how to choose what you delegate
Pick a 2-3 week representative sample of your calendar/task list. This could be simply pulling the last two to three weeks of your actual calendar and task list (unless there was something unusually unrepresentative about those last two to three weeks).
Write down every activity that you participated in from that sample and put each on a small post-it. You can use a shorthand or a headline, as long as you can recognize the activity by name.
On a decent-sized whiteboard or a fairly large piece of paper, draw a 2x2 matrix. Label the y-axis "Impact on Mission" and the x-axis "Doesn’t Have to Be Me."
Treating the "doesn’t-have-to-be-me" axis as theoretical or hypothetical (i.e., another person competent enough could take on this task instead of me in the organization, whether or not that person is currently with you), place all the post-its somewhere that makes sense to you within these four quadrants.
The things you should aim to delegate first are the post-its in the northeast quadrant: high impact on mission, doesn’t have to be you.
-ben
