Tim FerrissUltimate Guide to Managing Executive Assistants and Delegating Like a Pro — Sam Corcos (4K)
At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Sam Corcos’s systems for delegation, Loom workflows, and adult culture
- Sam Corcos describes a long-term, systematic approach to delegation that began with hiring an EA before he had clear tasks and improved through deliberate experimentation and feedback loops.
- He explains how Levels reinforces a “treat people like adults” culture with explicit norms like closing the loop, equating communication with performance, and routinely recording (and often sharing) meetings to reduce gossip and preserve context.
- He argues Loom enables scalable, asynchronous training and coordination, especially through one-take workflow recordings that let others replicate work without heavy documentation.
- He outlines practical time management via converting tasks (and even emails) directly into calendar blocks with intentional slack, using the calendar as the true constraint on commitments.
- He gives concrete examples of how multiple EAs and Notion databases support recurring processes, call preparation, social inbox triage, time tracking, and semi-automated decision-making support.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasStart delegating before you feel “ready,” and treat it as a skill to build.
He described hiring his first EA right after reading Tim Ferriss’s book, even though he “had nothing for her to do,” and then proactively searched for tasks to hand off. He framed delegation as a learnable skill that improves with deliberate practice over years.
If delegation fails, consider rematching before you abandon the approach.
He said a single bad EA experience often reflects a mismatch rather than delegation being impossible, and gave an example where rematching an EA for a legal leader led to “night and day” improvement, doubled output, and reduced stress. He also said Levels rematches about 30% of EAs due to fit.
Record your real work (one take) to transfer context faster than writing process docs.
He emphasized “workflow recording” as a near-zero-effort way to train others: turn on Loom and do your normal work, then share it. He said people routinely overestimate how complex their tasks are, and that watching 2–3 recordings can let an EA replicate work with high accuracy.
Make communication a core part of performance and use recordings to reduce organizational friction.
He described Levels’ culture as downstream of “treat people like adults,” including norms like “closing the loop” and the principle that “a lack of communication is a lack of performance.” He also explained recording meetings (and often sharing recordings) as a forcing function to reduce gossip and improve access to first-person context.
Move tasks from lists into time-blocked calendar reality, with deliberate slack.
He said the calendar should be the to-do list because time is finite while to-do items are infinite, and recommended building in substantial slack (he suggested 50% when starting, later reducing as estimation improves). He also described scheduling email/communications blocks and retroactively calibrating estimates by comparing planned vs. actual time.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesA lack of communication is a lack of performance.
— Sam Corcos
Content scales, time does not.
— Sam Corcos
I’ve been fully news sober for almost 10 years.
— Sam Corcos
Your time is finite, and the number of digital items you can add to a to-do list is infinite.
— Sam Corcos
Writing is thought.
— Sam Corcos
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
