“You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.” — David Allen
Delegate to amplify effectiveness, not to abdicate responsibility.
If you can afford to, delegate it. If you can’t yet afford to, automate it. Time is the most precious resource.
Eliminate → Automate → Delegate
- Never automate something that can be eliminated.
- Never delegate something that can be automated or streamlined.
See also: Elon Musk’s 5-Step Algorithm
How to delegate tasks that are hard to do
Paired Tasking
Paired tasking is best when the work is
- Complex and tacit (knowledge is hard to write down).
- Sensitive to quality or context.
- Performed infrequently (so documentation alone won’t suffice).
Typical scenarios
- onboarding a teammate
- transferring a client relationship
- teaching a specific workflow or judgment call.
How to run paired tasking
- Schedule a focused session where both people work together on the task.
- Observe and narrate: the person teaching explains decisions out loud.
- Swap roles or let the learner take the lead partway through.
- Compare results and explicitly discuss differences.
- Repeat 3–4 iterations until the learner reliably produces acceptable results.