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Mint
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Mint
Lessons from history's most notorious procrastinators: How delay became genius
Samiran Ghosh From Mozart, Darwin and Victor Hugo to Douglas Adams, Kafka and Einstein, the great procrastination stories of history reveal that working with our tendencies often proves more effective than fighting them. Procrastination and genius often go hand in hand. Gift this article On 28 October 1787, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart sat drinking with friends when someone reminded him about a missing overture. The premiere of Don Giovanni was hours away. Mozart calmly sat down at midnight and composed the entire piece in three hours while his wife kept him awake with stories. The orchestra played it brilliantly, and the audiences loved it, never knowing how close they came to having no overture at all. On 28 October 1787, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart sat drinking with friends when someone reminded him about a missing overture. The premiere of Don Giovanni was hours away. Mozart calmly sat down at midnight and composed the entire piece in three hours while his wife kept him awake with stories. The orchestra played it brilliantly, and the audiences loved it, never knowing how close they came to having no overture at all. This midnight miracle captures a simple truth: procrastination and genius often go hand in hand. Throughout history, humanity's greatest minds have turned delay into creative strategy, producing masterpieces under extreme pressure or using strategic postponement to enhance their work. Far from being a character flaw, procrastination, when properly channelled, can fuel extraordinary achievement. Procrastination as strategic patience: The Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus earned immortality through calculated delay. Facing Hannibal's seemingly invincible forces, Fabius refused direct engagement, instead retreating and harassing, earning the nickname Cunctator (The Delayer). His apparent cowardice saved Rome, giving rise to the 'Fabian strategy' that is studied and quoted throughout military history. This art of purposeful delay reached its zenith during Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia. General Mikhail Kutuzov's refusal to give Napoleon the decisive battle he craved cost the French 500,000 casualties. By transforming Russia's winter and vast distances into a weapon via strategic retreats and delaying tactics, Kutuzov destroyed the Grande Armée without significant engagement. Charles Darwin elevated scientific procrastination to similar strategic heights. After developing his theory of evolution in the late 1830s, Darwin spent two decades studying barnacles so thoroughly that his children assumed every household kept pickled specimens. Only when Alfred Wallace threatened to publish a similar theory did Darwin rush On the Origin of Species to print. He later claimed he "gained much by my delay" – the extended timeline had allowed him to gather evidence that made his arguments unassailable. Also Read: Confidently wrong: Why AI is so exasperatingly human-like Deadline pressure as creative fuel: While some procrastinators benefit from patience, others transform last-minute panic into creative lightning. Frank Lloyd Wright's legendary procrastination produced architecture's most celebrated moment. After assuring client Edgar Kaufmann for months that Fallingwater's designs were progressing, Wright had drawn nothing when Kaufmann announced a visit. As the client drove 140 miles from Pittsburgh, Wright calmly finished breakfast, then designed the complete house in two hours. The resulting masterpiece became one of the 20th century's most celebrated buildings. Victor Hugo weaponized deadline pressure through extreme measures. Facing penalties for The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Hugo locked away all his clothes and purchased only a grey shawl, effectively imprisoning himself at home. His wife noted he "entered his novel as if it were a prison," working from dusk till dawn. The method succeeded. Hugo finished two weeks before the deadline. Douglas Adams, patron saint of procrastinating writers, became so notorious that his editor locked him in a hotel suite for three weeks to force completion of So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. Adams loved deadlines for "the whooshing noise they make as they go by," yet this pressure-cooker method produced beloved works that might never have existed under comfortable conditions. Systematic procrastination as process: Some geniuses transformed procrastination into sophisticated creative systems. Franz Kafka's elaborate daily routine appeared inefficient—he would finish work at 2:30pm, then eat, nap for four hours, exercise naked at an open window, walk, dine with his family, and begin writing only around 11:30pm. A significant amount of 'writing time' was devoted to letters rather than creative work. Yet this seemingly wasteful process produced literature's most influential works. Leonardo da Vinci justified his legendary delays philosophically, telling patrons that "men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least." The Mona Lisa took 16 years; he abandoned The Adoration of the Magi entirely; his bronze horse monument never materialised after 12 years of promises. Yet his procrastination allowed cross-pollination between disciplines—engineering insights informing art, artistic observation enhancing scientific study. In Bengal, procrastination became a cultural practice through 'adda'—lengthy, meandering conversations over tea that outsiders dismiss as idle gossip. These sessions sparked the Bengal Renaissance, literary movements and independence struggles. What appears as collective procrastination often masks deep intellectual work, proving that apparent idleness can conceal the mind's most profound labour. Albert Einstein's transformation from a procrastinating patent clerk to revolutionary physicist demonstrates how systematic approaches can harness delay productively. Unable to secure academic positions due to his reputation for laziness, Einstein found that the routine patent work provided ideal conditions for deep thinking. His 1905 'miracle year' demonstrated that chronic procrastinators can transform their habits without altering their nature. Modern evolution: Today's creative professionals have reframed procrastination from a shameful secret to an acknowledged process. Tim Urban's TED talk on the 'Instant Gratification Monkey' drew 70 million views by normalising procrastination as a universal human experience. Steve Jobs demonstrated 'strategic procrastination,' deliberately delaying decisions while taking long walks to let ideas percolate. Research by organisational psychologist Adam Grant reveals that moderate procrastinators often produce the most creative work, occupying a sweet spot between impulsive action and chaotic delay. History's procrastinators reveal that working with our tendencies often proves more effective than fighting them. Whether it's a general refusing to go to battle until conditions favour victory, an architect designing masterpieces in two hours, or a culture institutionalising contemplative delay, procrastination becomes powerful when transformed from weakness into strategy. The key is not to eliminate procrastination, but to understand it and create systems that channel delay into genius. The author is a technology advisor and podcast host. Topics You May Be Interested In
Boston Globe
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
A Napoleon from Long Island meets his Waterloo
'For me, it's not a problem,' Springuel said. 'But the public doesn't expect that from Napoleon,' he said. For the 210th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, the organizers held their biggest reenactment in a decade, with 2,200 actors restaging the battle last weekend before 17,000 spectators. Advertisement Mark Schneider, born on Long Island, New York, secured the job over other would-be Napoleons, including from Belgium and Italy, in part because of his unrivaled ability to command respect on the battlefield, several organizers said. 'Even though it's 200-plus years later, they look to me as their Napoleon, and I look to them as my Grande Armée,' said Schneider, 55. For anyone who had an issue with his American accent, well, 'haters gonna hate,' said Schneider, who lives in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he works as a historian and professional actor. He added that Napoleon himself, born in Corsica, spoke French with an Italian accent (especially when angry), so 'it's very Napoleon to speak French with an accent.' Many of the reenactors' assignments aligned with their nationalities: German and Polish reenactors formed the Prussian battalions, British fought with the British, and French with the French. But there were exceptions: Portuguese reenactors studied Dutch phrases so they could follow their Dutch-speaking unit, Czech people fought with the French (the stylish uniforms were a draw, one said), and some Spaniards and Italians fought in a kilt-wearing Scottish battalion. Advertisement And then, of course, there was the American leader of the French army. Schneider has in recent years become the most sought-after Napoleon globally. 'I get more street cred, if you will, because I rose up through the ranks,' he said, referring to his start as a rank-and-file reenactment soldier. 'I didn't immediately make myself the emperor.' In 2015, for the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, organizers chose a French Napoleon, Frank Samson, a lawyer in Paris. But Samson's retirement just after the battle sparked a search for replacements. For bigger anniversaries, like the 210th, organizers stage a larger event, while holding smaller reenactments in other years. Franky Simon, a reenactment organizer who played Napoleon's right-hand man, Marshal Michel Ney, said that organizers had to search far and wide for an emperor up to par for this year's battle. 'For small events, we take a local Napoleon, and for big events, we take Mark,' said Simon, a Belgian librarian, praising Schneider's equestrian skills. Last year, Jean-Gérald Larcin of Belgium played Napoleon for the pared down 209th anniversary. On Sunday morning, on a wheat field rented from a farmer, war reenactors and 100 horses staged the battle -- which lasted around 10 hours in real life -- in 90 minutes. One reenactor had to be assisted off the field because of the heat, made more trying by the woolen uniforms as temperatures soared into the high 80s. Advertisement At the time of the 1815 battle, the real Napoleon Bonaparte, 45, had recently left exile on Elba and returned to power. At Waterloo, on June 18, he faced a coalition of European armies, led by Britain's Duke of Wellington and Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher of Prussia. More than 60,000 men were killed, wounded or captured in the battle, which ended Napoleon's reign and France's quest to dominate Europe. In a speech at the start to hundreds of reenactors, Michael Haynes, who played a British general, tied Waterloo to modern events. 'We are going to remind the world of how that tyrant was stopped and pulled down,' he said of Napoleon. 'We will encourage Europe and the world that there is hope when faced with oppression.' Haynes spent the nights leading up to the battle camping in one of the hundreds of tents erected a few miles from the French army's encampment. (He confessed that he slept on an air bed, not a wooden and canvas one, like some of the most dedicated reenactors). While the mood among the allied forces before the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 was reported to have been anxious, the encampment last week was lively. Alcohol flowed freely, and drinking songs lasted until the early hours. When, at 7 a.m. one day, someone started playing bagpipes, shouts of 'shut up,' with expletives, could be heard from the tent of an annoyed reenactor trying to sleep, according to Mair Mason, from Birmingham, England, who played a friend of the Duke of Wellington's wife. As for Schneider, after 20 years of leading the French army into mock battles across Europe, he plans to pass the baton following his career-crowning performance at Waterloo. Advertisement 'There are a bunch of Napoleons popping up left and right,' he said. 'I want to give them an opportunity. Whether they be the Polish Napoleon, the Dutch Napoleon, or the Belgian.' Or maybe, one day, Napoleon will be French again. This article originally appeared in
LeMonde
16-06-2025
- Politics
- LeMonde
How the US split Europe to invade Iraq at any cost in 2003
In the Old Town of Vilnius, on Didzioji street, a wrought-iron balcony sits atop the façade of an elegant little 17 th -century palace, now converted into a five-star hotel, the Hotel Pacai. It was from this balcony that Napoléon addressed the people of the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in June 1812, after seizing the city from the army of Tsar Alexander I. In the city, his soldiers were welcomed as liberators. Napoléon's brief but significant stay in Vilnius marked the beginning of what local historians call the "French period" – tragically followed by the retreat from Russia and the resulting carnage. In the Vilnius region alone, nearly 37,000 soldiers and officers of the Grande Armée died from cold, hunger or disease during the winter. It then took a little more than two centuries for France to regain the favor of Lithuanians, according to Zygimantas Pavilionis, a 53-year-old MP and chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Parliament of the small Baltic republic. Over coffee, Pavilionis recounted the episode of Napoléon on the balcony, and set the date of France's return to grace at 2020, when President Emmanuel Macron visited Vilnius and met with Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, whose husband is imprisoned in neighboring Belarus for attempting to run in the presidential election. "At last," he said with satisfaction, "France, with this gesture, reconnected with its revolutionary calling, after having swallowed so many bitter pills."
