115. How to Delegate Your Life as a Woman Physician (Without Paying for Busywork)

Hey Doc,

If you’ve ever said, “I just need more help,” and then somehow ended up more overwhelmed… this episode is for you.

Because the problem usually isn’t that you don’t have help.

It’s that you’re delegating the wrong things… in the wrong order… without a system.

So now you’ve got someone managing tasks that probably shouldn’t exist in the first place, while the things that would actually make your life easier are still sitting on your plate.

I see this all the time with woman physicians.

You finally decide to get support—maybe it’s an assistant, childcare, or help at home—and instead of relief, you feel frustrated.

Now you’re paying someone… and still tired.

In this episode, I walk you through how to actually delegate your life in a way that gives you your time, energy, and brain space back.

Not just shifting tasks around.

Not just “getting help.”

But building a system that works for you.

We’re starting with what most people skip, and why that’s exactly why delegation fails.

Inside this episode:

• Why “just hire help” is incomplete advice (and often a waste of money)
• The first step you must take before delegating anything
• How to identify tasks that should be deleted vs. delegated
• What to automate first (especially in the era of AI)
• How to stop paying people to do things no one needed to do in the first place

This is the work that makes everything else easier.

Less mental load.

Less resentment.

Less “why am I still doing all of this?”

More clarity.

More efficiency.

More space to actually live your life.

Because you didn’t work this hard to spend your evenings organizing email folders no one will ever open again.

🎧 Listen to the full episode and start delegating like someone who actually values her time.

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Transcript

 Hey Doc, I wanna talk about how to delegate, and this is one of my favorite topics because it means you doing less. It is one of my favorite things to help you do. So let's get into it. So the first thing. And I've talked about this kind of in different ways in terms of getting household help. It starts off always the same way, and you'll find this in a lot of like productivity hacks and tricks. And tips, right? You have to first audit. You can't, what is he saying? You can't, change what you can't measure. That's not the saying, I just completely messed it up. But basically you have to know. What you are doing to begin with, So, and this can be applied if you are an entrepreneur. If you are a physician in an employed practice. If you are hiring household help, whatever, because there is no situation. Where you can't delegate, maybe in your marriage, I suppose. You can't delegate some of the things that you do in your marriage, I suppose, but in your life in general, there are many different areas where you can get things off of your plate, and at first, in whatever instance that is, you have to know what are the things that you do. So in this context we talk about motherhood, it's usually when you're talking about sharing the load of the house, right? But if you are starting a business, or even if you are joining a practice or you just want to become more efficient at your job, there are things that you can delegate. If you're going into leadership and they're giving you a administrative assistant and you're like, I dunno what to give her, this is all the same process. So first, making sure that you know the things that you are currently doing, and this is not just so you can pick and choose the things that you don't wanna do to give to somebody else. This is so that you can first decide if some of those things just don't need to be done by anybody. Because there are a lot of tasks that just do not need to be done. They're just a waste of time. It is busy work. should be deleted. So sometimes I, I'm in my inbox and I'm like, yeah, I want everything labeled. So I'm going to go through every single email, all the hundreds of emails in here, and label each one and put them in their own quote unquote folders, which Gmail doesn't have. It's just you have to label everything. That is a complete waste of time. You can label some things, I suppose, but I almost never go back in there because if I need to find something, I just go to the search bar and type it in, right? That's just a perfect example of something that is a complete waste of time. However, if I was going to hire an executive assistant, that could have been a task that I put on the list for her to manage my inbox because it makes it seem like, oh yeah, this is definitely something that's important. This is something she should do. But when you start. putting tasks off for the person you're delegating to without doing the audit for what should be deleted, you end up wasting time and money because then they are just doing things that nobody should be doing, and they're not doing the more important things, right? So you're going to really assess what do I actually need to be doing to achieve this goal? The next thing that is very important before you delegate, and I'm just going to use this as an entrepreneurial example because it covers everything else right? Before you hire, let's say the executive assistant and stepping back a bit. You as an employed physician mother, you can definitely use an executive assistant. So this isn't really even an entrepreneurial thing, but I feel like, I don't know if you're mentally ready for that. And I just wanna say I have clients who are employed, plan to stay employed, have no intention of becoming an entrepreneur, and they have executive assistants. This is not a crazy thing. Many employed people have executive assistants. Most of them like people in leadership, that's what they do. You are a leader, you're a doctor. You should have one anyway. Before you say, I'm gonna delegate this to this person in the year of AI of 2026, please figure out what you can automate and what you can automate with AI before you waste time and money delegating this task, it is possible now more than ever for you to set up an automation, invest in the time it takes for you to figure it out. You don't even have to invest too much time because you can go into Cluade or ChatGPT, probably Claude. It is just better and ask it, how do I do X, Y, Z? And it will tell you, you don't even have to spend time figuring it out. There are lots of people who they're willing to teach you, right? What can I automate and then spend the time to set up the automation and then forget it. And that's something that I ascribed to long ago. Like it's the same thing as having templates for charting, right? It's like, how can I make this repeatable task as automated as quick as possible? If you're doing the same thing more than two times in a week, definitely in a day. See if there's a way it could be automated and at this stage of your life, make sure it's some kind of AI tool, . That's cool. But you will be left behind. That's just kind of how it is. Doc. Yes, AI is bad for the planet in general, but that's like saying money is the root of all evil. Is AI bad for the planet or is the way that the people who are creating it, that's actually damaging the planet, damaging vulnerable. Populations, is that the actual problem? It always has been, right? It has always been people that have abused and used these tools to the detriment of other people that have caused problems. The thing itself is not the problem. I mean, AI may get there. When it comes to general intelligence, we are not there yet. At least they haven't told us we're there yet. But at this stage, all of the bad things about AI is really just bad things about human beings. I digress. So figure out what you can automate. So step one, take an audit. Step two, see what needs to be deleted. Some of that shit you don't need to be doing. Step three, see what you can automate. Only then do you pull out the things that can be delegated or should be delegated. You want to make sure. If you are in a disorganized, frazzled state, doing a bunch of stuff and being busy just for the sake of being busy, that you're not just dumping all that stuff on somebody else because you have to spend time training this person or you don't, and that makes it even worse. And you spend money paying this person to do a bunch of stuff that should have been deleted or automated. So you're wasting their time and yours, and then you get angry because you aren't getting the results that you wanted, but it's because you didn't do the prep work before. So when you have this cleaned up list, this audited automated beautiful list is just like, yes, these are the things that I'm going to have this person doing, and this is an important part. Make sure that you are delegating things that make sense for one person to do and know what you're thinking. I, I do it all. I do all of this stuff. Why can't they do it? Why can't they just, I mean, I just might as well do it myself if they can't do it. Doc, if you want actual, proper help from humans who are not you. Then please just heed, heed my call. Listen to what I'm saying. Group the tasks so that they make sense. If you have an executive assistant and you want her to check your email, you want her to, I don't know, call people on your behalf, you want her to return packages for you. These are all things an executive assistant can do slash personal assistant, but then you also have her creating content. It's creating reels and all sorts of things. And then she's bad at that. You are gonna be mad, but, but those two types of tasks aren't related. I mean, you may luck out and find somebody who just happens to be good, but a lot of times when we. just want to, offload We are so overwhelmed, just like somebody else do all this stuff that I am doing. I may be doing poorly, but I don't wanna do anymore. You just do it and then they're even less capable than we are and then they get mad and you're like, well see. This is why I should have just been doing it myself. Make sure that. Whoever this person is who is likely not a physician, not an excellent multitasker, if that is actually a thing, we come the closest to it to be able to do it. As women physicians, especially as ob gyn. Shout out to my fellow obs, the only people that can come remotely close to multitasking because we know multitasking is not an actual thing. We just do multiple things poorly, but you're finding somebody who is not you. And then expecting them to do that. Just don't do it. It's not gonna work. So set people up to succeed. Don't give them a whole bunch of unrelated stuff. Overwhelm them and then be mad that they can't do it. Hire different people, delegate to different people, to their strengths, and that way they can really hone in and they can really excel and. If you are not just delegating, but finding a who, which is a concept that I'll explain in a second. They may actually be way better than you at doing their thing. And because they are focused, they can optimize it. They can give you ideas that you didn't even have. They can make it more efficient, they can really shine. And now. You are operating at an even higher level because you have narrowed it down and you have allowed this person to operate at the top of their license, whatever that license is, right? So there's a difference between delegation for the sake of delegation. Like, I don't wanna do this task, I don't like doing it. I know how to do it, I just want somebody else to do it. That's typical delegation. Finding a who in this concept of who, not how? It's a book by Benjamin Hardy and what's this guy's name? I can't remember the other guy's name. Where you find somebody, A who? Who is better at doing the thing than you are. So it's not just some menial person who just like, what, I'm just gonna pay them a couple bucks? No, this is an expert. So an example would be if I need to build a website, I'm gonna find a who. I'm gonna find somebody who is skilled at building websites. Of course, I could figure it out. Of course. Well, especially now, especially with ai, of course I can figure it out. Is that a good use of my time? Am I operating at the top of my license? Is that the best and highest use of my time? It is not because it's not my zone of genius. I'm not professional at it. I am not the person for that. There is somebody else, my who, who is so good at this that not only is it going to. Make them happy, but it is going to make me be even more efficient, make me be even more successful because I let them take it and do their thing. Right? So delegation who not how. Those are two separate things. And at your best, you wanna be doing both. Finding accelerate you beyond your wildest dreams in your growth in whatever it is that you are doing. If you are an employed doc who wants to go into leadership, get yourself a leadership coach. Find yourself a mentor. That's a who. Somebody who's been through the process, the person who you're gonna delegate to along that path is the research assistant. Is the fellow who's going to write all the papers, or the resident who's gonna organize all your shit. That's delegation. The who is the mentor that's gonna help you, the person that's going to guide you and put in together your, your package. Or you can just say, you know what, I'm just gonna figure this all out on my own. It's a waste of time so far. We have audit the things that you're doing, audit your time, delete what does need to be done, automate what can be automated, and then start pulling out the tasks that you're gonna delegate and the things that you're gonna find a who for, but you're not done. You need to actually, for the delegation. Train these people in what you like. This is not micromanaging. You need to set expectations. They need to know what success looks like. If your executive assistant doesn't know that you want to have inbox zero every single day, that you want to have all of your unread things at the top and whatever else, how are, how are they gonna know what success looks like? How are they gonna know how to make you happy? You have to tell them. You have to train them because if you just like, oh, you figure it out and then they do it how you don't like, you're gonna be mad. And then you're gonna say, you know what? I should have just done this myself. Who do not need to be trained. They need to know what you want, what your expectation is globally. But the point is, they are the expert. So you let them execute. Right? So that's a difference. And then you're still not done. You have to give feedback. Doc feedback is not a bad thing. It is the only way that this thing works. If you just grumble to yourself that girl is not doing what I said, this guy is, this is not what I wanted. Oh, they did this thing that I didn't like. Ugh. See this is why I should have done it myself. No, you give feedback. And if the thought is running through your head, oh, I'm non-confrontational. Why does feedback have to be a confrontation? And why does confrontation mean something bad in your head? Will we condition to think that any level of confrontation or disagreement is a negative, bad thing? And that means we are rude and we are mean. I want to challenge that because it is not true. You need feedback, you need conflict. You needed to be able to do it in a healthy way. And if people don't know how they can improve or that they need to improve, then they're not going to, and then the relationship falls apart because you continue to be salty and salty and salty. Your blood pressure goes up and then. The relationship just ends because you are super frustrated. They didn't even know that you are mad. They didn't know how to improve, and then you go back to doing everything on your own. It just doesn't work. And this is not to say some people just aren't the right fit. You do have to, you know, make that assessment like, maybe I was wrong about this one person. So how to delegate, audit your time and your tasks, delete. The stuff that you should not be doing and nobody should be doing in your life. Automate what you can. AI is your friend. It is a tool. Use it. It's not going away. Please talk. Make your life easier. Just use it. Don't use it to make funny pictures of yourself. That is a waste of time. Use it to make your life easier than when you actually delegate. Decide if you need somebody to delegate to or you need a who? Set expectations for the person you're delegating to make sure they know what success looks like. Make sure they know what you want. Give the outcome to the who, and don't try to micromanage 'em. Let them do their thing. They are the expert. And please, please, please give feedback. And that's it. You are delegating machine and all of a sudden things are running smoothly without you having to do it, and you have all this time to do all sorts of other things easy. 1, 2, 3, and I have had to learn this the hard way, doc. As with most things that I speak about on this podcast. I have spent lots of money, lots of time, lots of frustration. I not doing the things that I just told you and having to learn the hard way. Learn from me. I did it. I went through it. So you don't have to, this is the cheat code, use it. If you are thinking, yeah, they told me I should get a va, a visual assistant, but I don't know what I would. Use them for all the best one. I had a va and they, they're just a waste of time. I, I couldn't find things to give them. That's because you didn't go through these steps. So let me know if you have any questions. Happy delegating. I'll see you on the next episode of Stethoscopes and Strollers.