Delegation

 

Nicholas C. Zakas talked about delegation in a newsletter a while back.

I remember my first experience with delegating was making the choice to hire people in the early CSS-Tricks years. I wanted to do it because entirely because of time. There was just too much to do and if I could delegate stuff, I could get time back. Theoretically even have more time to focus on things I’m better at. That happened. Worked out pretty well, all told.

Nicholas says there are two ways you might feel.

The first thing you may feel is a sense of grief — you are losing something that was part of your identity. You have been the go-to person for these types of projects and now you’ll need to give that up. That is hard. It’s normal to feel a loss at this point, and that feeling can make it hard to hand off that task. It feels like giving away a part of yourself to someone else, and you won’t be the one to have the fun implementing it or get the credit when it succeeds.

I get that. I have to mentally put on different shoes to feel it anymore though, as at this point in my career I simply cannot wait to give up tasks. Please, for the love of god, take my tasks. You can have the fun and the credit, I promise.

And then:

A second common resistance is related to the performance of the person you’ve delegated to: will they complete the task in time? Will they complete it with the same commitment to quality that you have? What if they get stuck and need to ask for help?

This one will be hard forever because it’s likely after delegation the buck still stops with you. If they don’t do things in time, you’ll have to step in. If they don’t do things well, you’ll have to step in. If they need help, you’ll be doing the helping. All of that is fine and the hope is things improve over time. But they don’t always improve over time, so a delegation attempt might end up a total waste of time and resources. Happens.

Do you know what the big hesitancy for me considering my first attempts at delegation? It was entirely money. Every dollar you spend delegating is a dollar you no longer have. If you give a kid forty bucks to mow your lawn, that’s easy. But even part-time employees aren’t forty bucks, they likely represent some major cash outlay that doesn’t just feel like a hell of a risk — it is a hell of a risk.

No pain, no gain.

Jane Fonda VHS tapes
Chris Coyier

22 Mar 2023 at 18:26

Authenticity

 

I enjoyed this podcast with Susan Rogers who’s new book This is What it Sounds Like digs into why we like the songs we like.

Susan unpacks the seven dimensions of music and how they show up along a varying spectrum in every song. She explains how everyone has an individualized taste for the configuration of these dimensions, and that how closely a particular song aligns with this pattern of sweet spots accounts for whether you like it or not.

Part of me is like awwww bummer my super hip brain what with all its complex and esoteric tastes and be distilled into a seven-spectrum graph?? But there is all sorts of nuance to this. This is just an interesting way to think about it all and perhaps deliver a bit of insight into who we are.

I do have a fear of my musical tastes atrophying to the point that I only like the old stuff and this new stuff is just insolent noise. It’s already happened to some degree, but fortunately, I’m hanging on by a thread discovering a handful of new-to-me artists each year still that do it for me and I get quite into.

My favorite of all this was Susan’s first spectrum that she talked about on the show, and one that is the least possible to apply science to: authenticity. That is, how authentic the sound of the music sounds to you. Unlike some of the other spectrums, this isn’t a two-sided thing where some people like authentic music and others like inauthentic music. Everybody likes authentic music. The weird thing is that what sounds authentic to me might not sound that way to you and vice versa. That’s what has stuck in my brain. Like I can imagine some real modern country lover’s brain going man that guy just rhymed trucks with fucks, that’s good down home authentic stuff where my brain goes that’s just silly trite manipulative inauthentic garbage. And that same fella thinking did that cityfella just sing “I’ve come to test the timbre of my heart”? because he’s just singing fake inauthentic jibberish that I bet he doesn’t even understand and me going now that’s beauty in music — that’s authentically tapping into your emotions and turning it into melody.

Chris Coyier

20 Mar 2023 at 17:42



Refresh complete

ReloadX
Home
(195) All feeds

Last 24 hours
Download OPML
*
Alan Ralph
*
Alastair Johnston
Andy Sylvester
*
Andy Sylvester's Web
Anna Havron
annie mueller
*
Annie Mueller
*
Austin Kleon
bgfay
*
Bix Blog
*
BRANDON WRITES
*
Chris Coyier
Chris Lovie-Tyler
*
CJ Chilvers
CJ Eller
*
Colin Devroe
*
Colin Walker – Live Feed
*
Colin Walker — Daily Feed
Colin's FeedLand ramblings
*
Content on Kwon.nyc
*
Dave Winer’s FeedLand feed
*
David Heinemeier Hansson
Dino’s Journal 📖
*
Dispatches
E L S U A ~ A blog by Luis Suarez
Flashing Palely in the Margins
hyblog
inessential.com
*
James Van Dyne
*
Jan-Lukas Else
*
Jason Fried
*
Jim Nielsen’s Blog
*
Kev Quirk
*
Manton Reece
*
Manu's Feed
*
On my Om
*
rebeccatoh.co
*
Rhoneisms
ribbonfarm
*
Scripting News
*
Scripting News for email
Sentiers — Blog
*
Simon Collison | Articles & Stream
strandlines
the dream machine
*
The Marginalian
*
thejaymo
tomcritchlow.com
*
Tracy Durnell
*
writing.as.amit
About Reader

Reader is a public/private RSS & Atom feed reader.

The page is publicly available but all admin and post actions are gated behind login checks. Anyone is welcome to come and have a look at what feeds are listed — the posts visible will be everything within the last week and be unaffected by my read/unread status.

Reader currently updates every six hours.

Close
Colin Walker Colin Walker colin@colinwalker.blog