[thenerdhead]

Another tip is that for your inbox (human sent email), treat it as "other people's todo lists". This means you put yourself first at work before you get to other people's work. Your strategy may vary depending on your organization.

When I changed my perspective on email in this light, I started to really see who were the delegators and who were the experts. As you might imagine, the delegators don't typically do much and the experts are usually doing it all.

You can then strategically ignore email and when experts come asking for help, you know it's something impactful. Same applies for delegators, but you typically view them as lower priority as they usually aren't impactful at all from your perspective.

[jrm4]

100% -- This is the only thing from GTD that's stuck with me very well; Strongly separate your emails and texts from your own "inbox of stuff to do." Filtering one to the other AND NOT RESPONDING should be a discrete, extremely conscious, step in your flow -- only stopping if it fits the 5 minute rule.

[wyclif]

I'm more of a fan of "Inbox Zero for Life": https://web.archive.org/web/20210311074347/https://xph.us/20...

[jrm4]

See, why I prefer mine is; storage is (effectively) free, focused attention is not.

Inbox Zero requires you to seriously think and evaluate every single email, but my way allows me to subconsciously triage.

And I just realized why it's so effective and feels so effortless -- it uses a mental mechanism that we all must use everyday, unfortunately; it's the same filter that lets us ignore advertising (e.g. billboards), which we've all had to practice anyway.

[2143]

In support of delegation:

(This was the philosophy at a Scandinavian firm I worked at).

A more-experienced employee might want to delegate some of their less important tasks to less-experienced people, so that the former can focus on more important higher-value tasks.

If a more-experienced employee with more pay is doing a task that can be done satisfactorily by a less-experienced employee with lesser pay, that means the organization is spending more than it should to get that task done.

Of course, there are some assumptions here:

* The less-experienced is able to do the work with quality.

* The less-experienced wouldn't take an insanely longer time up complete the task than the more-experienced senior.

(Now please don't start a war here saying that everybody should have identical pay and there must not be any hierarchy whatsoever. It's beyond my control.)

[atoav]

Read and flag (Thunderbird: numberkeys 1 to 5).

Only answer directly if it really burns (aka you are responsible) or it is answered in a sentence.

All other things come later.

[samstave]

In defense as a delegator ;

---

I have, through my career, managed, directed, employed, mentored MANY people that were WAY smarter than I am (Looking at you JDB) -- but I had "mortar skills" -- oor as i call them "Lego Skills"

I am talented in bringing disparate engineering disciplines together.

Ill give you a real world example ;

Brocade.

I was the TPM on the build of their new HQ in San Jose, I was responsible for literally the entire go-live of collapsing all offices and data-centers down to the new HQ (I have dont this with other companies, including ILM, Facebook, Lockheed)

Its kinda my jam....

anyway, there were teams Server, storage, network, app, HR, blah blah not to mention the relocation of ~60,000 devices from colos in the valley to the new 4-storey DC building made at Brocade's HQ campus...

I was brought in because I knew how to gather the data req'd to inform an actual migration strategy.

---

I met with each SME of every discipline, asked them of their needs, inputs, workproduct, team, etc...

I did this with each SME for each discipline separately.

I then formed a plan of action, both tactical and hypothetical.

Once I had a plan together, held a meeting and showed the cohesive plan, with every teams dependencies and I threw that up on the wall and had all the SMEs in a meeting and asked them

"Tell me what is wrong with this plan. Show me any deficiencies that your team may suffer, and what is also needed from the other teams to make YOUR team successful. Throw as many darts as you can at THE PROBLEM and not the people on the other team."

A flawless move of ~4,000 employees and ~60K devices to a new colo with ZERO downtime to regular employees.

---

So, just know that just because youre not an SME in a deep subject, delegators have value. In my case : I was not an expert in ANY of their fields, but I knew how to tie a team together in a way that was less divisive. Super successful and I allowed each SME to air their project issues and requirements in private, so as to keep emotions to a min. Esp considering prior to my joining the project, they had not been talking cross-teams at all.

Delegation is a skill -- you need to know enough about the problem (both project and team issues) to be effective, and really what it comes down to, is ensuring that your SME stays focused on being an SME for [SUBJECT] and remove the Human Emotional friction that can happen on teams of really smart people.

[Moru]

In this case I'm pretty sure GP talks about the informal delegators that just wants to push the problem to someone else. Don't take it personally :)

[thenerdhead]

Yeah. No offense to TPMs, PMs, or EMs just doing their job. I meant people who pass the buck.

[samstave]

I am aware, just wanted to make sure this alternate view also was aired out there so people can have perspective and just not automatically bucket delegating managers into a single "passing the buck-bucket" :-)

Thanks for the posts

[XorNot]

Quality project management is a joy to work for has been my experience.

[chrisweekly]

Agreed. And it's SO RARE.

[lupire]

Many people are both delegators and experts.

Especially on teams.

In sports, a pass is a delegation.

[taneq]

A pass could equally be seen as delegation by the passee to the passer. “Run this ball up the field and deliver it to me when I need it.”