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Eliminate before you delegate.
Never automate something that can be eliminated, and never delegate something that can be automated
or streamlined. Otherwise, you waste someone else’s time instead of your own, which now wastes your
hard-earned cash. How’s that for incentive to be effective and efficient’? Now you're playing with your
own dough. It’s something I want you to get comfortable with, and this baby step is small stakes.
Did I mention to eliminate before you delegate?
For example, it is popular among executives to have assistants read e-mail. In some cases this is
valuable. In my case, I use spam filters, autoresponders with FAQs, and automatic forwarding to
outsourcers to limit my e-mail obligation to 10-20 e-mail responses per week. It takes me 30 minutes per
week because I used systems—elimination and automation—to make it so.
Nor do I use an assistant to set meetings and conference calls because I have eliminated meetings. If I
need to set the odd 20-minute call for a given month, [ll send one two-sentence e-mail and be done
with it.
Principle number one is to refine rules and processes before adding people. Using people to leverage a
refined process multiplies production; using people as a solution to a poor process multiplies problems.
The Menu: A World of Possibilities
I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who
considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.
— BISHOP DESMOND TUTU, South African cleric and activist
Tae next question then becomes, “What should you delegate?” It’s a good question, but I don’t want
to answer it. I want to watch Family Guy.
The truth be told, it is a hell of a lot of work writing about not working. Ritika of Brickwork and
Venky of YMII are more than capable of writing this section, so ll just mention two guidelines and
leave the mental hernia of detail work to them.
Golden Rule #1: 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.
Golden Rule #2: On a lighter note, have some fun with it. Have someone in Bangalore or Shanghai
send e-mails to friends as your personal concierge to set lunch dates or similar basics. Harass your
boss with odd phone calls in strong accents from unknown numbers. Being effective doesn’t mean
being serious all the time. It’s fun being in control for a change. Get a bit of repression off your chest
so it doesn’t turn into a complex later.
Getting Personal and Going Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes, the ultrarich filmmaker and eccentric from The Aviator, was notorious for assigning odd
tasks to his assistants. Here are a few from Donald Bartlett’s Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness you
might want to consider.
1. After his first plane crash, Hughes confided in a friend that he believed his recovery was due to his
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