as it's not the useless who are let go first, it's the unvalued.
    - lovich 1y ago
      You respect your managers a lot more than I would. The not valued column is let go first via the fact that the value function is what decides if their managers care or not
      - steveBK123 1y ago

greatgib 1y ago

And guess which ones got hold of most leadership positions in current days...

thewileyone 1y ago
It's always been that way ...

temporallobe 1y ago

In reality it’s more like a line graph with stupid to clever on the Y axis, and lazy to hardworking on the X axis.

jrvieira 1y ago
Yeah that general doesn't seem too clever

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

MrDrDr 1y ago

Thank you for posting this. Someone had told me this and attributed it to Clausewitz - so I've never been able to track it down. I've used it to make the case that laziness is not always a bad thing - i.e. lazy people find it easier to delegate.

Archelaos 1y ago

Beware: anyone who confuses bourmonts with management rules belongs in the last category.

stanford_labrat 1y ago

Love this quote and tell it to friends often. I strive to be the clever and lazy officer. It was also eye opening to meet the first hardworking+stupid individual of my career and see just how much damage they really could do.

nand_gate 1y ago

My experiences track this, being lazy and clever is a cheat code in many ways.

roncesvalles 1y ago

Unfortunately I've found that big tech companies are stuffed with "stupid and hardworking", an inevitable consequence of perf eval cultures that value work output over anything else.