One Thing at a Time
In 1903 the New York police arrested Giuseppe Morello and Ignazio Lupo, and the arrests came to nothing: not enough evidence, and the case fell apart. William Flynn, the Secret Service chief who had been watching the gang patiently for a long time, was furious, and he told the police brass straight out that the arrests had been premature. Too many policemen, he complained, make the mistake of thinking the arrest is the most important part of their job. The most important thing, in his view, was not the arrest but the conviction; an arrest without the evidence to back it was, for a jury, not just wasted effort but an admission of your own weakness.
I’d hang those words over every capo’s desk, with a couple of words changed. The most important thing isn’t the bustle, it’s the result. An arrest looks good: newspapers, photographs, a report to the boss. A conviction is dull: months of surveillance, paperwork, witnesses who are scared. But only the conviction counts. In the end Flynn put Morello away for twenty-five years. Not because he made more arrests, but because he knew what counted.
The Main Thing and Everything Else
Every morning you have a list of things to do, and there’s always more on it than you’ll get through. Most people start with whatever is easiest, quickest or shouts loudest. By evening they’re tired, they’ve done a lot, and they haven’t done the main thing.
Start the day with a question: which one to three things, if I do them today, will move the business forward most? Those are your main tasks. Do them first, while your head is fresh and before anyone has had a chance to demand anything of you. Everything else comes later, if there’s time left. If there isn’t, no harm done: you’ve done what counts.
Agent Pistone describes how in the summer of 1977, a year into the operation, he had enough evidence against Jilly’s crew in Brooklyn, the outfit he’d started with: hijackings, robberies, heists. Enough to shut them all down at once. The temptation was huge: a ready-made result, arrests, praise from the bosses. But by then he was already making contacts with Bonanno family people in Little Italy. And he didn’t rush. The small-time Brooklyn crew moved to the back burner. He chose the main thing—the road into the family—and gave up a quick success for a real one. Four years later there was enough evidence for an entire family.
The Mafia itself made a similar choice, only the other way round. While Totò Riina was completely swallowed up by his war on the state, Dickie writes, Bernardo Provenzano was quietly strengthening the business and political ties that had always brought the Sicilian Mafia a solid income: construction, health care, waste processing. Riina was busy with the loud stuff. Provenzano with the profitable stuff. Riina was arrested in 1993. Provenzano stayed in hiding for another thirteen years.
The Mind Does One Thing at a Time
Why is it so hard to do the main thing? Because the mind can’t hold two tasks at once. It can switch quickly, and that makes us think we’re doing two things at the same time. In fact we’re doing a little bit of each, and every time we lose time remembering where we stopped.
For almost five years Pistone kept everything he saw and heard in his head, because keeping notes in his apartment was dangerous. Talk about shady deals, loads of stolen goods, new faces, exact sums. Mafiosi, he writes, could talk for half an hour about haircuts, shoes and baseball and then drop a line in passing about a contract killing or a bent politician. He couldn’t ask them to repeat it. Concentration, he writes, was what his success depended on. And he admits honestly that you want to remember everything at once, but you can’t; you have to make hard choices.
Almost five years of listening to talk about shoes for the sake of one sentence. That’s concentration, no meditation required. Pistone survived and put dozens of people away because at any given moment he knew what mattered to him right then.
Every switch costs you time and energy. So do one thing at a time. Shut off whatever distracts you. Gather small tasks of the same kind into a batch and do them in one go: the calls one after another, the paperwork one after another. Don’t open your office door to everyone who knocks while you’re busy with the main thing. Don Vincenzo had a rule: from morning until lunch, nobody came in to see him unless the house was on fire—literally. Everything else waited. Not once did the city fall down because of it.
Four Ways to Deal with a Task
Every task on the list has four possible fates, and only one of them is doing it yourself.
Do it. If the task matters and won’t take long, do it now and forget it.
Drop it. A lot of tasks don’t need doing at all. They got onto the list out of habit, out of politeness, or because somebody asked. Cross them off. You’ll be surprised how little changes.
Hand it on. If somebody else can do it, let them. A capo who counts the invoices himself isn’t a capo, he’s an expensive clerk.
Put it off. If it isn’t urgent, give it a time and put it out of your head until then.
Pistone describes a very elegant use of the second and third methods at once. The FBI had forbidden him to take part in hijackings and robberies: the crew went out on jobs armed, and one stray bullet could wreck the whole operation. Sooner or later they asked him along on a job. Refusing outright would have looked suspicious. He explained that cowboy stick-ups weren’t his line of work and offered to help unload the goods instead. And, as he writes, the guys were actually pleased: fewer people on the job meant a bigger share for each. He dropped what he wasn’t allowed to do and offered in its place something that was useful to everyone. A refusal served up as a gift is the highest form of managing your time.
Don Vincenzo taught me time management in a few words: write everything down, hand out what you can, and whatever’s left, hand out again. Over the years I added my own: cross things off first. Half of what you were planning to hand on isn’t needed by anyone at all.
The Bottom Line
Know what counts for you: the conviction, not the arrest. And don’t mistake being busy for working. Riina was very busy. Provenzano worked.