The primary reason people fail to delegate is the correct belief that they can do a task faster and better themselves the first time. The key is to accept this initial time cost as a necessary investment in long-term leverage and compounding efficiency, rather than a reason to avoid delegating.

Athena discovered that providing a world-class assistant wasn't enough; they also had to educate clients on the skill of delegation. This highlights that for complex services, investing in client training is as crucial as the service itself for ensuring customer success.

For professionals new to AI, the fastest way to get a tangible productivity boost is to use a paid plan like OpenAI's ($20) and create Custom GPTs. This low-barrier tool is exceptionally effective for automating repetitive tasks involving reading, summarizing, or transforming text.

The most efficient delegation method is using your voice, which is 2-3 times faster than typing. By sending voice notes to an assistant between meetings to capture takeaways and action items, you can process work in real-time and prevent tasks from accumulating into a daunting end-of-day list.

AI agent platforms are typically priced by usage, not seats, making initial costs low. Instead of a top-down mandate for one tool, leaders should encourage teams to expense and experiment with several options. The best solution for the team will emerge organically through use.

It is almost always faster and better to do a task yourself once. However, this is a trap. The "cardinal sin" is failing to invest the extra upfront effort to delegate and train someone, which unlocks compounded time savings and prevents you from ever having to do that task again.

Effective delegation isn't just handing off a task. It's about codifying your personal preferences and decision-making process into a repeatable algorithm. This allows an assistant to replicate your desired outcomes autonomously over time, moving beyond simple task completion to genuine leverage.

Instead of viewing AI collaboration as a manager delegating tasks, adopt the "surgeon" model. The human expert performs the critical, hands-on work while AI assistants handle prep (briefings, drafts) and auxiliary tasks. This keeps the expert in a state of flow and focused on their unique skills.

The skills of setting clear goals, understanding resource (model) strengths, and defining processes are the same for managing people and AI agents. Being a great manager makes you a great AI user, as both require clarifying outcomes and marshalling resources to achieve them.