Delegating Tasks Quotes

Building a team is a huge task. This task can’t be delegated to someone else. You’re the leader of your business and you have to behave like a leader for your employees.

The question of how to spend my life, of what my life is for, is a question posed only to me, and I can no more delegate the responsibility for answering it than I can delegate the task of dying.

Burnout occurs when your body and mind can no longer keep up with the tasks you demand of them. Don’t try to force yourself to do the impossible. Delegate time for important tasks, but always be sure to leave time for relaxation and reflection.

If you delegate tasks, you create followers, if you delegate authority , you create leaders

One of the perks of being an amanuensis is delegating tasks.

Molly. I have an opportunity for you.” “An opportunity?” I repeated, without enthusiasm. Oh, good. Next comes the part where he tells me to be a “team player” and then dumps some tedious task on me. “It’s a chance for you to show that you can be a team player,” Bill Vogel said.

He had certain similarities to Trump in Washington in that he was reluctant to delegate tasks in his administration. With the possible difference that Trump drew conclusions without doing the actual reading.

The important thing is to keep them pledging,' he explained to his cohorts. 'It doesn't matter whether they mean it or not. That's why they make little kids pledge allegiance even before they know what "pledge" and "allegiance" mean.' To Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren, the Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade was a glorious pain in the ass, since it complicated their task of organizing the crews for each combat mission. Men were tied up all over the squadron signing, pledging and singing, and the missions took hours longer to get under way. Effective emergency action became impossible, but Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren were both too timid to raise any outcry against Captain Black, who scrupulously enforced each day the doctrine of 'Continual Reaffirmation' that he had originated, a doctrine designed to trap all those men who had become disloyal since the last time they had signed a loyalty oath the day before. It was Captain Black who came with advice to Captain Piltchard and Captain Wren as they pitched about in their bewildering predicament. He came with a delegation and advised them bluntly to make each man sign a loyalty oath before allowing him to fly on a combat mission.

Everything around you was architected by another person. Whether or not they were aware of what they were doing. Whether or not they did a good job. Whether or not they delegated the task to a computer. Information is a responsibility we all share.

The work which can be done by your subordinates should be delegated, even if you like doing the work yourself. You must rather focus only on those tasks that can be done by you alone. If you still have some time left, focus on future planning and improving the efficiency of the organisation.

Decide what you want. Determine the Five Major Moves that will help you leap toward that goal. Do deep work on each of the major five moves—at least 60 percent of your workweek going to these efforts—until they are complete. Designate all else as distraction, tasks to delegate, or things to do in blocks of time you’ve allocated in the remaining 40 percent of your time.

Take time to empower yourself. Delegate tasks so you have time to pamper yourself and invest your energy in what you love. Be the ruler of your own life. http://journeycharms.com/charms-store...

Three Steps to Less Implement the three Ds: delete, deal (including delegating), or defer to all tasks. Strive for ABD: always be done. Put your ego aside and recognize that sometimes the hurdle is you.

If you are to make delegation work, you must allow your managers freedom to do things their way. You and the company are in trouble if you try to measure your assistants by whether or not they do a particular task exactly as you would do it. They should be judged by their results - not their methods.

Having to remind your partner to do something doesn’t take that something off your list. It adds to it. And what’s more, reminding is often unfairly characterized as nagging. (Almost every man interviewed in connection with this project said nagging is what they hate most about being married, but they also admit that they wait for their wives to tell them what to do at home.) It’s not a partnership if only one of you is running the show, which means making the important distinction between delegating tasks and handing off ownership of a task. Ownership belongs to the person who first off remembers to plan, then plans, and then follows through on every aspect of executing the plan and completing the task without reminders. A survey conducted by Bright Horizons—an on-site corporate childcare provider—found that 86 percent of working mothers say they handle the majority of family and household responsibilities, “not just making appointments, but also driving to them and mentally calendaring who needs to be where, and when.” In order to save us from big-time burnout, we need our partners to be more than helpers who carry out instructions that we’ve taken time and energy to think through (and then who blame us when things fall through the cracks). We need our partners to take the lead by consistently picking up a task, or “card”—week after week—and completely taking it off our mental to-do list by doing every aspect of what the card requires. Otherwise we still worry about whether the task is being done as we would do it, or done fully, or done at all—which leaves us still shouldering the mental and emotional load for the “help” or the “favor” we had to ask for. But how do we get our partners to take that initiative and own every aspect of a household or childcare responsibility without being (nudge, nudge) told what to do? Or, to simply figure it out?

For any challenge, the first thing to do is optimize it. Break it down to its bare minimum, simplify it, and eliminate everything that’s not completely necessary. Once you’ve boiled the task down to its essentials, the goal is to break what’s left into bite-sized tasks that can be replicated and possibly delegated.

He wasn’t concerned with getting credit or even with being in charge; he simply assigned work to those who could perform it best. This meant delegating some of his most interesting, meaningful, and important tasks—work that other leaders would have kept for themselves. Why did the research not reflect the talents of people like the

common destructive element in the life of any creative person is doing the wrong work—in other words, spending too much of your time on things that don’t matter or don’t come naturally. We flourish by leaning into our strengths more than by “fixing” our weaknesses. Delegate, outsource, or avoid the tasks that call on your weakest areas. There is no benefit in being so stubborn that you do it all.

He gave subordinates input into key decisions, implementing the ideas that made sense, while making it clear that he had the final authority. He wasn’t concerned with getting credit or even with being in charge; he simply assigned work to those who could perform it best. This meant delegating some of his most interesting, meaningful, and important tasks—work that other leaders would have kept for themselves.

Putting the Lost Cause to work, however, necessitated a good measure of willful forgetting. Confederate memorialists proved equal to the task. "The world has been wickedly taught and foolishly believes that we resorted to war solely to preserve our institution of African slavery," General John S. Preston told a SASC meeting in Columbia in 1870. If anyone knew what had led to the Civil War, it was Preston, who not only attended the South Carolina Secession Convention but also served as the state's official delegate to Virginia's secession convention. The North and South were antagonistic societies whose differences were fundamentally rooted in slavery and race, he had told the Virginia convention in February 1861. But a decade later, Preston preached that slavery had not been the animating cause of secession at all.

It is as creatures made jointly in God’s image that women and men together have the task of mastering the earth. In Genesis 1 there is a structure of authority. God is the ultimate authority. God then delegates authority over creation to humanity, and women and men together are the means of exercising it. There is no suggestion in the creation stories that God designed the world to be a place where any human beings exercised authority over any others. There was no authority to be exercised by men over women, or husbands over wives;

Hand Over Control If anyone has ever called you a control freak, recognize that your controlling ways and hesitancy about letting other people do things their way is likely to be anxiety related. Your thinking patterns may be related to fears that other people won’t do tasks to a standard that’s acceptable to you, which may or may not be true in any given instance. Or your controllingness might be related to “should” thinking errors, along the lines of “I should be able to do everything myself,” or fears that needing help is a sign of being a weak person. A behavioral experiment you can try is delegating or outsourcing tasks you feel overwhelmed by.

INSIGHT FOR BUSINESS: Make sure you understand the business environment in which you are working, from the lowliest job to the most complex one. You don’t need to be able to do every task, but you must understand everything that happens inside the organization. While it is important to delegate responsibilities, never abdicate supervision. It is important that you keep tabs on the entire process from top to bottom and from bottom to top. INSIGHT FOR LIFE: Keep all aspects of your life in balance. Extremes in any direction lead to setbacks in another. Make sure to be involved in your own life by not allowing decisions to be made for you by others—but at the same time, take the opinions of friends and family seriously.

The reason I didn’t have a normal, dad-built tree house is that, as I’ve indicated, I didn’t have anything even approaching that kind of dad. He was, and remains, one of the world’s great indoorsmen, a delegator of all conceivable outdoor tasks—lawn mowing, car washing, gutter cleaning, and tree-house building. By the time I was ten, which was when I’d kicked off my campaign for a tree house in the woods behind our ranch, he didn’t even own the tools needed to build one, having “accidentally” nailed his tool chest behind the walls of a cedar closet he’d tried to build for my mother in the basement. Whether consciously or not, my father had clearly wanted to make sure the cedar closet would be his last do-it-yourself project, and it was.

Time-use researchers call it “contaminated time.” It is a product of both role overload—working and still bearing the primary responsibility for children and home—and task density. It’s mental pollution, one researcher explained. One’s brain is stuffed with all the demands of work along with the kids’ calendars, family logistics, and chores. Sure, mothers can delegate tasks on the to-do list, but even that takes up brain space—not simply the asking but also the checking to make sure the task has been done, and the biting of the tongue when it hasn’t been done as well or as quickly as you’d like. So it is perhaps not surprising that time researchers are finding that, while “free time” may help ease the feeling of time pressure for men, and in the 1970s helped women a little, by 1998 it was providing women no relief at all.15

What are all these?” Charlie plucked a book of psalms from the unruly pile on the desk. “Have you two robbed a church since I left this morning?” “No,” said Jackaby. “Not personally. We had to delegate that task. Pilfering parish property has fallen to Miss Cavanaugh this week.” Charlie rubbed his neck as he dropped the book back on the stack. “Because if there’s one thing New Fiddleham needs right now, it’s a bit more paranormal petty crime.” “If it makes you feel any better,” I submitted, “the pastor more or less asked us to. He was rather insistent that we should find something in one of his Bibles.” “You’re certain he won’t go storming into the station house tomorrow to tell the duty officer how he’s been robbed by a ghost?” I swallowed. “Not unless he is one himself,” said Jackaby. “He’s dead.” “What?” “Quite dead. He’s up in the attic if you would like to check for yourself.” “Why do you have a dead preacher in your attic?” “Because we found it easier to carry him up to the coffin than to maneuver it down to him.” Charlie looked suddenly very tired. “Enough about our morning,” I said. “You had a difficult patch yourself?

When I started in real estate, despite high ambition, I was constrained by the same 24 hours as everyone else. My early success came from a grueling schedule, long hours, and the high price of near burn-out. In self-defense, I devised a system that featured direct marketing in place of traditional prospecting plus a highly effective team, with all the non-rainmaker tasks delegated to them. This took me to the top of the profession, twice #1 in RE/MAX worldwide in commissions earned, and 15 years as one of the top agents—working less hours than most. While an active agent, I consistently sold over 500 homes a year, even while starting and developing a second business, training and coaching more millionaire agents than any other coach. Without the inspiration of Dan Kennedy’s direct marketing methods and his extraordinary, extreme time-management philosophy, these achievements simply would not have been possible. LEVERAGING yourself, by media in place of manual labor, and with other people is very intimidating to most real estate agents and to most small businesspeople. It frankly is not easy to get right, but it is the quantum leap that uniquely and simultaneously lifts income and supports a great lifestyle. —CRAIG PROCTOR, CRAIGPROCTOR.COM

We may not recognize how situations within our own lives are similar to what happens within an airplane cockpit. But think, for a moment, about the pressures you face each day. If you are in a meeting and the CEO suddenly asks you for an opinion, your mind is likely to snap from passive listening to active involvement—and if you’re not careful, a cognitive tunnel might prompt you to say something you regret. If you are juggling multiple conversations and tasks at once and an important email arrives, reactive thinking can cause you to type a reply before you’ve really thought out what you want to say. So what’s the solution? If you want to do a better job of paying attention to what really matters, of not getting overwhelmed and distracted by the constant flow of emails and conversations and interruptions that are part of every day, of knowing where to focus and what to ignore, get into the habit of telling yourself stories. Narrate your life as it’s occurring, and then when your boss suddenly asks a question or an urgent note arrives and you have only minutes to reply, the spotlight inside your head will be ready to shine the right way. To become genuinely productive, we must take control of our attention; we must build mental models that put us firmly in charge. When you’re driving to work, force yourself to envision your day. While you’re sitting in a meeting or at lunch, describe to yourself what you’re seeing and what it means. Find other people to hear your theories and challenge them. Get in a pattern of forcing yourself to anticipate what’s next. If you are a parent, anticipate what your children will say at the dinner table. Then you’ll notice what goes unmentioned or if there’s a stray comment that you should see as a warning sign. “You can’t delegate thinking,” de Crespigny told me. “Computers fail, checklists fail, everything can fail. But people can’t. We have to make decisions, and that includes deciding what deserves our attention. The key is forcing yourself to think. As long as you’re thinking, you’re halfway home.

Delegation—the assigning of things (work or a task) to individuals. Jethro told Moses to delegate the lesser tasks so he could focus on the major issues of leading the nation of Israel to the promised land. Delegation involves three important elements: Clearly assigning the responsibility the individual is entrusted with. Granting the necessary authority and ability to accomplish the task assigned. Holding the person accountable for the completion of the assigned task. Delegation is not giving an unpleasant task to someone, nor is it getting rid of work to make your workday less than responsible. It is, however: Sharing the work with individuals who have the capability so that you may concentrate on more challenging or more difficult assignments. Providing a format whereby individuals can mature and learn through on-the-job work. Encouraging others to become part of the organization by participative task accomplishment. Allowing individuals to exercise their special gifts and abilities. An important element of the organizational structure of the church is the granting of authority to accomplish the task. Authority is the right to invoke compliance by subordinates on the basis of the formal position in the organizational structure and upon the controls the formal organization has placed on that position. Authority is linked to the position, not the person. Authority is derived in various ways: Position Reputation Experience Expertise Authority and responsibility are directly linked. When you give someone responsibility for a task, then the individual should be given the ability to see to it that the task is accomplished. Responsibility and accountability are also directly linked. If the individual is given the responsibility for a task as well the authority/ability to see to its accomplishment, then it is the manager or administrator’s responsibility to hold the individual accountable to complete the task in the manner assigned and planned. Elements of describing the use of organizational authority include: The use of an organizational chart that establishes the chain of command. The use of functional authority, assigning to individuals in other elements of the organization the authority to administer and control elements of the organization outside their own. Defining span of control, defining within the task assignment specifically what elements of the organization the individual has authority over.

Here is my six step process for how we will first start with ISIS and then build an international force that will fight terrorism and corruption wherever it appears. “First, in dedication to Lieutenant Commander McKay, Operation Crapshoot commenced at six o’clock this morning. I’ve directed a handpicked team currently deployed in Iraq to coordinate a tenfold increase in aerial bombing and close air support. In addition to aerial support, fifteen civilian security companies, including delegations from our international allies, are flying special operations veterans into Iraq. Those forces will be tasked with finding and annihilating ISIS, wherever they walk, eat or sleep. I’ve been told that they can’t wait to get started. “Second, going forward, our military will be a major component in our battle against evil. Militaries need training. I’ve been assured by General McMillan and his staff that there is no better final training test than live combat. So without much more expenditure, we will do two things, train our troops of the future, and wipe out international threats. “Third, I have a message for our allies. If you need us, we will be there. If evil raises its ugly head, we will be with you, arm in arm, fighting for what is right. But that aid comes with a caveat. Our allies must be dedicated to the common global ideals of personal and religious freedom. Any supposed ally who ignores these terms will find themselves without impunity. A criminal is a criminal. A thief is a thief. Decide which side you’re on, because our side carries a big stick. “Fourth, to the religious leaders of the world, especially those of Islam, though we live with differing traditions, we are still one people on this Earth. What one person does always has the possibility of affecting others. If you want to be part of our community, it is time to do your part. Denounce the criminals who besmirch your faith. Tell your followers the true meaning of the Koran. Do not let the money and influence of hypocrites taint your religion or your people. We request that you do this now, respectfully, or face the scrutiny of America and our allies. “Fifth, starting today, an unprecedented coalition of three former American presidents, my predecessor included, will travel around the globe to strengthen our alliances. Much like our brave military leaders, we will lead from the front, go where we are needed. We will go toe to toe with any who would seek to undermine our good intentions, and who trample the freedoms of our citizens. In the coming days you will find out how great our resolve truly is. “Sixth, my staff is in the process of drafting a proposal for the members of the United Nations. The proposal will outline our recommendations for the formation of an international terrorism strike force along with an international tax that will fund ongoing anti-terrorism operations. Only the countries that contribute to this fund will be supported by the strike force. You pay to play.

To avoid the feeling of inconveniencing a friend when delegating, I recommend delegating in a matter-of-fact, all-business sort of way with a professional tone, rather than a “can you do me a favor” type of tone. When you present a task as a favor, you present it as something in which they have the option not to complete.

When you find yourself falling short of completing tasks try to figure out why. You may need to change your goal, or you may need to delegate that task to someone else.

Leadership as a Service But the best leadership—the kind that people can mention only with evident emotion and deep respect—is most often exercised by people without positional power. It happens outside the official hierarchy of delegated authority. When I’m on my home turf, I play tennis two or three times a week in groups organized by a charming fellow named Mike. Mike is our leader. It’s Mike who decides the matchups: who plays with whom and against whom. He’s the one who shuffles the players (16 of us on four courts) after each set so we all have different partners for all three sets. He invariably makes good pairings so that near the end of a half hour you can look across the courts and see four scores like 5 to 4, 6 to 6, 7 to 6, and 5 to 5. He has a great booming voice, easy to hear even when he is three courts away. He sets the meeting times, negotiates the schedules for court time, and makes sure there are subs for anyone who needs to be away. Nobody gave Mike the job of leading the group; he just stepped up and took it. His leadership is uncontested; the rest of us are just in awe of our good fortune that he leads us as he does. He gets nothing for it except our gratitude and esteem. —TDM In this example, leadership is not about extracting anything from us; it’s about service. The leadership that the Mikes of the world provide enables their endeavors to go forth. While they sometimes set explicit directions, their main role is that of a catalyst, not a director. They make it possible for the magic to happen. In order to lead without positional authority—without anyone ever appointing you leader—you have to do what Mike does: • Step up to the task. • Be evidently fit for the task. • Prepare for the task by doing the required homework ahead of time. • Maximize value to everyone. • Do it all with humor and obvious goodwill. It also helps to have charisma.

The proceedings of these ecumenical councils remind me of the experience of sitting down at a table before a large, thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. Many of us know how frustrating it can be to keep trying piece after piece that looks like it should fit, but it doesn’t. I have even been guilty of trying to force a piece into the wrong space, even though I know only one will be a true fit. Eventually, I find the proper puzzle piece that provides an exact fit. Likewise, the delegates to the Council of Nicea and the Council of Chalcedon were seeking to be faithful to the hundreds of Christological “pieces” found in the texts of Scriptures. It was their unenviable task to put the whole “picture” of Christ together for the very first time in such a way as to find a perfect match for every piece. At times, various groups presented “pieces” they believed were a proper fit regarding the humanity or deity or natures or wills of Christ, but, in the end, each was declared to be improper fits. The proceedings of these councils did more to declare which pieces were not true pieces of the puzzle and should be discarded, than to provide a final, definitive statement of Christology that would silence all future discussions. We may know that the “Arius,” “Nestorius,” and “Eutyches” pieces do not fit the Christological puzzle, but this is not to say that a final and complete picture emerged.

particularly the importance of setting clear goals for an organization, delegating tasks, and holding people to account. I also gained the confidence to pursue my entrepreneurial urge.

Delete it. The message isn’t important or it requires no response. The simplest action is to get rid of it. If you think it might be important, then you will put the message into an archive folder. Defer it. If a message requires a task that takes 5 or more minutes to complete, then defer it and schedule a date and time when you will do it. One of the main reasons people get bogged down is that they try to take action on emails that require you to complete a lengthy task. For emails like this, it makes sense to estimate the time required, write down the specific action into your calendar, respond back to the recipient with a date when they should expect it and then filter the email into your “Follow-Up” folder. You can use the items on your calendar to schedule the rest of your week. Another option for deferring an item is to use the Boomerang extension, which creates reminders for specific tasks. Delegate it. You may not be the best person to handle the task. If you have a team or subordinates, then delegate the task to the appropriate person. After that, create a reminder in your calendar to follow up and make sure it has been handled. Do it. If it takes less than 5 minutes to respond to an email or complete the required task, then take care of it immediately.

The lesson of the Ford story is that managers and management are the specific need of the business enterprise, its specific organ, and its basic structure. We can say dogmatically that enterprise cannot do without managers. One cannot argue that management does the owner’s job by delegation. Management is needed not only because the job is too big for any one man to do himself, but because managing an enterprise is something essentially different from managing one’s own property.

Managers handle parallel projects all the time. They juggle with people, work tasks, and goals to ensure the success of every project process. However, managing projects, by design, is not an easy task. Since there are plenty of moving parts, it can easily become disorganized and chaotic. It is vital to use an efficient project management system to stay organized at work while designing and executing projects. Project Management Online Master's Programs From XLRI offers unique insights into project management software tools and make teams more efficient in meeting deadlines. How can project management software help you? Project management tools are equipped with core features that streamline different processes including managing available resources, responding to problems, and keeping all the stakeholders involved. Having the best project management software can make a significant influence on the operational and strategic aspects of the company. Here is a list of 5 key benefits to project professionals and organizations in using project management software: 1. Enhanced planning and scheduling Project planning and scheduling is an important component of project management. With project management systems, the previous performance of the team relevant to the present project can be accessed easily. Project managers can enroll in an online project management course to develop a consistent management plan and prioritize tasks. Critical tasks like resource allocation, identification of dependencies, and project deliverables can be completed comfortably using project management software. 2. Better collaboration Project teams sometimes have to handle cross-functional projects along with their day to day responsibilities. Communication between different team members is critical to avoid expensive delays and precludes the waste of precious resources. A key upside of project management software is that it makes effectual collaboration extremely simple. All project communication is stored in a universally accessible place. The project management online master's program offers unique insights to project managers on timeline and status updates which leads to a synergy between the team’s functions and project outcomes. 3. Effective task delegation Assigning tasks to team members in a fair way is a challenging proposition for most project managers. With a project management program, the delegation of project tasks can be easily done. In most instances, these programs send out automatic reminders when deadlines are approaching to ensure a smooth and efficient project workflow. 4. Easier File access and sharing Important documents should be safely accessed and shared among team members. Project management tools provide cloud-based storage which enables users to make changes, leave feedback and annotate easily. PM software logs any user changes to ensure project transparency within the team. 5. Easier integration of new members Project managers are responsible to get new members up to speed on the important project parameters within a short time. Project management online master's programs from XLRI Jamshedpuroffer vital learning to management professionals in maintaining a project log and in simplistically visualizing the complete project. Takeaway Choosing the perfect PM software for your organization helps you to effectively collaborate to achieve project success. Simple and intuitive PM tools are useful to enhance productivity in remote-working employees.

Frequently overlooked is that Ricardo's comparative advantage in "delegating" tasks among nations is equally applicable for managers delegating work. Even if a manager can perform the full range of tasks better himself, it is still mutually advantageous to divide them up. If you try and talk like this to economics professors, and I've done this three times, they shrink in horror and offense because they don't like this kind of talk. It really gums up this nice discipline of theirs, which is so much simpler when you ignore second- and third-order consequences.

What habits make up 80% of my efficiency? What habits drain my energy? What tasks are a complete waste of time? Who can I ask for help or delegate these tasks to?

I got the idea that some of the things I was seeing around me were under the aegis of Obatala, the demiurge charged by Olodumare with the formation of humans from clay. Obtala did well at the task until he started drinking. As he drank more and more, he became inebriated, and began to fashion damaged human beings. The Yoruba believe that in this drunken state he made dwarfs, cripples, people missing limbs, and those burdened with debilitating illness. Olodumare had to reclaim the role he had delegated and finish the creation of humankind himself and, as a result, people who suffer from physical infirmities identify themselves as worshippers of Obatala. This is an interesting relationship with a god, one not of affection or praise but antagonism. They worship Obatala in accusation; it is he who has made them as they are. They wear white, which is his color, and the color of the palm wine he got drunk on.

The answer is simple: Results. It’s not about hours or processes; it’s about results. I don’t delegate tasks; I instead choose to delegate results. So

You, my friend, are unique and operate differently. But no matter how the Lord has wired you, there is something to be said about obscurity, and going off by yourself and meeting with Jesus. Getting away from all the noise and distractions and responsibilities of your days, and simply going and sitting at his feet for a while. Whether that’s simply to breathe, or to worship him, to tell him about your day, to pour out your heart to him, to grieve, to mourn, to seek his face. To put down the phone. To stop scrolling. To put off some of your to-dos. To delegate a few tasks. To put on a show for the kids. To have your husband or babysitter or grandparent take the kids for an hour so you can journal your heart out. To go for a walk.

The main reason for my presence was to impact policy, not just try to help the president and the country accurately understand the current status of the pandemic. After all, I was a health policy expert, not an epidemiologist or virologist. My expertise, my role, was to devise a set of policies that minimized the harms of the pandemic—including the harms of the policies themselves. Americans would have been frightened if they had realized that there was no one on the Task Force with any medical background who understood, or was even concerned with, these impacts. To delegate policy to people solely concerned with stopping the infection, without any understanding of the destruction of the lockdowns, would have been reckless.

We so often get pulled into tasks that we should, by rights, be asking others to help with. We tell ourselves that they’re not quite as experienced or knowledgeable as us, or that it will be quicker if we just do it ourselves. But there’s a massive cost to this way of thinking. By being unwilling to delegate tasks that others could reasonably help with, we fail to make progress on the important or tricky things that only we can do.

Savvy business owners learn to delegate tasks to others. And yes, this is something that must be learned.

Learn the power of “no” I was so busy working inside my company that I failed to work on it. I was answering support tickets, posting app store listings, making landing pages, writing low-level code, and doing other tasks that employees could’ve performed. If you can delegate work, do it. I should have said “no” to busywork and “yes” to growing my company. When I delegated work, I had time for professional development. Reading books on business and focusing on professional development were two reasons why my company grew into a mid-sized company. Too many founders focus on their day-to-day responsibilities. When I started, my issues were funding and product development. When my company became mid-sized, the issues centered around alignment, time-management, technical support, marketing, and automation. I learned how to set boundaries with customers and employees. Neglecting the power of “no” was why my company failed to reach the next level at certain stages. My boss at the software company was overwhelmed because he tried to perform the same work as his employees. He had hundreds of emails that remained unread. He once said he would wake up at 4am, but he still failed to complete all his tasks. Unlike him, I decided which problems were the most important to focus on. I transformed from a technician to an executive with a grand vision for the company.

When you delegate tasks, you create followers. When you delegate authority, you create leaders

1) Only check email once, twice a day maximum. You need slow time to think, reflect and come up with new ideas. The switching costs of going back and forth between email and other tasks can affect focus in very negative ways. Focus on one thing at a time. Studies show that multi-tasking is actually counter productive. 2) Only do what only YOU can do. Everything else? Delegate! It's the only way you'll truly be able to grow your business. 3) Automate and come up with systems as much as you can. Always think: Is there a way to automate what I'm doing right now? 4) Have a Digital Detox, tech free day. It will help you be more productive in every possible way. You need time to recharge.

There is a thin balance between under-delegation and over-delegation. Under-delegation is tasking to the body while over-delegation is tasking to the organization and the project at hand

Three categories are proposed: Tasks, Processes, and Outcomes. The third category, Outcomes, bestows the most freedom on the delegator and, on the delegatee, the biggest opportunity to grow.

On the night that the Ministry of the Interior was bombed, the then Deputy Minister Mohammed bin Naif called the parents of the dead suicide bombers so that they would not first learn of their sons’ deaths on TV. He did not delegate the task to a clerk or a minor official, he telephoned the parents himself. He described the young men who had just tried to kill him as victims and apologized for not having been able to stop them before they began their bombing run.

Think on Paper The power of this technique lies in its simplicity. Here’s how it works: You start with a list of everything you have to do for the coming day. Think on paper. You then place an A, B, C, D, or E next to each item on your list before you begin the first task. An “A” item is defined as something that is very important, something that you must do. This is a task that will have serious positive or negative consequences if you do it or fail to do it, like visiting a key customer or finishing a report that your boss needs for an upcoming board meeting. These items are the frogs of your life. If you have more than one A task, you prioritize these tasks by writing “A-1,” “A-2,” “A-3,” and so on in front of each item. Your A-1 task is your biggest, ugliest frog of all. ”Shoulds” versus “Musts” A “B” item is defined as a task that you should do. But it has only mild consequences. These are the tadpoles of your work life. This means that someone may be unhappy or inconvenienced if you don’t do one of these tasks, but it is nowhere as important as an A task. Returning an unimportant telephone message or reviewing your e-mail would be a B task. The rule is that you should never do a B task when an A task is left undone. You should never be distracted by a tadpole when a big frog is sitting there waiting to be eaten. A “C” task is defined as something that would be nice to do but for which there are no consequences at all, whether you do it or not. C tasks include phoning a friend, having coffee or lunch with a coworker, and completing some personal business during work hours. These sorts of activities have no effect at all on your work life. A “D” task is defined as something you can delegate to someone else. The rule is that you should delegate everything that someone else can do so you can free up more time for the A tasks that only you can do. An “E” task is defined as something that you can eliminate altogether, and it won’t make any real difference. This may be a task that was important at one time but is no longer relevant to you or anyone else. Often it is something you continue to do out of habit or because you enjoy it. But every minute that you spend on an E task is time taken away from an A task or activity that can make a real difference in your life. After you have applied the ABCDE Method to your list, you will be completely organized and ready to get more important things done faster.

Delegation is giving responsibility of a task to somebody else, while maintaining accountability for it.

One barrier could entail time restraint. It does require some time to identify the tasks completed and determine who would be best suited for the task. Also, you must factor in training the individual. Consider this as mentoring or developing the team member. Start thinking of delegation as growth of the individual team member and less of a burden on you.

When considering tasks to delegate, you should also consider tasks that aren’t appropriate to delegate. Tasks that have unclear objectives, high stakes, rely on your unique skills, or a personal growth opportunity should be completed by you. Once you identify the tasks, it is easier to identify the person. Now, we recognize delegation as growth opportunities for our team. We must also consider the skill sets for the tasks. Take a moment to identify the skills and competencies needed. Consider the individual and assess based on the following: skills, strengths, reliability, workload, and development potential. As the tasks are delegated, keep the individuals’ skills in mind. This will be a new endeavor for them and require you to build their self-confidence.  This is why strength-and-skills matching is important. Set clear goals and routine check-ins. Also provide good feedback to the individuals on the progress

When a leader fails to delegate, he will find himself embroiled in so much detail that it will eventually overwhelm him and distract him from his primary task (developing the business of the company and finding innovative solutions to its problems) to such an extent that he will eventually lose sight of the bigger picture.

Step Four: Ideal-Week Planning Now you need to take your “only I can do” list and actually plot out how you will get all these things done. I hope your to-do list is shorter than when you picked up this book. If so, that reduction is a massive win in itself. The goal is to schedule all these things out. Literally, go through the list, plot each item into your calendar, and create an automated repeating appointment so it shows up in your calendar on a weekly basis. For example, if only you can write a weekly blog post and you know you need about three hours to write and publish a post, create a three-hour appointment in your calendar from ten to one o’clock on Mondays, for example, and then make it a recurring appointment. The same process can be followed for child-related activities. If you are the person who primarily picks up your kids from school, put an appointment in your calendar for the amount of time it takes to drive or walk to the school, pick them up, and return home. Repeat this task for all the activities you have on the only-you list. Once you’ve entered these activities, you may be thinking, Okay, Lisa, that’s great, but I have now run out of time. So what happens if you actually block everything in and you run out of hours in the week? If I were sitting across from you in a private coaching session, this is what I would ask: •Are all the activities in your calendar truly things only you can do? Is there anything that could be delegated to someone else? •Can any of these activities be batched with something else? For example, could you do research for a blog post on your phone while you run on the treadmill? Can you do phone calls on your commute home or while grocery shopping for your family? •Is everything in your calendar actually aligned with your ideal life plan? Is there anything on the list that is no longer supporting this plan? Be honest with yourself about things that need to go—even if you are having a hard time letting go. •Can you reduce the amount of time it takes to do an activity? This might seem like an incredibly overwhelming exercise, but trust me, it is an incredibly worthwhile exercise. It might seem rigid to schedule everything in your life, but scheduling brings the freedom not to worry about how you are spending your time. You have thought it through, and you know that every worthwhile activity has been accounted for. This system, my friend, is the cure to mom guilt. When you know you have appropriately scheduled dedicated time for your children, your spouse, yourself, and your work, what do you have to feel guilty about?

Eisenhower Matrix, a method of ordering tasks by importance and urgency. The idea is that you file every task into one of four quadrants: important and urgent; not important but urgent; important but not urgent; and neither important nor urgent. Depending on which of those four a task is in, you do it, delegate it, schedule it or ignore it.

FOXO3 belongs to a family of “transcription factors,” which regulate how other genes are expressed—meaning whether they are activated or “silenced.” I think of it as rather like the cellular maintenance department. Its responsibilities are vast, encompassing a variety of cellular repair tasks, regulating metabolism, caring for stem cells, and various other kinds of housekeeping, including helping with disposal of cellular waste or junk. But it doesn’t do the heavy lifting itself, like the mopping, the scrubbing, the minor drywall repairs, and so on. Rather, it delegates the work to other, more specialized genes—its subcontractors, if you will.

When delegating responsibilities, always assign tasks to a single owner with a clear deadline. Only then will people feel responsible for getting things done.

Securing immediate federal aid to help New York City was the primary task given to the congressional delegation, and Chuck and Hillary quickly plotted strategy. Eventually, Chuck told us he was going to ask Bush for $20 billion. “Why $20 billion?” I asked. “It’s the biggest number I can ask for without being embarrassed,” he replied.

There’s no easy solution to making yourself face and ask these questions. I once heard the general life advice that, for unpleasant tasks, you should imagine what you would have someone else do if you were delegating it. Then do that. And remember, you’re allowed to ask about money. You're a startup. It's okay.

Before you begin each day, start by making a list of everything you have to do that day. The best time to make this list is the evening before, at the end of the workday, so that your subconscious mind can work on your list of activities while you sleep. You will often wake up with ideas and insights for how to more effectively complete the tasks of the day. Then apply the A B C D E Method to your list: • A = “Must do”—Serious consequences for noncompletion; • B = “Should do”—Mild consequences for doing or not doing; • C = “Nice to do”—No consequences whether you do it or not; • D = “Delegate”—Everything you possibly can to free up more time for those things that only you can do; • E = “Eliminate”—Discontinue all tasks and activities that are no longer essential to your work and to achieving your goals.

Delegate responsibilities, not tasks. In Start, you are delegating tasks, since you’re still involved in all the decision-making. But here in Scale, you’ve got to stop delegating tasks and instead move entire responsibilities to members of your team so that you’re not having to think about every item every day.

As early as 2016, when the Duterte administration launched the Build, Build, Build program, Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Secretary Mark Villar instituted key reforms in the right-of-way processes, including the issuance of an administrative order creating Right-of-Way Task Forces for each of the projects being implemented. He also decentralized the ROW acquisition functions and delegated the duties and responsibilities to various implementing units. Prior to this, regional offices were not capacitated with their own right-of-way divisions and were dependent only on legal support provided by the Central Office.

...his methods of achieving his aim were a constant throughout his life: • No matter how verbose the orders, render them down to simple aims. • Know your enemy. • Plan every move from the point of departure to the point of return. Keep the element of surprise in mind at all times. Plan boldly and act boldly (but not foolishly). • Ask the question “What if . . . ” at every stage of the plan. Ask that question no matter how outlandish it may seem to be. • Give honest orders and honest answers to the troops’ questions. • Do not delegate a task unless prepared to do it yourself. • Select the right equipment, but always remember that it is the man who counts. • Rehearse, rehearse, and then rehearse again. • Hope for—but do not expect—good luck. If good luck does appear to be with you, exploit it—fast. No one will deny that the Meadows-detailed preparation and planning phases for any operation paid off. It is a technique still practiced throughout Special Forces.

for unpleasant tasks, you should imagine what you would have someone else do if you were delegating it. Then do that.

The most important of all tasks, in the view of F.D.R., was the forming of an international organization to settle future disputes and keep the peace of the world. There must never be another war like this, if civilization was to endure. The President had called an international conference at a mansion in Washington called Dumbarton Oaks, and it had worked out the details of such an undertaking; now he wanted to persuade Stalin to agree to a time and place for a formal assemblage of delegates to organize and launch the project.

Begin each morning with a quick preview of the coming day’s events. For each one, ask yourself how you can use it to develop as a manager and in particular how you can work on your specific learning goals. Consider delegating a task you would normally take on yourself and think about how you might do that—to whom, what questions you should ask, what boundaries or limits you should set, what preliminary coaching you might provide. Apply the same thinking during the day when a problem comes up unexpectedly. Before taking any action, step back and consider how it might help you become better. Stretch yourself. If you don’t move outside familiar patterns and practice new approaches, you’re unlikely to learn.

We are the ones who decide whether to do a task ourselves or to delegate it to someone else, and doing the physical labor is often the easier road.

If you don’t improve by 25%, you get the sense you could be replaced. Your manager casually says, “I don’t care how you do it. Just do it.” While this might seem like empowerment (full range to do or try anything), it’s also not supportive for a big, new, and elusive goal. Your manager is removing any of his or her accountability and contribution to the result, leaving you solely accountable for a result that has many factors (and people) beyond your control. This flippant form of delegation makes the task feel more like a threat.

When you are handling surplus income, do not delegate the task to anyone". Jesse Livermore.

The 80/20 rule says that 20% of what we do is responsible for 80% of the results we see. The other 80% of what we do are low-leverage activities that only bring 20% of the results and therefore should be delegated, outsourced, or at the very least saved for the end of the day when the high-priority tasks are completed.

Each delegated task must be both time-consuming and well-defined. If you’re running around like a chicken with its head cut off and assign your VA to do that for you, it doesn’t improve the order of the universe.

Though he would later become known for the catchphrase “You’re fired,” Trump usually felt uneasy getting rid of an employee. If it had to be done, he would rather delegate the task to an underling. “We always felt that if you were close enough to Donald that he would have to be the one to let you go, you had a job for life,” Res said. In

But the words that lingered longest in the public imagination were those from Romeo and Juliet, “When I think of President Kennedy,” Bobby said, “I think of what Shakespeare said … “‘When he shall die Take him and cut him out in little stars And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night, And pay no worship to the garish sun.’” The hall burst again into applause. In a hotel room off the boardwalk, O’Brien, O’Donnell, Salinger, and Dave Powers watched the proceedings on television and wept. Elsewhere, Johnson men chafed at Bobby’s reference to the “garish sun.” An obvious, petty jab, they said. It was just like Bobby. After the twenty-minute film, as the lights in the hall were raised, Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson entered the presidential box in which Bobby and Ethel had watched the tribute. Delegates began to cheer; the organ began a rousing reprise of “Hello, Lyndon!” The president shook Bobby’s hand. As Bobby and Ethel stepped to the back of the box, Johnson generously beckoned them forward. They sat at Lady Bird’s side while the president, moments later, gave his acceptance speech. “Let us now turn to our task!” Johnson charged the convention hall crowd in a fervent thirty-five-minute speech. “Let us be on our way!

When Benjamin Franklin left the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in July 1787, a bystander reportedly asked him what sort of government the delegates had created. “A republic,” he replied, “if you can keep it.” Keeping a republic is no easy task. The most important requirement is the active involvement of an informed people committed to honesty, civility, and selflessness—what the Founders called “republican virtue.” Anchored by its Constitution, the American republic has endured for more than 220 years, longer than any other republic in modern history. But the road has not been smooth. The American nation came apart in a violent civil war only 73 years after ratification of the Constitution. When it was reborn five years later, both the republic and its Constitution were transformed. Since then, the nation has had its ups and downs, depending largely on the capacity of the American people to tame, as Franklin put it, “their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views.

Instead of looking at a task as just a chore, look at it as an opportunity to learn more about the associated piece of equipment, the procedure, or if nothing else, about how to delegate or accomplish tasks.

work on it for an hour of completely focused and undistracted effort (notice I haven’t opened e-mail yet). Then, every morning at 7 a.m., I have what I call my calibration appointment, a recurring appointment set in my calendar, where I take fifteen minutes to calibrate my day. This is where I brush over my top three one-year and five-year goals, my key quarterly objectives, and my top goal for the week and month. Then, for the most important part of the calibration appointment, I review (or set) my top three MVPs (Most Valuable Priorities) for that day, asking myself, “If I only did three things today, what are the actions that will produce the greatest results in moving me closer to my big goals?” Then, and only then, do I open e-mail and send out a flurry of tasks and delegations to get the rest of my team started on their day. I then quickly close down my e-mail and go to work on my MVPs. The rest of the day can take a million different shapes, but as long as I go through my morning routine, a majority of the key disciplines I need to be practicing are taken care of, and I’m properly grounded and prepared to perform at a much higher level than if I started each day erratically—or worse, with a set of bad habits.

Create a centralized strategic plan using whatever process is right for your movement. Make sure the plan has tasks that can be repeated by volunteers that add up to progress on the plan. Then delegate chunks of work from your plan to a distributed network of volunteer leaders who can work across space and time, and in the numbers necessary, to meet concrete goals and make change possible.

The same thing happens with emails. Most people open their inbox and see ten new unread messages. Almost everyone will click each message open, read it, and then move on to the next message. If an email requires some action, they’ll get back to it later—in which case they’ll have to re-read the message! Remember, touching something once doesn’t mean you have to-do everything yourself. Delegating an item is almost always the most time efficient thing to-do, so if you touch it once and delegate to somebody, do it. Also, not every task should be touched immediately. A large project or something that is going to run into a previously scheduled time block should be scheduled for later. Most people will have a rule of thumb about when to action something immediately. Most people I know will take immediate action on something if it takes less than five or ten minutes.

1.5 Make time to manage People used to worry about keeping their desk tidy. Now it’s also about keeping the computer desktop tidy. Then there are the interruptions, the telephone, the meetings…Follow these nine tips to get rid of the time robbers in your life. 1 Be clear about what you want to achieve. Do the one minute wonder exercise opposite. 2 Plan your work. Write down your goals and break each goal down into sub-tasks. Give start and finish dates to each task. 3 Book appointments with your work. If a report is going to take two hours, then make an appointment with that report as if it were a real person. 4 Deal with tasks as soon as you can. If it’s an unpleasant task then do it first thing. 5 Be ruthless with time – but courteous with people. But don’t over-socialize either face to face or on the phone. Remember you’re eating into other people’s time as well! one minute wonder Write down your job purpose. Then write the five activities that help you achieve this job purpose. Rate each activity 1-5 according to how happy you are with the time you spend on each (1=low, 5=high). Now get those low – rated activities into your diary! 6 Deal with your email three times a day. First thing in the morning, mid-morning and mid-afternoon. Turn off the pop-up that tells you when an email has just come through. 7 Deal with interruptions. Ask the interrupter if it’s quick or if it can wait until later. If interrupted at your desk, then stand up to keep the other person focused. 8 Deal with your in-tray once a day. Take each item and: deal with it; delegate it; file it or dump it. 9 Plan your telephone calls. Save them up and do them in a block so they’ll be quicker and more focused. The worst feeling as a manager is when we think that the workload is too much for us. These nine tips make sure that you stay in control and go home each evening feeling on top of your workload. Being a great time manager leaves you with more time for your people.

Discovering a dental practitioner that works for you can be difficult. You can make this task a lot simpler if you educate yourself a bit. The following article provides numerous ideas to help you learn the best dental care practices. If you're teeth are very delicate to temperature level like hot and cold, you might should attempt a new toothpaste. Talk with your dental practitioner prior to switching over to tooth paste for sensitive teeth. If there is anything else that may be causing your delicate teeth, he or she can identify. Practice deep breathing if you're worried about having actually procedures done. When you find something that works for you, do it both in the past, throughout (if possible) and after your consultation. Using these strategies can help the process go more efficiently. A weak tooth enamel can lead to issues with cavities. Germs breaks down the enamel and this lead to cavities. Having routine cleanings in addition to excellent brushing practices can prevent cavities from ever forming. Your dentist will examine for any dental troubles with an x-ray. For the healthiest teeth, you should do more than just brush them. You likewise need to floss your teeth frequently and utilize disinfectant mouthwash regularly. Mouthwash gets rid of the germs that brushing your teeth doesn't and flossing enters between your teeth to get rid of plaque and pieces of food. Make sure your dental care regimen has all three aspects: flossing, mouthwash and brushing. You need routine check-ups to make sure that you have no problems with your teeth. You will likewise be sure that your dental professional will find anything before it happens and can also offer you with strong suggestions. You have to floss a minimum of once daily. You will see a huge distinction when you appropriately floss. The floss must be placed between your teeth. Move the floss back and forth to clean the space extensively. You must stop flossing at the gum line, not under the gums. You have to go gradually and clean the back and sides of every tooth with the floss. Prior to making use of over-the-counter items for whitening your teeth, visit your dentist. The unsightly fact is that damages can result from utilizing some teeth-whitening products. Most can be utilized safely; nevertheless, it is tough to identify which products are damaging and which aren't Your dentist will let you understand which options you should make use of for whitening, depending on your situation. Are you mulling over the possibility of having somebody pierce your tongue? Think once more. Germs are rampant inside your mouth, as well as a precise cleaning can not eliminate them all. Tongue piercings can end up cracking your enamel or even breaking your teeth. If your tongue ends up being infected and you don't receive therapy, you might lose a portion of your tongue. This is actually not extremely chic! Make sure that you alter your toothbrush on a routine basis. You ought to change your toothbrush every three or 4 months. It does not matter if your toothbrush still looks fantastic. After this window, your toothbrush's bristles become damaged. The older a tooth brush is, the less effective it is at cleaning your teeth. Frequently replacing your tooth brush is important for correctly taking care of your teeth. Floss teeth about when a day. It eliminates plaque and bacteria in between the teeth where brushes can not reach. Flossing likewise has much to do with guaranteeing your gums remain healthy. You can either floss in the early morning or at night; however, just do not forget to floss. Follow your tri cities wa dentist's orders as carefully as you can, specifically if you need dental work or antibiotics. Infections delegated fester can infect other parts of your body. Always do what your dental professional states to treat your infection, consisting of getting antibiotic

But Welch also thought through another issue before deciding where to concentrate his efforts for the next five years. He asked himself which of the two or three tasks at the top of the list he himself was best suited to undertake. Then he concentrated on that task; the others he delegated. Effective executives try to focus on jobs they’ll do especially well. They know that enterprises perform if top management performs—and don’t if it doesn’t.

It’s really crucial not to flip out that a certain task or skill won't be done correctly if you don't do it yourself. In fact, it’s really pivotal when you can place innate faith into people who work for you. Delegation gives you a chance to improve your end result, or final outcome. 2 The

Why can't Dumbledore teach Harry?" asked Sirius aggressively. "Why you?" "I suppose beacuse it is a headmaster's privilege to delegate less enjoyable tasks," said Snape silkily. "I assure you I did not beg for the job.

Confidence spark When interviewing for an ambitious assignment, make a list of the skills you have, the skills you need to learn, and the tasks that can be delegated. Now address your fear of not being able to handle the situation, and see the truth as it is. You have several skills, and you can learn or delegate the rest. Breaking down the job into its various parts may also help. What daily tasks can you do right now? Which ones will you assign to someone else?

As women must be more empowered at work, men must be more empowered at home. I have seen so many women inadvertently discourage their husbands from doing their share by being too controlling or critical. Social scientists call this "maternal gatekeeping" which is a fancy term for "Ohmigod, that's not the way you do it! Just move aside and let me!"...Anyone who wants her mate to be a true partner must treat him as an equal - and equally capable partner. And if that's note reason enough, bear in mind that a study found that wives who engage in gatekeeping behaviors do five more hours of family work per week than wives who take a more collaborative approach. Another common and counterproductive dynamic occurs when women assign or suggest tasks to their partners. She is delegating, and that's a step in the right direction. But sharing responsibility should mean sharing responsibility. Each partner needs to be in charge of specific activities or it becomes too easy for one to feel like he's doing a favour instead of doing his part.

The fact is that you can't do everything that you have to do. You have to procrastinate on something! Therefore, procrastinate on small tasks. Put off eating smaller or less ugly frogs. Eat the biggest and ugliest frogs before anything else. Do the worst first! Everyone procrastinates. The difference between high performers and low performers is largely determined by what they choose to procrastinate on. Since you must procrastinate anyway, decide today to procrastinate on low value activities. Decide to procrastinate, outsource, delegate and eliminate those activities that don't make much of a contribution to your life in any case.

Figure out the things you get lost in in your business and your personal life. Then figure out how you can be doing more of those things more of the time. Hire someone and delegate the tasks you hate doing. Partner up with someone who’s good at, and enjoy doing the things you’re not that into.

It would have been easy for Donald to be a hero. People who have hated and criticized him would have forgiven or overlooked his endless stream of appalling actions if he'd simply had somebody take the pandemic preparedness manual down from the shelf where it was put after the Obama administration gave it to him. If he'd alerted the appropriate agencies and state governments at the first evidence the virus was highly contagious, had extremely high mortality rates, and was not being contained. If he'd invoked the Defense Production Act of 1950 to begin production of PPE, ventilators, and other necessary equipment to prepare the country to deal with the worst-case scenario. If he'd allowed medical and scientific experts to give daily press conferences during which facts were presented clearly and honestly. If he'd ensured that there was a systematic, top-down approach and coordination among all of the necessary agencies. Most of those tasks would have required almost no effort on his part. All he would have had to do was make a couple of phone calls, give a speech or two, then delegate everything else.

My friend Taylor Pearson is a terrific operationalist – I learned a lot of what I know from him.   His approach to Ops is to open a Google Doc every time he’s doing a task that should be repeatable, alongside the work.   Then, as he works, he writes down exactly what he’s doing in the Google Doc.   It’s rough and messy at first, and it means completing the task takes 20% longer than if he just did it without documenting, but he winds up with the start of legible processes that can be improved directly or delegated.

The most striking and obvious thing about an administrative organization is its formal system of rules and objectives. Here tasks, powers, and procedures are set out according to some officially approved pattern. This pattern purports to say how the work of the organization is to be carried on, whether it be producing steel, winning votes, teaching children, or saving souls. The organization thus designed is a technical instrument for mobilizing human energies and directing them toward set aims. We allocate tasks, delegate authority, channel communication, and find some way of co-ordinating all that has been divided up and parceled out. All this is conceived as an exercise in engineering; it is governed by the related ideals of rationality and discipline.

At Soma, we are constantly reflecting on the 80/20 Rule. We identify the projects that are bearing the most fruit. We make lists of things to delegate and create systems to automate the small, but required tasks. We do less, but achieve more.

Principle 1: Leaders Embrace Extreme Ownership. "On any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame." Principle 2: There Are No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders. "When leaders drive their teams to achieve a higher standard of performance, they must recognize that when it comes to standards, as a leader, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate." Principle 3: Mission Clarity. "Everyone on the team must understand not only what do to, but why." Principle 4: Keep Your Ego in Check. "Ego clouds and disrupts everything: the planning process, the ability to take good advice, and the ability to accept constructive criticism." Principle 5: Teamwork. "Each member of the team is critical to success, though the main effort and supporting efforts must be clearly identified. If the overall team fails, everyone fails, even if a specific member or an element within the team did their job successfully. Pointing fingers and placing blame on others contributes to further dissension between teams and individuals. These individuals and teams must instead find a way to work together, communicate with each other, and mutually support one another. The focus must always be on how to best accomplish the mission." Principle 6: Simplicity and Clarity. "Leaders eliminate complexity in problems and in situations. Leaders bring clarity to a situation. They keep plans simple, clear, and concise." Principle 7: Prioritize and Execute. "Leaders must determine the highest priority task and execute. Prioritize and Execute." Principle 8: Decentralized Command. "Good leaders delegate. They trust their teams to execute. They provide freedom to execute by giving them clarity in the mission and clear boundaries." Principle 9: Manage Up and Manage Down. "As leader, if you don’t understand why decisions are being made, requests denied, or support allocated elsewhere, you must ask those questions up the chain. Then, once understood, you can pass that understanding down to your team." Principle 10: Discipline Equals Freedom.

If there was any politician in America who reflected the Cold War and what it did to the country, it was Richard Nixon—the man and the era were made for each other. The anger and resentment that were a critical part of his temperament were not unlike the tensions running through the nation as its new anxieties grew. He himself seized on the anti-Communist issue earlier and more tenaciously than any other centrist politician in the country. In fact that was why he had been put on the ticket in the first place. His first congressional race in 1946, against a pleasant liberal incumbent named Jerry Voorhis, was marked by red-baiting so savage that it took Voorhis completely by surprise. Upon getting elected, Nixon wasted no time in asking for membership in the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was the committee member who first spotted the contradictions in Hiss’s seemingly impeccable case; in later years he was inclined to think of the case as one of his greatest victories, in which he had challenged and defeated a man who was not what he seemed, and represented the hated Eastern establishment. His career, though, was riddled with contradictions. Like many of his conservative colleagues, he had few reservations about implying that some fellow Americans, including perhaps the highest officials in the opposition party, were loyal to a hostile foreign power and willing to betray their fellow citizens. Yet by the end of his career, he became the man who opened the door to normalized relations with China (perhaps, thought some critics, he was the only politician in America who could do that without being attacked by Richard Nixon), and he was a pal of both the Soviet and Chinese Communist leadership. If he later surprised many long-standing critics with his trips to Moscow and Peking, he had shown his genuine diplomatic skills much earlier in the way he balanced the demands of the warring factions within his own party. He never asked to be well liked or popular; he asked only to be accepted. There were many Republicans who hated him, particularly in California. Earl Warren feuded with him for years. Even Bill Knowland, the state’s senior senator and an old-fashioned reactionary, despised him. At the 1952 convention, Knowland had remained loyal to Warren despite Nixon’s attempts to help Eisenhower in the California delegation. When Knowland was asked to give a nominating speech for Nixon, he was not pleased: “I have to nominate the dirty son of a bitch,” he told friends. Nixon bridged the gap because his politics were never about ideology: They were the politics of self. Never popular with either wing, he managed to negotiate a delicate position acceptable to both. He did not bring warmth or friendship to the task; when he made attempts at these, he was, more often than not, stilted and artificial. Instead, he offered a stark choice: If you don’t like me, find someone who is closer to your position and who is also likely to win. If he tilted to either side, it was because that side seemed a little stronger at the moment or seemed to present a more formidable candidate with whom he had to deal. A classic example of this came early in 1960, when he told Barry Goldwater, the conservative Republican leader, that he would advocate a right-to-work plank at the convention; a few weeks later in a secret meeting with Nelson Rockefeller, the liberal Republican leader—then a more formidable national figure than Goldwater—Nixon not only reversed himself but agreed to call for its repeal under the Taft-Hartley act. “The man,” Goldwater noted of Nixon in his personal journal at the time, “is a two-fisted four-square liar.

1. Break Down Big Goals into Manageable Next Steps Don’t fall for the old “eat that frog” trap. While your goal should begin in the Discomfort Zone, your next step should be in the Comfort Zone. Do the easiest task first. If you get stumped or stuck, seek outside help. You want to build momentum early with quick wins. 2. Utilize Activation Triggers Brainstorm the best Activation Triggers for you. Remember to leverage what comes easy to do what’s hard. Don’t rely on your willpower in the moment. Instead, optimize your Activation Triggers with elimination, automation, and delegation. You’re going to face obstacles, so anticipate those and determine the best if/then response in advance. The idea is to plan your workarounds before an obstacle derails you. If you don’t have it right to begin with, experiment until you nail it. 3. Schedule Regular Goal Reviews For your daily review, scan your list of goals. You want to keep your goals fresh in your mind and also think through a few specific tasks for the day that will bring you closer to achieving them. I call these my Daily Big 3. For your weekly review, scan your goals with a special focus on your key motivations. Conduct a quick After-Action Review of the prior week. Review the next actions for each of your goals and determine what three outcomes you must reach in the coming week to achieve them. I call these my Weekly Big 3, and I use them to determine my Daily Big 3. For the quarterly review, I recommend walking through the five Best Year Ever steps again. But the key is to (1) rejoice if you’ve completed your goal or passed a milestone, (2) recommit if you haven’t, (3) revise the goal if you can’t recommit to it, (4) remove the goal if you can’t revise, and finally, (5) replace the goal with another you want to achieve.

Principle 1: Leaders Embrace Extreme Ownership. "On any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame." Principle 2: There Are No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders. "When leaders drive their teams to achieve a higher standard of performance, they must recognize that when it comes to standards, as a leader, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate." Principle 3: Mission Clarity. "Everyone on the team must understand not only what do to, but why." Principle 4: Keep Your Ego in Check. "Ego clouds and disrupts everything: the planning process, the ability to take good advice, and the ability to accept constructive criticism." Principle 5: Teamwork. "Each member of the team is critical to success, though the main effort and supporting efforts must be clearly identified. If the overall team fails, everyone fails, even if a specific member or an element within the team did their job successfully. Pointing fingers and placing blame on others contributes to further dissension between teams and individuals. These individuals and teams must instead find a way to work together, communicate with each other, and mutually support one another. The focus must always be on how to best accomplish the mission." Principle 6: Simplicity and Clarity. "Leaders eliminate complexity in problems and in situations. Leaders bring clarity to a situation. They keep plans simple, clear, and concise." Principle 7: Prioritize and Execute. "Leaders must determine the highest priority task and execute. Prioritize and Execute." Principle 8: Decentralized Command. "Good leaders delegate. They trust their teams to execute. They provide freedom to execute by giving them clarity in the mission and clear boundaries." Principle 9: Manage Up and Manage Down. "As leader, if you don’t understand why decisions are being made, requests denied, or support allocated elsewhere, you must ask those questions up the chain. Then, once understood, you can pass that understanding down to your team." Principle 10: Discipline Equals Freedom.

She had to delegate tasks even though the desire to follow up everything herself was overpowering.