Modern WisdomYou’re Not Overloaded. You’re Under-Leveraged - Jonathan Swanson
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
70 min read · 13,649 words- 0:00 – 8:12
Why is Time So Important?
- CWChris Williamson
How did you get started in thinking about time and delegating?
- JSJonathan Swanson
So my first job out of school was working at the White House, and I worked for the president's top economic advisor. And I got to walk in the West Wing every morning, which was cool life experience, and I sat next to the president's executive assistants. And as you might imagine, the executive assistants to the president are really freaking good, and it set my bar crazy high for what this client-EA partnership could look like. And so when I left the White House to start my first company, I asked myself the question: What if I had an assistant or a team of assistants that was as good as the president's? Uh, obviously, I'm not gonna become president, but what else could I accomplish if I had that sort of support? And so hired my first, uh, assistant that way and then set out on a journey to build the best team I could to see how it changed my life.
- CWChris Williamson
What were the unlocks that you saw inside of the White House? Like, how, how complex and big is the system of spindly octopuses with their tentacles and everything, trying to help get the machine moving?
- JSJonathan Swanson
I mean, it's insane. The president has multiple assistants, as you might imagine. There's actually an entire department called Advance that plans every minute of the president's life for months in advance. And so if he's gonna be in Brazil in three months, there's people deployed months [chuckles] in advance to go scope, prepare everything. Um, and, you know, I think there's just kind of the level of optimization, which is one thing, but the thing that really struck me sitting next to the president's assistants is seeing the relationship they had. It wasn't just saving him time or doing tasks for him. At the end of the day, he would sit down, lean back in his chair, and be like: [exhaling] "What happened?" And he would talk to his assistant, and this was one of the people he trusted most in the world. There's all these other people jockeying for his attention, governors, senators, NSA chiefs, but this assistant is the one person who's just, like, got his back fundamentally, emotionally, psychologically. And you could tell there was a real psychological connection that was very valuable, uh, beyond just the work.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. So it was a deep relationship of trust and kind of awareness, I suppose, because of how globally, uh, connected that assistant is to everything?
- JSJonathan Swanson
Exactly. Like, if you have an assistant there in your inbox, they're seeing the lawsuit that's coming, the person that's quitting, the money you just raised, the investor that rejected you, all the highs and lows that are shielded from most of your company and most of the White House, but that assistant sees all of it, and so they're on the emotional journey with you more than really anyone else.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay, so jump to the end. That's the beginning. Jump to the end. What is your current setup when it comes to life with assistants?
- JSJonathan Swanson
So I've, I've got a chief of staff and a half dozen assistants, uh, that roll into that chief of staff. The-- each assistant specializes in different things, so one helps me with work, one helps me with finance, one helps me with, uh, my kiddos, house, et cetera. Uh, you know, I wouldn't recommend to anyone they start [chuckles] with that many. You start with one and get to capacity, and then you keep going to the extent your means and your ambition allows. But in my experience, the... You know, I, I just experienced this time scarcity for most of my life of, I just want more out of life. I wanna spend more time with my family, my kids, do more work, and there's only so many hours in the day. And as I layered on more assistants, I eventually, when I got to six, [chuckles] got to the point where I was like: Wow, I have this feeling of time abundance, where so much is taken care of that I can start thinking about new things that I wanna do. And that, for me, was the most fundamental unlock. And it's not to say that's easy. It took me a decade to get there. No one's gonna turn it on [chuckles] in a day, but it's possible, and it feels really good, and I think that's what most people are looking for in life, is more time.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. How do you come to think about time, then? Like, w- how do you regard it as a, a resource or a, a contributing element of people's lives?
- JSJonathan Swanson
It's the most, uh, primary asset in the world. It's the ultimate currency, right? Uh, I think lots of people want more money, or want to be popular, or, uh, you know, want power if they're in politics. I think these are false goals. The real goal is to control your time, and that's what we all want more of. It's the only non-renewable asset. You can't get more of it. Uh, and, uh, yet people have different uses of that time. It can be to start a business or spend time with their family, but ultimately, time is all we've got, and it should be treated as the most fundamental thing in the world.
- CWChris Williamson
I think this is one of the reasons that this conversation can be [clears throat] pretty uncomfortable for people because it sounds like rich founder who began his career in the White House now has an, a small platoon of people who enable him, in position of already [clears throat] material privilege, to sort of maximize that, uh, that reach even more and to get even further down the line. I think the, the interesting thing for me when I was maybe m- early twenties, was I started looking at some of the things that I did, like, when I bought my first house when I was twenty-seven, and I realized that I really hated cleaning, but that a cleaner in the northeast of the UK was forty pounds every two weeks.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
And that meant that I didn't need to buy a vacuum cleaner 'cause she brought her own vacuum cleaner-
- JSJonathan Swanson
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
-and I didn't want to vacuum. And I don't think you need to vacuum your house more than once, about every two weeks, unless you've probably got kids, in which case it's every day. But, um, as soon as you sort of accept that, well-... is my time more valuable than, you know, three hours at £40 per time? Well, yeah, maybe it is, or maybe I just really hate cleaning or, or doing the gardening or whatever it might be. As soon as you accept that, I think it becomes just one straight line from, well, there's little ways that I can claw back my time by using money or whatever other resource I need to trade for it, in order to be able to not have to do something I don't wanna do, so I can do something that I do wanna do. And I, in some ways, although a, you know, Navy SEAL team of assistants sounds quite unachievable for most people, it is a single lineage from, "I have a cleaner, or a gardener, or someone who washes my car," uh, straight to, uh, "I have an army of people and a chief of staff."
- JSJonathan Swanson
Yeah, look, I, uh, I grew up in the Midwest, in farm country, farm boy. We had no assistants [chuckles] or house cleaners or anything like that around, so I know how it sounds. Uh, but it's possible to get leverage, uh, without spending any money, right? You can use ChatGPT to get started. We can talk about that. You can delegate to your friends, right? If you don't have a single dollar to spend on an assistant, you can get a group of four friends together and say, "Hey, let's all babysit each, each other's kids one, one night a week." Well, you just got a free babysitter for those other three nights. Uh, so there's ways to-
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, that's such a clever idea.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Ways to get leverage for all of us, and, you know, my recommendation to people is you start small with whatever resources you have, and you learn to delegate to an AI assistant. Uh, people talk about prompt engineering. That's just delegation, and as you get really good at that, and you have the resources, then you can upgrade to an assistant with a company like ours or an in-person assistant, which is even more expensive, or, yeah, a fleet [chuckles] of assistants that runs your whole life. We- I've worked with, you know, billionaires who have teams of 50. [chuckles] Uh, it's totally mind-blowing, and that's out of reach for almost all of us. But I think everyone can take the, the first couple steps, and you go as far as you want or
- 8:12 – 16:15
How to Make More of Your Time
- JSJonathan Swanson
you're able.
- CWChris Williamson
Let's begin at level zero then. Let's say that someone thinks, "Okay, I, I, I, I believe that time is pretty important." What is the- what are some of the zero-cost or very low-cost ways that people can start to do that, and then we can build up toward the platoon?
- JSJonathan Swanson
Yeah, so level zero is you delegate to friends and family, uh, costs you nothing, and this is group work. So the, uh... You get together, you do the babysitting, you get together and you say, "Hey, I wanna meet more friends in dinner parties. I'll plan one dinner party once a quarter if these other friends," you also do it once a quarter, and now you get a monthly dinner party, making new friends, and you're only doing it a couple times a year. So that's level zero, and that's where everyone should start. The next level above that is 20 bucks a month, ChatGPT. Uh, you know, they're trying to be a human assistant. It's, uh, limited in what it can do today, but you can use it like a coach, like, uh, you know, a, a limited assistant, and so, you know, if you want to, uh, exercise more, you can go to ChatGPT and say, "Every day, ask me if I've exercised, and check in with me, and give me a report card at the end of the week." It can do that. Twenty bucks a month, you'll learn how to leverage it more and more over time. Once you have the resources for, you know, five, ten bucks an hour, you can go to Upwork or, uh, a company like that and hire someone directly. If you've got 3,000 bucks a month, you can work at a comp- with a company like Athena, where we recruit, train, manage the assistant for you. And then, if you want someone in person, it's $100,000 a, a year, and then, you know, it goes up to infinity. The- this billionaire that I worked with has team of 50. He has eight [chuckles] executive assistants. The executive assistants all graduate from Princeton. [chuckles] It's totally wild and crazy. Uh, but yeah, you start small with whatever resources you've got.
- CWChris Williamson
So you think about buying hours being more important than buying things, then?
- JSJonathan Swanson
Yeah, of course. I mean, what, what do people ultimately want? They want connection, they want time with their friends, they want time to exercise, time to learn, and, uh, that's, that's what gives us meaning. And so, um, yeah, the most, the most successful people I know, the happiest people I know, they're not buying things. They're not buying cars, uh, or clothes. They're buying time, and the more time you buy, the more you have for everything else in life.
- CWChris Williamson
Isn't it a strange inversion of how people often think about where their time should be spent or where their money should be spent, that, "Well, I've worked so hard. I deserve this holiday"? But if you look at, what, a family holiday for four people, I mean, how many sessions of a cleaner is that?
- JSJonathan Swanson
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, I remember Shaan Puri got a ton of shit on Twitter, and it is, it's so strange to me, the delegating thing being such a trigger for a lot of people because it does sound very out of reach. I think it's a... Having staff, especially when it's something that you can do for free. You, you can't fly the plane for free, you can't build the hotel for free, you can't go to the sunny place for free, so the value exchange is more apparent. But when it's, you could wash your car for free-
- JSJonathan Swanson
Mm-hmm
- CWChris Williamson
... you could do the laundry for free, you could do these things, there's this sort of odd, bourgeois, luxurious, opulent kind of thing that's going on. But yeah, Shaan Puri basically said, um, "We haven't bought a new car for a decade," or something, "There's no new family car, um, but we've got a chef. And I, I have a chef that, that comes around twice a week and s- cooks for that night and then meal prep stuff for the next couple of days." Just the words, "I've got a chef"-
- JSJonathan Swanson
Mm-hmm
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, [chuckles] so-
- JSJonathan Swanson
Mm-hmm
- CWChris Williamson
... so out of touch. They sound so horrendously out of touch. "I've got a chef." Uh, but if you were to say, "I got a new car five years ago," you would not say that, but he netted it out, and it was, it was pretty much the same-... cost, I think, to get a new car every five years as it was to keep one for ten and get a chef that came around twice a week or something.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, my wife and I joke we'd burn down our house before we let go of our personal team. They mean that much-
- CWChris Williamson
[laughing]
- JSJonathan Swanson
They, they mean that much to us. And I think the, the words you're using do matter. It's, "I have a chef," that signals this kind of separation. "I'm better than you," maybe is how someone hears it.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm, mm.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Uh, another way to say it is, "I, uh, help support another person." And I think this is a barrier for lots of people, is feeling guilt about delegating. Of like, "Is it okay for me to hand this off? It makes me feel different," or it's giving this small little task to someone.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- JSJonathan Swanson
But I like to reframe that and say, delegation is your way of gifting to someone else. You're giving them a job, you're giving them income. Like, the more we hire, the more we delegate, we literally are just putting money in other people's pockets. And it's more than money; it's a job, and it's meaning, and something, uh, a craft that they get good at. And so, you know, the more you delegate, the more you give that gift of, of meaning to other people. And of course, you get something in return, which is food or time or whatever it might be.
- CWChris Williamson
Talk to me about the relationship between time and health.
- JSJonathan Swanson
I think it's the most fundamental thing. So you, you hear Bryan Johnson talk about sleep being the most fundamental. You gotta sleep, 'cause if you sleep, then you can exercise. If you exercise, then you eat well, and those are the f- fundamentals of, of good health. But why do people not sleep much? It's not 'cause they don't want to [chuckles] , it's 'cause they don't have time. Uh, they're working too late, they wanna spend time with the kids. And so in my view, time is actually the most fundamental pillar of health, and learning to control your time, getting sovereignty of it, is how you then unlock good sleep and everything else that follows.
- CWChris Williamson
Where are the places that people are wasting time, or where are they spending time in very low leverage ways? Or in what ways is it being sapped and pulled away from them that they might not realise?
- JSJonathan Swanson
Yes, I think the-- for most beginner delegators, they start by delegating things that sap energy and that are monotonous and annoying. That's renewing a passport or a driver's licence, it's calendar, it's inbox, it's paying bills. These are things that don't require any cognitive load, don't require any creativity. It's not why people get up in the morning. And so starting there reduces this just kind of like cognitive weight that you carry. Every day, you've got to do XYZ, but you take those things off, and then the things that remain are higher order. It's planning, it's goals, it's aspirations, and those higher-order things are much more exciting, more energy, uh, giving, and that is, uh, that's a wonderful trade.
- CWChris Williamson
So cognitive offloading is a mental upgrade here in that regard?
- JSJonathan Swanson
Exactly. Yeah, the more you, uh, the more you offload, the more time you have for the highest-order things in your life. Uh, you know, I'd like to say assistance is like a cognitive, uh, prosthetic for remembering, planning, sequencing. And just like inflammation damages your body and health, chronic to-dos damages or impairs your mind. And so the more we can free ourselves of those things, the freer and the more upgraded our mind can be.
- CWChris Williamson
What... I think when it comes to delegation, a lot of people have a, a, a, a number of ics and concerns, probably quite a lot of hurdles to get over. I certainly know that I did and do. Like, especially if you're agentic, a hard-charging, get-after-it yourself-er, uh, the prospect of giving tasks to somebody else, uh ... I don't know. I, I seem to have two categories of friends, one are those who can't wait to offload, and another are those who can't work out how to do it.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
So
- 16:15 – 22:08
The Cardinal Sins of Delegation
- CWChris Williamson
what are the, what are the cardinal sins of, of delegation?
- JSJonathan Swanson
So the number one, uh, I call pride. This is the thinking it's better or faster to do it yourself. This is the cardinal sin of delegation because it's true. [chuckles] It actually is faster, and you will be better at doing something the first time, uh, whether it's sending an email or, uh, planning a party, but the hundredth time you do it, uh, you won't be faster and better. And so it is- it takes effort to delegate and to hand that off, uh, but you have to get over the fact that you could do it faster or better, but you could be doing something else. So that's the first thing, which I call pride. The second is guilt, which is really on the other end of the spectrum, which is, I don't even feel good about, you know, having this person manage the minutiae of my life or wait on hold all day long. And, uh, for these people, my reframe is, you're giving this other person a job. And, you know, at companies like Athena, we recruit people who are excited to support and take care of you. It's really like a caretaker job, and for them, they get to take care of someone else, and that feels good, and you have to delegate in order to give them that opportunity. Um, the other, uh, blockers, uh, I call it selfishness, which is just not opening up your life, uh, enough. If you don't give access, your assistant can't really help you. If you don't have access to your inbox, your calendar, the other parts of your life, they have to have the context to really get in, and then you have to be willing to give them lots of hard, sometimes uncomfortable feedback. Like, "Hey, I liked how you did this. Oh, I wish you could have done that better." And giving really detailed, continual feedback is something only top one percent delegators do. Most people struggle 'cause it takes extra work, and you have to be willing to make someone feel a little bit uncomfortable. Uh, so you have to learn how to give that hard feedback in a way that's encouraging, supportive.... And then the last, uh, blocker for most people is just a lack of commitment. They will try, try it for a month or try it part-time. I've never seen that really work to get ultimate leverage. The, the people who get the most leverage are going all in. They're doing it for a decade. They're all in with a full-time person, and, you know, the- you look at the clients we work with, the ones who have really transformed their life, they're working with the same person for many years, and that person becomes their second brain, knows them like a little sister. That's how I think of my assistant I've worked with the longest. She knows everything about me, and that takes this long-term commitment.
- CWChris Williamson
So just putting a toe in doesn't give the assistant the required depth of resolution to be able to actually look at what's going on in life? They need to be able to see everything, and the gains accrue as they start to see more.
- JSJonathan Swanson
It's like getting married, but, uh, only going on a couple dates. Uh, you know, the marriage and I think all good things, wealth, relationships, they compound, and the power of compounding is, uh, it gets better and better gradually over time, and that's true with, uh, an assistant. The, the more you do, the deeper, uh, and better it gets.
- CWChris Williamson
Right. Okay. What is your perspective on the difference between a VA and an in-person PA or something? 'Cause what you're talking about here with Athena, a lot of this are virtual assistants, and presumably, people can get these for cheaper, but your virtual assistant might be able to organize a cleaner but can't be a cleaner. They might be able to organize someone to collect your Amazon parcel, but they can't go and post it themselves.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
So how do you think about piecing together different assistants in that sort of a way?
- JSJonathan Swanson
Yeah, I mean, if you have the budget for both, that's the best. You have someone in person for arms and legs and to run around and help you, and someone in the cloud who's virtual. Uh, typically, someone who's virtual is less expensive. Uh, you know, at Athena, our assistants are based in the Philippines or Kenya, where, um, you have, uh, great talent at more affordable rates and in person. You know, if you're in New York or SF or Austin, it's just gonna be more expensive. So, you know, I recommend people start virtual, and then as you have resources, you can do more. Uh, you know, my- the team and I were just joking, there's these humanoid robots that are now getting closer, and some of them are teleoperated. And we're like, "You know, we're not far away from you being able [chuckles] to have a robot in your house, that your virtual assistant can actually teleoperate." And so- [chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
Wow!
- JSJonathan Swanson
... you can say, "Hey," [chuckles] you can be like, "Hey, can you grab me a coffee?" And they could teleoperate the robot in your house and bring it to your desk. Uh, you know, [chuckles] that's- we're, we're getting pretty close to that being a real thing, so that's- it's gonna be a, a fun frontier when that happens.
- CWChris Williamson
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- 22:08 – 28:40
How to Build Your AI Assistant’s Algorithm
- CWChris Williamson
What is happening with AI and assistants at the moment? I think the number one use case for ChatGPT is coaching, which is probably not far off-
- JSJonathan Swanson
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... what you're doing. It's like, "Help me with this problem." Might be a little bit more closet psychotherapist than a-
- JSJonathan Swanson
Mm-hmm
- CWChris Williamson
... typical assistant, but, uh, yeah, what, what are you guys doing with AI? What, what's interesting with regards to how that can unlock people's delegation and time?
- JSJonathan Swanson
Yeah. Uh, so our vision is, uh, we merge the best of human, the best of machine into one product, and so the human is the UX. Humans are good UX, and then behind that hum- human, we're building machine assistants that automate more and more of it over time. And my analogy is like Tesla with self-driving. The- Elon built the first cars with steering wheels 'cause you had to drive them. He didn't build them without steering wheels [chuckles] . And as you drive them, you're actually teaching the machine how to drive, and progressively, they automated. They have assisted steering and auto braking, f- and then eventually, full self-driving. And we view, uh, our work as similar. It's gonna be fully human, and then gradually, the machine will do more and more. Human will always be in the loop, uh, but the human will do more advanced, more powerful, more creative, uh, tasks over time, and the machine will do the more rote and mechanical stuff. And so effectively, the AI will become an assistant to the human assistant, uh, which will increase their memory, um, allow them to work overnight, do all sorts of cool productivity things. Uh, but our view is the human, uh, touch is real and is gonna last for a long time, no matter how much, uh, some of the AI promoters would like to say otherwise. Uh-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- JSJonathan Swanson
... but the combination is, uh, gonna be a pretty cool thing.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, that's cool. Around the, "I can do it better," or, "I keep finding frustration when getting somebody else to do a task on my behalf," that can last for maybe a bit longer than you might want. How does someone navigate that, that challenge day to day?
- JSJonathan Swanson
... Yeah, I think some of it is expectation setting. I think some people think you just delegate and it works, and that's not the real world. [chuckles] The, the real world is you delegate, and the first version doesn't work or it's not exactly what you wanted, and then you give feedback, and you do it again, and the next time's a little better. And you have to have a high tolerance for failure, for iteration. But as long as you have a high tolerance for those things and you just continue compounding improvements, then it gets better and better over time. But yeah, I think like most things in life, there's no easy button. [chuckles] Uh, you've got to invest in the partnership. And, you know, we tell clients who work with us, "If you just wanna show up and want everything-- your life to be perfect, it's just not gonna work. Uh, you have to invest, and the more you invest, the better your partnership will get." And in fact, if you look at the best assistants at Athena, the kinda top one percent, they just so happen to work for the clients who are the best at delegating. Not a coincidence. [chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- JSJonathan Swanson
They've become so good because the client is so good at exporting their thinking, giving feedback, praise and recognition, helping build up their confidence when they make mistakes, helping correct them and steer them, and it really is a, a marriage of sorts. And so as long as both parties are really invested in it, it can be super powerful, but if it's one-sided, ain't gonna work.
- CWChris Williamson
How do people give better feedback? I think this is something that lots of humans struggle with.
- JSJonathan Swanson
So number one thing is do it more often. People just don't do it enough. The number two thing is you need to be way more detailed. "Hey, this was good," or, "Hey, that was not good," not helpful. Helpful feedback is very specific, and it's very timely. It's, "Hey, this task you did, I liked because you were super fast, you were detailed, XYZ," or, "Hey, next time I'd like you to do this differently," and be very specific. So that's just the most-- like, you need to be doing it constantly and it needs to be very detailed. The other thing that is not obvious to lots is that you should really be exporting your own personal algorithm and your own thinking as you delegate. So kind of a, a novice way of delegating would be, "Hey, will you plan a dinner party for Chris and me when I'm in Austin next week?" That's probably not gonna be organized the way you want because there's not much detail there. The better way to delegate would be to say, "Hey, when I have dinner parties, here's what I like them to be. I want it to be six to eight people. I want there to be a variety. Here's where I go to find party invites. I go look for people who have this to our company or these sorts of interests." You basically create an algorithm, uh, or a process the person can follow step by step, and then you h- then, then they have, like, real guidance for executing. And then they execute, and then you go back to that process and say, "Hey, there's three steps in here that we missed that we'll refine this further. Let's continue to tweak the algorithm." People who are kind of engineering minds, this comes very naturally, but for other-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- JSJonathan Swanson
... people, uh, you have to learn how to do it.
- CWChris Williamson
It makes, it makes sense to say not just, "This is the thing that I want, but this is how I typically get there." If [clears throat] if you have a, a person who helps you do meal prep or helps you with your emails or something, and you don't explain to them, "Well, actually, I like my eggs to be a little bit firmer, so typically what I do is da, da, da, da, da, da, da" Or, "When I send a reply, I tend to put two signatures in because it actually shows up differently on the thread, and I think that link's important to show a little bit of reputation, and da, da, da, so this is how I do it."
- JSJonathan Swanson
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, I suppose it allows people to see your thinking.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Exactly. There's a-- in AI world, there's this concept of context engineering that's become very popular. To make the models more performant, you have to pipe in all the context 'cause the models are very smart, but they don't have context. And the same is true with delegating to an assistant or otherwise, is like, if there's not enough context, it's impossible to do it well. And so your job as a delegator is to export all the context you have. And what's not obvious is that you have a million [chuckles] times more context than you could possibly realize, and it's just sitting there, and it takes practice to export that. And that's why these things compound over time, because there's no way to export it all on day one, but over the course of compounding for months and years, uh, you eventually get there. The- [inhales]
- 28:40 – 36:39
The Relationship Between Ambition and Leverage
- CWChris Williamson
How do people build a tolerance for inefficiency? Because especially if you're the sort of person who thinks, "I might, I might get a cleaner. I might get a cleaner for a little bit," or, "I'm gonna... I'm, I'm gonna get someone to do the gardening 'cause I fucking hate it, and I, I kinda suck, and I really want to spend my time on Sunday mornings with the kids instead." Uh, if you're the sort of person who is prepared to make that cognitive leap, you're also probably a perennial over-optimizer in any case, which means that when you see inefficiency, that is a particular bugbear to you.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
So how do you improve your tolerance for inefficiency?
- JSJonathan Swanson
I think part of it is just realizing it's the right trade. So, you know, does Michael Jordan mow his own lawn? No, but you know what? I bet if he did, he'd be f- f- amazing, [chuckles] right? And whoever does it is never gonna reach his level of potential, but he could just be doing something else. And so it's like, do you want to do something else, even if something's done inefficiently? That's just, uh, something you have to accept. Uh, another kind of framing I have is Elon, uh, Musk sometimes talks about teams being the vector sum, so a company is a vector sum of all the humans involved. And, you know, it's just a fancy way of saying there's inefficiency 'cause these vectors are not perfectly aligned, and the only way to get more output is to have a higher tolerance for inefficiency. And that's just a fundamental rule of the universe is, [chuckles] if you're focused on more and more output, there's gonna be more and more effi- inefficiency because more humans are involved.
- CWChris Williamson
Right, okay. So inefficiency is-... a price that you need to pay to increase output overall? Well, I mean, I, I remember in university learning about diseconomies of scale, and one of the biggest ones being communication. That you know everything that you need to know by design of the fact that you already know it, and you're the only person that needs it communicating to. As soon as you've got two people, well, they need to know what you now know, and some of it gets lost in translation. And as soon as you scale up to thirteen, there's lots that gets missed and lost, but your total capacity for overall output has gone up, even though the efficiency is less.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
Thirteen people in a team is less efficient than one person thirteen times in thirteen different companies, but the total output of the company that's got thirteen staff is greater than any of the individuals that have got one.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Hundred percent. Yeah. You know, how do you-- another way of asking this question is: how do you measure your life? Do you measure it by efficiency, or do you measure it by how many times you go on a date with your wife, or how many times you exercise, or how much you spend time doing a hobby? Those outputs are what you actually care about. You don't care about the inefficiencies that were involved in creating those outputs. You just want, uh, that good life that you want.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow! Yeah. Okay. What about the relationship between leverage and ambition? Because it seems to me that lots of people who are very ambitious lean into their leverage, but I, I get the sense that it can become a feedback loop as well. So how, how do you come to construct ambition and leverage?
- JSJonathan Swanson
Yeah, this is one of the more counterintuitive things that we discovered as we've coached clients on delegation, which is most people assume that powerful people or successful people have all this leverage, and that's how they become ambitious. That's why they have all this ambition. Um, or because they have all this money, they can create all this leverage. But what we see in practice is that people's ambition clearly grows linearly as their leverage grows. And the reason for this is pretty clear. When you are overwhelmed by life, uh, when you have more than you can possibly handle, your ambition just narrows because you're trying to get through the next twenty-four hours.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JSJonathan Swanson
But to the extent you take this cognitive load off, you share it with someone else, this partner or assistant, you now have the cognitive space to think about bigger goals, bigger aspirations. And so, as you unlock more leverage, your ambition actually grows. And I've seen this in my own life during times with my first company, Thumbtack, when, you know, we're just drowning [chuckles] with all the work and the challenges.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Uh, I was just focused on that thing, and there was no space in my mind to consider new aspirations. But to the extent I've gotten more and more leverage over time, you know, what do you want to do with it? Oh, it's like, do I want to start another company? Do I want to, uh, yeah, do more cool things for my friends? And that's how, that's how your ambition can really grow.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, I mean, how many people say that the reason they can't think about the important is because the urgent is in the way? And I suppose that means that the more time you spend not doing the urgent, the more important stuff you have access to. That seems like a pretty good trade.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Exactly, yeah. The... You gotta do, you gotta do the urgent, so you have the, yeah, the right and the opportunity to do the important. And to the extent you can offload the urgent, you get more of the important, and that's a beautiful trade.
- CWChris Williamson
Is there a relationship here with willpower as well? That not having to do bullshit means that you can use your willpower on stuff that somebody else can't do.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Absolutely. I mean, we, we all have a limited number, uh, a limited amo- amount of willpower and work ethic, right? It's like, I, I, I always say, I, I can work ten percent more, twenty percent more, but I can't work a hundred per-- or ten times more, and I can't have ten times more willpower. It's just impossible. I have [chuckles] God and nature has granted me with a certain amount of those things, and so I have to use that limited willpower and limited agency in the best way possible. And I don't want to be using my limited willpower on, you know, my passport renewal. It's just not the highest order thing in my life. I would rather be using that to, yeah, help a friend, uh, solve a problem or, uh, accomplish something in my business or, or something else. And so I think you can unlock more willpower, uh, into higher order things the more you unload these more monotonous things.
- CWChris Williamson
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- 36:39 – 42:48
Where to Start With Delegating to Your Assistant
- CWChris Williamson
go through, for me, let's say someone's bought in. They're like, "That's it! I'm gonna find myself an assistant. I'm gonna do it through Athena, or I'm gonna find somebody in person," or whatever. What, what does effective levels of integration-- Where should somebody start? What are the first things to outsource? What are the, the ways to best onboard? Take me through the, the full stack.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Yeah, so step one is, uh, start with ChatGPT or in person or whatever it is. And the beginner way to delegate is offload pain. So make a list of all the things that you don't like doing, that reduce your willpower, that make you unhappy, and start there. And this is kind of monotonous stuff. It's like your inbox, your calendar, paying bills, passport renewal, et cetera. Uh, this might take a year to offload all these things. Uh, as you offload-
- CWChris Williamson
I just need to pause, I need to pause there. The, the, um, what a lot of people might assume, I think, and I know I certainly did when I started working with assistants, was, "This is going to be the immediate fix for me. I'm gonna introduce this person into my life, and I'm never gonna have to do anything again." But, uh, being modest with the speed at which this integration is going to happen effectively, I think is a, a really, really good idea.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Yeah. Look, uh, my recommendation is you, you do this as a new way of living. I think that's the right way to do anything, exercise, meditation, or whatever. If you're doing it for a week or a month, kind of worthless, but if you can do this for the rest of your life, then it will compound. And yeah, you start with pain, unload all these monotonous things, and then once you do that, then you start chasing your aspirations. It's how do I... You know, for me, this is: How do I make more friends? How do I deepen my relationships? How do I have the best marriage possible? How can I be there for friends in need? Um, and those are the sorts of things that assistant can actually help you with, but you're not gonna actually do that unless you've, you know, got your passport renewed and your, uh, credit card bills paid and everything else done first. So that's kind of the high level: remove pain, and then increase your aspirations and, and go for your goals. Um, in terms of the levels of delegation, the way most people start delegating is they delegate by task. "Hey, will you help order these flowers for, uh, my wife's birthday?" That's a good way to start, but it's the least powerful way to delegate. The more intermediate way to delegate is delegate by process, is what we talked about. Is like, "Hey, when I give gifts to my wife, I want X, Y, and Z. Here's what she likes, here's what she doesn't." And you're now teaching your assistant how to do things at a higher level. The next level more advanced delegators do is they deleby- delegate by goal, and this takes often years, where you've mind-melded with your assistant and give them so much feedback that you can just delegate a goal, and they can execute it in the way you'd want.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- JSJonathan Swanson
So this is, "Hey, I want to exercise more. I want to protect my sleep. I want to spend more time with this person in my life, architect my calendar, reject meetings that don't fit this priority." No one can start by delegating by goal. You have to build your way up, but this is where you want to get to. And then the highest level, uh, of delegation, I call it clairvoyant delegation. Um, this is the nirvana [chuckles] of delegation. This is where you have given so much feedback, and your assistant is so in line with your personal and professional goals, that they can anticipate your needs, and the first time you hear about a task is when it's done. This is a level that is very difficult to reach. Uh, I would not promise anyone [chuckles] gets this on week one, but this is what you should aspire to get to. And I, I have glimpses of this now, uh, all the time. It's not something I live in constantly, but my assistant will reach out and say, "Hey, I know you wanted-- you'd want me to do X, Y, and Z. It's already done. Here, you just gotta sign this." And that is where you're like, "Yeah, this, this, this is good." [chuckles] And, uh, yeah, it unlocks so much cognitive load that you didn't even have to delegate it.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- JSJonathan Swanson
You don't have to think about it. It was just, "Hey, it's done, and, um, now you can go on to do something else."
- CWChris Williamson
I suppose that's one of the current limitations of AI, that b- by design, the prompt needs to be done before the task is completed. I'm not-- I'm sure there probably is somewhere, but I don't think any of the LLMs at the moment are gonna pop up on a Monday morning and remind you that you need to do the thing or have done the thing, and then tell you that it's been done on your behalf. It's still very sort of top-down as opposed to bottom-up.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Yeah. Yeah, uh, I th- I do think AI is going... AI is just gonna get better and better, and I do think there is an opportunity for-- and I think lots of the AI labs are gonna do this. They're gonna start watching your screen as you work, and they're gonna look at what you're doing, and they're gonna proactively offer opportunities for them to help you. And this is, uh, we've built something like this at Athena as kind of internal testing tool, where we watch-- this is, we're just using it for in- internal employees, but we watch them as they work, and then we automatically offload a task they should delegate, but they haven't vocalized to their assistant. And the person who built this internally, the majority of his delegations are now machine-generated. That means he didn't say anything. He's just working on his computer. The machine is effectively watching. It's identifying things that his assistant could help with, and it sends it to the assistant. Now, of course, the human's in the loop and is gonna say, "Oh, Chris would want me to help with this. I'll start working on it," or, "This one's worthless." I'll say no. So I, I do think that is going-- where the world's going. I think we're getting to a world where you just work, machines watch you, they identify your goals, and then pass it off to a combination of machine and human assistants for the execution.
- 42:48 – 47:03
Are There Any Downsides to Delegation?
- CWChris Williamson
... What are some of the potential negative externalities of a world where people outsource incorrectly, or they, they do it too much? Or wh- wh- what are some of the ways that people can get this wrong?
- JSJonathan Swanson
Yeah, I hear some people say, you know, "You shouldn't delegate your life," and I think that's right. Like, you shouldn't delegate [chuckles] spending time with your kids or with your wife. Uh, you should delegate the things that you don't wanna do, to do the things that are meaningful to you. So I think that's one way. Um, you know, the other thing is, I think you need to treat your assistant with the respect and love that they deserve, right? This is not just, "Hey, do this for me." [chuckles] Uh, this is, "Hey, we're a partnership. I wanna help you build your life. I wanna give you more opportunity, more income. You're gonna help support me," and it needs to be a mutual thing. We've-- This doesn't happen very often, but we've had to fire a few clients at Athena who just, like, weren't kind to their assistants, and that's unacceptable to us. Uh, we, [chuckles] we only wanna work with people who are, are kind and generous with their assistants, 'cause our assistants are there to take care of you, and they give so much that they deserve, uh, that same in exchange.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, I worry... [clears throat] There's been parts of my life where I've got, I've got concerns that my tolerance or my resilience for bullshit, which is inescapable, may become more finely attuned as I don't deal with bullshit on a daily basis. Kind of like, you know, these astronauts that go up to space, and they don't need to lift any weight, and then they come back down, and they're unable to support themselves. Does that make sense?
- JSJonathan Swanson
[chuckles] I totally know what you mean. We, uh... I live in Puerto Rico, and the getting things done in Puerto Rico is a little more difficult than-
- CWChris Williamson
I've, I've, I've heard slightly, slightly challenging-
- JSJonathan Swanson
It-
- CWChris Williamson
- with the mañana, mañana, uh, philosophy
- JSJonathan Swanson
... And I am, uh, you know, I'm lucky to have this team that's basically [chuckles] filter between me and the difficulty of getting things done. And, you know, I do occasionally step outside of that filter, and I'm like: Whoa! [chuckles] I, like, forgot how hard this, uh, is. So look, I think if there- for, like, waiting in line at the DMV, I just, like, never need to be good at that, so I don't mind if my skills atrophy. Uh, but, you know, if something's important for your work or your skill set or your craft, then obviously you can't fully delegate it, and you need to own that and keep your skills sharp. Uh, and so I think if you delegate something like that, that could... I, I could see that being a, a negative thing. But there's a hundred other things to delegate that are not core to your highest skill, and all of those things, I don't, I don't really care if, uh, yeah, my inbox management skills atrophy, just not my, not my focus in life. [chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
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- 47:03 – 52:54
The Assistants That Have Carried History
- CWChris Williamson
How, how novel of a solution is this, given the expanse of human history? How recent is it? 'Cause it can sound in some ways like, again, a cosmopolitan, TikTok generation, Gen Z, ChatGPT solution to, "Well, people should just be able to sort of go and go and get it, man." Um, yeah, how, how recent is this versus how sort of steeped in history?
- JSJonathan Swanson
Yeah, so we did some fun research at Athena. We actually used AI to do this. We, uh, we got a list of thousand of the kind of greats of history and downloaded ten biographies on all of them and then looked for how they delegated. And across all sorts of people, Cicero, Newton, Caesar, Einstein, Voltaire, Gates, Churchill, Picasso, Buddha, all of them had personal assistants. And it's not a coincidence because these people did not ten-x, but, like, a thousand-x more than other people have done in history. And there's this kind of great man view of history that one person does these great things, and there's some truth to that. But the reality is there's actually a team, and there's an organization, and there's typically an assistant who is helping this person accomplish great things. The history books just don't put tho- those people on the cover.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- JSJonathan Swanson
But that's how, that's how it's actually happened. And yeah, it's fun reading, uh, these stories. I'm, I'm reading a biography of Cicero right now, and he has a assistant who is, yeah, helping him [chuckles] manage the, uh, manage the Roman Empire and trying to protect the Republic. And, uh, this guy is not, you know, the person we learn about when we learn about-... uh, history, but it was important. And so, you know, our view of this is if you wanna accomplish small things or great things, uh, it's helpful to have an assistant. Uh, there's, there's also funny stories. So Catherine the Great, I think, was one of the, uh, the greats at delegation. She delegated not just managing her empire and, uh, rewriting [chuckles] the, the laws, but she also had someone- she delegated her dating life. And so she had someone dedicated to first dates and to testing, quote, "male capacity" [chuckles] . And-
- CWChris Williamson
No way!
- JSJonathan Swanson
[chuckles] Yeah. And that person kind of was running top of funnel for her.
- CWChris Williamson
[laughing]
- JSJonathan Swanson
And I'm like: "Catherine, you are an OG delegator." [chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
What a savage.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Like-
- CWChris Williamson
Holy shit.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Insane. But-
- CWChris Williamson
That's a, that's like P. Diddy's delegation.
- JSJonathan Swanson
[chuckles] Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, the, the Wright brothers, I've got two books about them. My housemate George is obsessed.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
And, uh, they delegated the first design of the plane engine for the Kitty Hawk, right?
- JSJonathan Swanson
Correct. Yeah, Darwin delegated, uh, this whole army of, uh, fact-gathering assistants to collect data for The Origin of Species. Edison delegated to an assistant to find the filament for the first light bulb. They found it in, uh, Kyoto, and there's actually a shrine that, uh, exists in Kyoto today to the assistant who found this. And-
- CWChris Williamson
So hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. So I have not failed; I have just found a thousand ways that I did not succeed. Thomas Edison did not actually technically come up with the design for the filament himself. It was just someone on his team.
- JSJonathan Swanson
He delegated it. He said, "I need this filament-
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, fuck.
- JSJonathan Swanson
"Someone needs to go-- someone needs to go find it."
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, fuck.
- JSJonathan Swanson
But yeah, he gets all the credit, and that's fine. That's how history works, but it's not how-
- CWChris Williamson
I mean, the Wright brothers, right? It's, it's... I mean, I, the, I don't think the first design was the one that worked. But there was a-- there's this really cool line, um, I think it's the photographer who took the pictures of the first flight when the Kitty Hawk was up, and he referred to the Wright brothers as "the workingest boys that I ever saw."
- JSJonathan Swanson
[chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
Like, just like, like this pure early nineteen hundreds-
- JSJonathan Swanson
Mm
- CWChris Williamson
... Americana kind of sentence.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Mm-hmm.
- 52:54 – 56:41
The Neuroscience Behind Delegation
- CWChris Williamson
Have you looked at the neuroscience of delegation? Like how it appears inside of the brain? Because I imagine that there's a lot of open loops that can get closed off. I also know that there's a hierarchy of how different tasks, new tasks, get attacked with certain areas of the brain, system one and system two, from sort of Daniel Kahneman's stuff. It seems like a pretty obvious map from doing it externally with a different person to what is already happening internally with inside of our brains.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Yeah, delegation goes back to the origin of our species, and our brains have this relentless, uh, desire to optimize both energy and energy, uh, and, and information. And because of that optimization, it has-- the brain has crafted this hierarchy of task distribution, where complex novel, novel tasks, uh, are tackled by our prefrontal cortex, and routine tasks are offloaded to lower and more automated neural structures. So we like to say that it's not that our brain was merely wired for delegation, but it was wired by delegation, and it's just built into our brains from the very beginning. We delegate inside our brains, and now we can delegate between brains.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm. What did these life experiments that you did-- you did, you've pretty much every year, I think, for a while, did some wild annual test. W- what, what did you learn from doing those?
- JSJonathan Swanson
Well, I just, I'm experimental, so I just like trying things and r- ripping life up. You know, I think one of the, the first things I did after I left my company, Thumbtack, where my meetings... I had meetings from eight AM to [chuckles] ten PM all day long, and I felt like I just didn't have sovereignty over my time. And so when I left, I said: "I'm gonna work with no calendar, zero meetings. [chuckles] If you wanna, if you wanna talk to me, call me. Let's, uh, d- go WhatsApp or voicemail," and that, uh, was one of the most freeing things I've ever done. Um, it's not something you can always do, uh, but I, I certainly recommend to anyone who has a chance to kinda work without a calendar, uh, for even a little bit, uh, it's, uh, a beautiful thing.
- CWChris Williamson
... Hmm. Okay, and what about the delegating by voice solution?
- JSJonathan Swanson
Yeah, so there are, there's a hierarchy of how you delegate, and most people delegate with their thumbs on their phone, worst way. [chuckles] Kind of better than that is to delegate with all your fingers on email. But the best way to delegate is by voice, where instead of typing things, you voice note. And I tried for a year just delegating almost exclusively through voice. And voice is way more powerful than other mechanisms of delegating because you can talk three to five times faster, uh, than you can type. You can do it between meetings, uh, in an Uber, at the gym, and it's also-
- CWChris Williamson
I think it feels less arduous as well. It's like, I've just got this thing. Trying to work-- how do I want to say this? I've got to type the thing out, as opposed to, "Hey, I need flower- I think I need... What do I need? Flowers. I need flowers, and, and today. I need flowers today." And then it's kind of done, as opposed to working out what needs to go through your thumbs.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Yeah, and, you know, to the point of how do you give better feedback, the way you give better feedback is you do it by voice. Because if you have to type up a page of notes, you're just not gonna do it. But if you can just be like, "Hey, here's what I liked," and you talk about it as you walk on, in the park-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm
- JSJonathan Swanson
... you talk all day long. Um, yeah, I think it takes some training to learn to delegate by voice. Some people are a little uncomfortable with it, but if you look at the top delegators at Athena, they all delegate by voice constantly, just all day long.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm. Okay. Uh,
- 56:41 – 1:04:19
The Best Ways to Reduce Phone Use
- CWChris Williamson
start of the year, a lot of people have got new resolutions, myself included. One of my big ones is to reduce my time on my phone.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
How have you managed to reduce phone use, and what are some of the strategies that you've learned around that?
- JSJonathan Swanson
So the first thing I tried, you know, there's this time app on your phone that just shares how much time you're in different apps, and-
- CWChris Williamson
Weak sauce. Weak sauce. [chuckles]
- JSJonathan Swanson
[chuckles] Totally. I, I tried using that, and it's just useless. Uh, and so what I, what I... The experiment that worked for me was when I went to buy a new phone, I kept my old phone, and I downgraded it to what I call my freedom phone, and I deleted everything from it except the bare essentials. I can Uber, [chuckles] I can, I can, uh, uh, make phone calls, but I don't have email, I don't have all my messaging apps, I don't have all the bad things. [chuckles] And I actually have gone so far that I've banned all news sites, checking the price of crypto, all sorts of other stuff. Um, and my wife has the code, so I literally can't unlock it. So this freedom phone, I call it, is what I take out of the house with me, and it's got the stuff I need, and everything else is totally locked down. And that's the only thing I've done that's worked because it's literally impossible [chuckles] for me to use it for, uh, anything distracting. And I don't-- for me, personally, I don't know about you, but I don't mind if I'm on the phone a lot. If I'm, like, making a phone call to a friend, that's cool. What I don't like is just, like, passively picking up the phone to check notifications.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- JSJonathan Swanson
That's just a waste of brainpower and [chuckles] shouldn't be doing, and this freedom phone that's totally locked down has, uh, solved that for me.
- CWChris Williamson
That is a good point. And, you know, I, people upgrade a phone every two years, maybe, something like that. And by the time that, you know, two iPhones from now's iPhone comes out, you'll get three hundred bucks or maybe two hundred bucks at trade-in. I don't know. I don't know w- what you would get, but I know it's not, uh, a, it's not concordant with the amount of value that the device brings.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Like, it's certainly not... Like, a two hundred dollars for that phone? Like, fucking yeah, I would, even if the battery sucks a little bit. Um, so what I would do is I would actually make the new phone the freedom phone, and I would make the old phone, because the old phone's kind of got to be tethered to-
- JSJonathan Swanson
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
But I, I've been, I've been a proponent of this for quite a while. I think my most extreme was three. One was the cocaine phone, another was the kale phone-
- JSJonathan Swanson
[chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
... um, and then a third one was Wi-Fi only, and that was what I actually did morning routine stuff on. So that was meditation apps, that was Kindle, Audible, maybe podcast apps, uh, all my breathwork stuff, my logins for all of the different personal development things I was doing. And, um, I went back home. It's so funny. I was back in the UK over Christmas, and I was back in my old house, and I was in my old room, my old bedroom, which people can go back and watch the first episodes from the show-
- JSJonathan Swanson
Mm
- CWChris Williamson
... ever were recorded in there. And I'm sat on the couch, this little couch that's on the right-hand side, and, uh, I've got this iPhone, fucking, it must be a 6 maybe or a 5 or something. It's ancient technology. And [chuckles] I realized it's the only phone that can still control the lights in my house-
- JSJonathan Swanson
Hmm
- CWChris Williamson
... because that was the one that the Philips Hue system had been connected to. So I'm there trying to fight with this decade-old iPhone in a desperate attempt to try and get the lights in my bedroom to turn on. And I've been flying. I flew from Kauai to the UK. It's twenty-eight hours or something, basically a, a day and a half, plus eleven hours of time change. It's a fucking nightmare. I get in, and then I'm battling with this phone, and in some ways, it was super annoying, but in other ways, it was really lovely and nostalgic. So, uh, yeah, I've tried, I think, as a, a pretty easy, sort of low-entry, accessible way for people to spend less time on their phone. Uh, and a good, a good solution here as well is if you do use the, uh, old phone, if you... I guess people don't use physical SIM cards anymore. But if you move the SIM to the one that you're allowed to take out of the house, what that actually means is that the old one only work-- the cocaine phone only works on Wi-Fi.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Yeah. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Which means that if you take it out with you, it stops working, which is-
- JSJonathan Swanson
Yeah [chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
... you know, great, but it, it, it, you're cementing yourself, you're tethering yourself to your house.
- JSJonathan Swanson
I have a, I have a friend who had a real phone addiction, [chuckles] and he act-... killed phone entirely and just carried a laptop [chuckles] with him.
- CWChris Williamson
[laughing]
- JSJonathan Swanson
So when he wanted to call someone or do something, he'd have to open the laptop, and it was a real pain in the ass.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JSJonathan Swanson
And it worked, but yeah, that's kind of- that's real, like, AA. That's, that's desperate times.
- CWChris Williamson
Correct. That's a pretty measure.
- JSJonathan Swanson
I mean, the other thing is you don't, you don't have to have two phones, right? If you don't have the money to buy a second phone or to, you know, use an old phone, just make your main phone the kale phone. [chuckles] Just don't have any of that stuff on it, and have it on your computer. And I have, you know... I don't mind if I'm WhatsApp-ing whatever on my computer, 'cause I'm getting work done. But just the passive stuff is what's toxic.
- 1:04:19 – 1:11:18
How to Overcome the Fear of Delegation
- CWChris Williamson
all right, so let's say, let's say that someone's made it this far, and they're at least partly convinced by your thesis. What are the remaining objections typically, or what are the, what are the fears that people have, um, and how do you overcome those?
- JSJonathan Swanson
Yeah, I think number one is feel of fear, uh, fear of failure. Will it work? Uh, and that I say it's, it's not gonna work on day one. You just gotta go for it, and it will compound. It'll get better, uh, over time. The other thing is a lack of control and trust. Some people have trouble trusting others and letting go of control. And, you know, what we say is trust should be built over time, so don't give your bank account access on day one. Uh, you start with more limited access, and then you grant more and more access over time. I've worked with, you know, one of my assistants for over a decade, and she has basically access to everything, but that takes a long time to build that trust. And so you kind of go at your own pace. You don't have to go faster than you're comfortable with, but you've got to give up some control, uh, if you want to get more leverage. That's just part, part of the game. Um, and then I think the, the, the other fundamental blocker for lots of people is, like, knowing what they want more of, and you've got to have this thing that draws you into it, 'cause it's gonna be activation energy, there's gonna be investment, and so you've got to have a vision for how you want your life to be better. It's, "I want more time to start a business," or, "I want more time for my family or my kids." And I think if you have that specific goal, then delegation is not about a task, which is kind of the level, it's about unlocking something that's more meaningful to you.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. What... I'm trying to think about, let's say that somebody onboards a, an assistant, but they've- they, they, they need somebody that's in person or, or they're, they're not using Athena. What are the best resources for how to train that person? Is, is there a how to create a great assistant coaching course? Is there some sort of, like, a master class that people can follow? Where would you anticipate, or where would you suggest that people go to for that?
- JSJonathan Swanson
There's nothing that's fantastic out there. Um, but if, if you go to playbooks.athena.com, we've built some of our favorite playbooks for things you can delegate. So you can come look at our website. Um, and, you know, I think the, the best way is just to get started and to do it yourself. I've, I've watched a bunch of YouTubes and read a bunch of books, and the reality is there's not a lot out there. When we started Athena, our goal was to recruit and train the best executive assistants and just match them with clients. And what we found after [chuckles] we matched the first 10 clients is every single client said the same thing-... how do I delegate my inbox? How do I delegate date nights? And so it became clear to us that we'd have to invest as much in teaching and coaching our clients-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JSJonathan Swanson
-as the assistants. This is kinda like it's a marriage. We're, we're both in it, and so we've invested a lot in building those playbooks, creating the coaching, uh, to help people. Um, and at some point, we'd love to kinda open source that and share that more with the world, but right now it's, it's all internal.
- CWChris Williamson
Is it possible-- I, I, uh, I have to bring this up. Whenever I think about assistants, and especially hiring assistants, one of the first things that I think of is an episode of Family Guy where Stewie made himself a clone that was called Bitch Stewie. [chuckles]
- JSJonathan Swanson
[chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
Bitch, Bitch Stewie basically did all of the stuff that Stewie didn't wanna do. So he, he made himself an assistant, and he was a bit sort of slower and kind of... there were a few chromosomes missing.
- JSJonathan Swanson
[exhales]
- CWChris Williamson
And then Brian saw Bitch Stewie and really wanted his own clone.
- JSJonathan Swanson
[chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
But instead of making it himself, Stewie got Bitch Stewie to make Bitch Brian, and Bitch Brian, like, ear fell off, and he turned into a puddle and broke on the floor and stuff. In your experience, how, how effective is it to get other members of staff, potentially assistants or other people, to do the hiring, training, or the, like, delegating the delegating? Um, is this still something that needs to be done by the principal, or is the-- uh, is there a way to outsource outsourcing?
- JSJonathan Swanson
You can delegate almost everything, [chuckles] uh, but-
- CWChris Williamson
Including the active delegation.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Yeah, but you have to delegate components of it. So, for example, if I'm recruiting an executive at Athena, I would not have my assistant interview the CFO. But what I would say is, "Hey, I'm gonna go through my CRM now. Open a voice note. Here are 30 friends I know who have cool companies. They know CFOs. I want you to pre-draft an email from me to this person, asking for an introduction to the best CFO they've ever worked with." And then those emails get dropped in my inbox, and I send those out, and I have my assistant CC herself on the email, so when the responses come back, she can help schedule them.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- JSJonathan Swanson
So, you know, my-- when people say, like, "What can I delegate?" It's basically anything. I, well, I turn around, I say: What's your top personal and professional goals? Tell me what those things are, and I'll tell you some ways, uh, you can delegate. And so, like, for you, like, twenty twenty-six, Chris, what, what are your top personal and professional goals?
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, build a world-class studio, um, go on tour, and not need to worry about whether operations back home are continuing, and fix my health.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Great. And on, uh, health, uh, how could you delegate components of that?
- CWChris Williamson
Organizing, testing, uh, speaking to the different doctors, updating them on where this, these numbers are at and whether Chris has completed that course and whether he did those IVs. There's sleep people, and there's nutrition people, and there's IV people, and they all need-
- JSJonathan Swanson
It's almost a full-time job. [chuckles] Yeah, I mean, I've-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JSJonathan Swanson
-I've done, uh, related to health, one of the first projects, kind of mega projects I did with my assistant, was look through my calendar and my inbox for every doctor's appointment I've had for the last decade. And then, from my inbox, reach out to those doctors and ask for my health records, uh, 'cause it has to come from my inbox. And then centralize all of those test results, all the doctor's visits, put it in one spreadsheet. And this, you know, I wouldn't just never have done otherwise. [chuckles] It just wouldn't have happened. But now that I have it, I can drop that into ChatGPT and be like, "Hey, what's... What, what should I do about my cholesterol?" And it can look over the last decade and make, uh, make real recommendations. So, yeah, you, you can always break it down into projects that someone can help take off your plate.
- CWChris Williamson
Heck,
- 1:11:18 – 1:12:21
Where to Find Jonathan
- CWChris Williamson
yeah. Jonathan Swanson, ladies and gentlemen. Jonathan, you're awesome. Athena's a fucking dope company. I've got a bunch of friends who rely on it, and I think what you're doing to emancipate us from the drudgery of online internet work and to outsource it to people who actually love to do that, I think is, is really, really cool. Um, if people wanna check out more of what it is that you guys do, where should they go?
- JSJonathan Swanson
They go to athena.com, and, uh, we'd, we'd love to help you get more leverage, uh, and, uh, thanks, thanks for having me on.
- CWChris Williamson
You do know that one of my friends, who I think uses your service, named his daughter Athena?
- JSJonathan Swanson
[chuckles] Uh, I did, I did not know that, but, uh, I had twins this summer, and my wife and I [chuckles] named one of our girls Athena. [chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
Let's go! There's two Athenas... There's three Athenas in the world now, technically.
- JSJonathan Swanson
Fun fact. [chuckles]
- CWChris Williamson
Jonathan, I appreciate you. Thank you, brother.
- JSJonathan Swanson
All right, thank you so much. [upbeat music]
- CWChris Williamson
Congratulations. You made it to the end of an episode. Your brain has not been completely destroyed by the internet just yet. Here's another one that you should watch. Come on.
Episode duration: 1:12:21
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