Excerpt from a Will Humphreys talk (YouTube) arguing that freedom is not having nothing to do but doing work that supplies love and energy; burnout often results from doing tasks outside one’s ‘genius’ rather than from sheer quantity of work. Delegation within a person’s genius is framed as a gift; delegating tasks outside someone’s genius cripples them.
Chapters
So it was interesting to me because I think a lot of times people think that freedom means not having anything to do. That's not freedom. That's boredom. Freedom is working where you get love and energy. Like, where do you find. So that example of when you were CFO was a really cool one because the word you used was, I gave her those things to do. She was unhappy because she didn't have enough on her plate. Now, as a quick side note, I believe people are burned out. All this burnout that's so prevalent in our industry comes from people doing either too much or doing things that aren't in their geniuses. So I could be doing fewer things outside of my genius and complain about feeling burned out and overwhelmed. And then people who have that genius look at how little I'm producing and judge it like, well, what's wrong with him? He just must be weak. No, I'm working outside of my genius. So when we delegate a task to an employee or a co worker, in my opinion, who's outside of their genius, we're crippling them. But when we are delegating a task to an employee or a co worker that's within their genius, we're gifting them.