Don’t delegate a whole lot of nothing.

Hiring an assistant is supposed to free you from tasks that you should do but don't want to do.

But it's easy to make this mistake...

Day-to-day, you run into random tasks you don't want to do, and pass them along to your assistant. Because it's not on your plate anymore, it's easy to forget to question if the task actually needs to be done.

Fast-forward a month, and your EA is doing a random hodgepodge of tasks that don't matter.

Revisit the Impact

Here's my challenge to you...

If you zoom out and rewind to before you hired an EA, based on their current tasks, would you hire them again?

If yes, great. You're done here. Feel free to like, subscribe, and move on.

If it's not an easy yes, reflect on their current tasks. Take a step back and ask yourself:

• What priorities made me hire this person?
• Are they working on those priorities? If not, are they working on tasks of higher or equal priority?
• Are they at least enabling you to spend more time on higher priority work?

Assistants can feel like a superpower for people because of their increased impact. If you don't feel this yet, it may be time to recalibrate.

Building a Sustainable Partnership

Your partnership should be a clear win-win for you and your assistant. Here's how:

Know your needle-movers.

Before you hire, you probably had a sense of what types of tasks you wanted to get off your plate. The first few weeks often involve figuring out working styles and catching up on context. Once this phase passes, focus your assistant towards tasks that help your priorities.

If you do quarterly planning, knowing your business priorities is easy. Share these planning docs with your assistant.

If you prioritize your health and relationships (you should), let your assistant know your main efforts on those fronts.

Continuous Evaluation.

Schedule regular reviews to assess the effectiveness of the tasks being handled. Check if each of the current tasks supports a needle-moving priority. It should be very clear that it does.

Actionable Steps

• Schedule your task audits. Make your assistant responsible for this. Every quarter, schedule 30 mins to review their recent/upcoming tasks. Identify low-impact ones and redirect focus towards high-impact ones. Don't rush to fill open space right away.
• Align on clear priorities. Outline important business/personal goals and how your assistant can contribute. Map their daily responsibilities with these objectives.
• Be willing to pivot. Don't hesitate to switch their tasks if you find more important things. Even if they're in the middle of working on that thing. An nimble approach makes sure that your assistant remains a valuable asset to the team.

Don't forget to zoom out. Then realign your assistant’s tasks with things that matter. This creates a sustainable, productive relationship that helps both of you. Remember, you pay your assistant real money and they want to help you in ways that matter. Not just be an operational convenience.

Related links:

Finding More to Delegate - Come up with more tasks that matter.

Energy Audits by Mochary Method - Matt Mochary is an exec coach who’s worked with people like Naval and the CEOs of companies like Reddit, Coinbase, OpenAI, etc. In this doc, he talks about Energy Audits and how you can identify more tasks that matter.

Eisenhower Matrix - Prioritizing tasks based on importance and urgency.

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