How to Be More Alive
Napoleon Never Slept
The key thesis of Napoleon Never Slept is that influential people master energy. They have impressive stamina and are able to energize their allies and dominate their enemies with their emotions.
What is what energy looks like:
Winston Churchill, during the Second World War, would take a nap in the afternoon and stay up all night answering dispatches. Beethoven was so engrossed in composing that he didn’t even notice his meals-- his cook would find the untouched dishes outside the door next day while Ludwig was still crafting music inside. Steve Jobs would phone key people in the small hours of the morning, or stay up all night at their house making enthusiastic plans.
An influential person presses forward, in a straight line. They are a force of nature. What accounts for this? High emotional energy, the property of “being pumped up, bodily and mentally.” This shows itself with confidence and proactive nature. It requires a focus – a goal that this person moves towards and consistently expresses to themselves and other people.
People with low emotional energy are slow and passive. They lack confidence and agency. They are also disorganized and lack the focus required to make an impression on their surroundings. They are waiting around to be used as a resource by people with high emotional energy – or, if they drain too much energy, will be ignored.
Crucially, emotional energy is social. It isn’t fostered by reciting a mantra to oneself or meditating. It’s given to and received from other people.
This is why Collins’s other central idea is essential: emotional domination, the art of setting the emotional tone and direction of interactions.
In our social world, if you want to be influential, it’s important not just to energize yourself but to convert everyone around you for the sake of your goals. A boss needs to motivate their subordinates, a founder needs to win their negotiation and so on.
The last central idea is this: energy builds on itself.
“I’m never sore,” he said. “I get up at 5 in the morning. I go days without sleep and it doesn’t bother me. I don’t know why they say you need a good night’s sleep. I don’t. I always feel good. I’m up all night reading and watching TV. When the time comes (to retire), my body will tell me. I’ll know.” One reason he was pumped up was that he rode 9,530 horses to victory, still second all time. Winning is better than sleep.
Laffit Pincay (then the all-time winning jockey in horse racing)
It’s a reason the world is unequal.
Upbeat people go from energizing experience to energizing experience. Depressed people slide down until they are stuck in the mud.
Think, perhaps, of Cavafy’s Che Fece ... Il Gran Rifiuto:
For some people the day comes
when they have to declare the great Yes
or the great No. It’s clear at once who has the Yes
ready within him; and saying it,
he goes from honor to honor, strong in his conviction.
He who refuses does not repent. Asked again,
he’d still say no. Yet that no—the right no—
drags him down all his life.
What can one learn from this?
Collins has a list of eleven principles of “Winning Big”:
Gain emotional energy from successful encounters; avoid energy-draining encounters
Keep checking micro-social attunement and disattunement
Energize yourself by energizing the group
Details are never boring when they have trajectory; successful people are never bored
Start early in the adult world; skip the credential queue and the bureaucratic ladder
Build momentum where it’s easy – but with a path to the big leagues
The big battle, the big deal: monitor rivals, identify weakness, exert emotional dominance
Build inner circle and alliance networks by emotional energy, deal-making networks by emotional domination, and reputational networks by collective effervescence
Heavyweight networks are dangerous: expect volatility
Luck is location at the cusp of change; launch from the most advanced platform
Ideological rigidness limits success; other people’s rigidness is your opportunity
You can get a sense of the book and its principles from this list, which is why I’ve included it, but I would summarize things differently.
Focus
Common to all of these stories is an obsessive focus on the goal. Collins (and many other books) focus on winning bigly. For many though, it’s a matter of choosing a range of simple roles and being excellent at them. The point isn’t to be Napoleon or Alexander, it’s to be you. Ignore everything else.
Exhibit focus in every social interaction
Once you have your roles, don’t lose them. Set the tone of your interactions to accomplish your goals. This looks different depending on what they are. To be a good husband is different from being an excellent CEO which is also different from being an excellent artist. Each of these may share high level principles, but they manifest differently in each situation. This is related to the principle:
Keep checking micro-social attunement and disattunement
What makes up micro social interactions? The goals that are being expressed, the rhythm at which they are expressed, language of all sort – from tone, pitch, pace, posture. Cicero was on to something when he said posture was a moral matter.
Avoid distracting energetic encounters
In today’s world, there are so many distractions. It’s important to have a focus and stick with it. Note that distractions can be energizing. Don’t listen to the sirens. Obvious, but essential, just as the following is:
Avoid energy-draining encounters
To have a focus means to press forward. Stay on the path and move forward. “Make haste slowly.” Don’t slow down unless there is a reason to. Some will slow you down without justification. Perhaps Marcus Aurelius’s reminder is useful:
In one respect man is the nearest thing to me, so far as I must do good to men and endure them. But so far as some men make themselves obstacles to my proper acts, man becomes to me one of the things which are indifferent, no less than the sun or wind or a wild beast.
Meditations 5.20
Cultivate your own physical and mental energy
Much of this is genetic. We’ll all have our own starting kit. But you can improve your base levels of fitness through exercise, sleep, and nutrition. I’d avoid over-optimization here, but it’s likely the case that most of us should stop making basic mistakes once we’re out of the teens and 20s.
Energize others
Being energetic isn’t just a matter of “choosing” the right interactions – it’s about converting low energy interactions to high energy ones. There’s a balance between avoiding distraction and low-energy people and simply converting distractions into resources and low-energy people into high energy ones. Don’t index too much on thinking that energy is a matter of selection. You must be full of life first.
Find energy in your focus
This is another way of saying “Details are never boring when they have trajectory; successful people are never bored.”
Transform negative energy into positive energy
The dark side of energy – it is often neurotic. We can be energized by love and fear. Many of us are energized by fear. The danger with this is that it can turn hatred or nihilism.
Many of people living energetic lives are unbalanced. This is not necessarily bad, but it can be as evolutionary psychiatrist Randolph Nesse writes:
The biggest rewards in mass societies go to those who pursue grand goals single-mindedly. This usually requires an unbalanced life. In many fields, the price of trying to get into the big leagues is neglect of self, health, partner, children, and friends. The predictable problems provide fodder for television shows that exploit the problems of the famous to provide schadenfreude for the masses. Magazines about celebrities are equal parts veneration of superachievers and consolation for the rest of us.
It’s better then to find energy in your focus. You need both negative and positive judgments to do that, but we especially need to find enjoyment in our purposes and ensure that it's good. Otherwise, what’s the point?
Napoleon Never Slept is not a moral book. There are plenty of people who, given their character, one would prefer not be energetic at all. Mao is someone who understood the principles of energy deeply, but the 20th century would have gone better if he was sluggish.
If you’re looking for self-improvement slogans, I’d say return to your purposes. Ensure you're on the path to achieving them. Keep the principles of energy in mind and become more alive. Be vital, but most importantly, try to be good.