"There are only four types of officer.
First, there are the lazy, stupid ones. Leave them alone, they do no harm.
Second, there are the hard-working intelligent ones. They make excellent
staff officers, ensuring that every detail is properly considered.
Third, there are the hard-working, stupid ones. These people are a menace
and must be fired at once. They create irrelevant work for everybody.
Finally, there are the intelligent lazy ones.
They are suited for the highest office."
-General Von Manstein
Lovely
Think that classification applies all the time and in all walks of life.
I've always believed that the harder you try, the less you achieve.
Or, more precisely, the harder you try / the more you fiddle around, the less the outcome is going to resemble what you had originally envisioned.
A major hurdle on the path to greater success and happiness is that most societies value empty activism as a legitimate
end in itself, as opposed to what it really is, no more than a
means that is only to be employed with great circumspection and very sparingly.
Unfortunately, being seen as
doing something, no matter how nonsensical, ineffective or counterproductive the result may be, tends to be viewed far more favorably than
doing nothing most of the time.
And that in spite of the fact that it's always the
"leastest" input that generates the
"mostest" desired output, as per our old friend
Pareto and his 20 / 80 Rule, unfortunately for us most humans just aren't wired to be able to sit back, let events unfold, and reap the eventual rewards.
There was a time however when Pareto or
effectivity were in far greater favor, I'm simplifying slightly here for the sake of argument, but effectively you British built an Empire where you didn't actually have to
do anything much, you didn't send armies across the globe to conquer through battles and carnage, nope, you did most of it through treaties and consensus, without almost any bloodshed.
Most amazing bit of Empire building in history, I believe.
In the same vein, your ruling classes had a very commendable work ethic based on
results,
not processes, one where it was considered bad form to show up in offices long before noon, or overstay ones welcome there as afternoon turned into evening.
Can't imagine them in todays world where people actually feel important or God knows what if they can boast of the endless hours they've wasted in meetings or unproductively doodling around in their offices, forever reacting, always extinguishing the latest fire, never proactively formulating clear objectives / stretch goals without worrying about how to achieve them.
That's all you really need, though, isn't it. Clear cut objectives. Once you have those down pat, tactics and the means to your end will sort themselves out as you approach your objective.
