Sep 22, 2026 · 53 min · 19 segments
Napoleon Bonaparte was one of the greatest workaholics in history. John D. Rockefeller himself said that if Napoleon had applied himself to commerce and industry he would have been the greatest…
Nic MunozHost
It says, Napoleon was capable of compartmentalizing his life so that one set of concerns never spilled over into another, probably a necessary attribute for any great statesman, but one he possessed to an extraordinary degree.
When I wish to interrupt one train of thought, I shut that drawer and open another.
What you have to understand about Napoleon is that he is literally the equivalent of a modern day CEO.
How his army was structured was exactly how a modern day corporation is structured today.
And when you look at Napoleon's army as a whole, this is exactly how a modern day business is sort of run.
You have the CEO at the top and then underneath the CEO, you have all these directors that report to the CEO that command the troops on the front lines.
The point is that if Napoleon were alive right now, he would probably be a CEO and he would probably be the best CEO.
And what this comes down to is the ability to compartmentalize different subjects and different problems in his mind.
The vision of the army, the enemy movements, the supply lines, negotiating peace agreements, the morale of the army, every problem that could possibly spring up in a business was always on his plate at all times.
And yet even in this complete chaos, Napoleon was able to always concentrate on one thing at one time and block out everything else.
In his biography by Walter Isaacson, which I have right here, in this book, the author describes how Elon works and he describes Elon as a serial tasker.
You could describe Napoleon in the exact same way, but what Elon does is he is someone who is always working on the bottleneck of the company and he focuses all of his attention on the bottleneck until it is completely solved.
It says, Napoleon was capable of compartmentalizing his life so that one set of concerns never spilled over into another, probably a necessary attribute for any great statesman, but one he possessed to an extraordinary degree.
When I wish to interrupt one train of thought, I shut that drawer and open another.
What you have to understand about Napoleon is that he is literally the equivalent of a modern day CEO.
How his army was structured was exactly how a modern day corporation is structured today.
And when you look at Napoleon's army as a whole, this is exactly how a modern day business is sort of run.
You have the CEO at the top and then underneath the CEO, you have all these directors that report to the CEO that command the troops on the front lines.
The point is that if Napoleon were alive right now, he would probably be a CEO and he would probably be the best CEO.
And what this comes down to is the ability to compartmentalize different subjects and different problems in his mind.
The vision of the army, the enemy movements, the supply lines, negotiating peace agreements, the morale of the army, every problem that could possibly spring up in a business was always on his plate at all times.
And yet even in this complete chaos, Napoleon was able to always concentrate on one thing at one time and block out everything else.
In his biography by Walter Isaacson, which I have right here, in this book, the author describes how Elon works and he describes Elon as a serial tasker.
You could describe Napoleon in the exact same way, but what Elon does is he is someone who is always working on the bottleneck of the company and he focuses all of his attention on the bottleneck until it is completely solved.
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