[bluGill]

> Their job is to understand you, and act on your behalf in the matters you delegate, knowing what outcome you would choose yourself.

And that works very well even today when you are high enough to get a personal secretary. For the engineer who always shared the secretary with several others she didn't know you as well, and in any case their preferences were not important enough to consider (you don't get first class options).

Even for my boss, outlook is a force multiplier over a secretary because he (happens to be he today, has been she in the past, and likely will be again in a few years) doesn't have very many things where knowing preferences matter and doesn't have such complex scheduling needs that a human needs to do it. The ability to schedule his own meetings is much more powerful than asking someone to do it - while it might take more time to do it he can see that by not inviting one person the meeting can be had sooner and that is a much greater multiplier than the time saves by having someone else who not knowing those details delays the meeting until everyone can be there.

Yes when your situation is such that a secretary can "understand you, and act on your behalf in the matters you delegate, knowing what outcome you would choose yourself" it is a force multiplier. However most of us are not really that different from anyone else and even where we are we are not allowed the level of differentiation. We also don't have nearly the ability to delegate things, much less enough things that someone else can delegate them on our behalf. And so for most of us outlook is a force multiplier over the secretary we would get.