What to Delegate to AI vs. What to Keep

What this is for

You're not short on AI tools. You're short on a rule for when to use them. This is for the moment you're staring at a task and genuinely don't know if reaching for AI is smart delegation or a way to avoid doing your actual job. Fifteen minutes gives you a rule you'll use for years, not a prompt you'll use once.

The framework

Hand over: volume, structure, first drafts, translation, formatting.

• Volume — anything you'd do the same way ten times. Twelve reviews with the same format, fifty emails needing the same kind of reply, a spreadsheet of similar entries.
• Structure — turning chaos into a known shape. Notes into an outline, a transcript into a memo, a rambling brief into a table.
• First drafts — the blank page, not the final page. A first pass at a document you'll heavily edit anyway.
• Translation — converting between formats or audiences you already understand. Technical detail into an exec summary, a policy into plain language, data into a narrative.
• Formatting — the mechanical layer. Slide layout, table structure, consistent headers, cleaning inconsistent data entry.

Keep: stakes, taste, relationships, judgment calls, anything you'd have to defend in a room.

• Stakes — if being wrong costs real money, a relationship, or someone's job, you make the call, even if AI drafts the language.
• Taste — the decision about what's actually good, not just correct. AI can generate five options; you pick the one that's right for this audience, this moment, this person.
• Relationships — anything where the value is that it came from you specifically. A personal thank-you, a hard conversation, a reference call.
• Judgment calls — decisions with no clean right answer, where your years of pattern-matching are the entire point of asking you and not someone else.
• Anything you'd have to defend in a room. If you'd be embarrassed to say "the AI decided this," you shouldn't let it decide. Drafting language is fine. Owning the decision is not delegable.

The test that cuts through most edge cases: could a competent junior person do this well if you gave them the same instructions? If yes, it's probably volume, structure, or formatting — delegate the drafting. If the answer is "no, because it requires knowing things only I know or relationships only I have," keep it.

Two prompts to apply the framework

1. Audit your own week to find delegable volume work — either model.

ROLE: You are a time-management consultant helping me find tasks in my
week that are volume, structure, or formatting work I'm doing manually.
CONTEXT: Below is a rough list of what I did this week, in no particular
order.
MY WEEK: [PASTE — e.g. "Wrote 8 similar client update emails. Built a
board deck from scratch. Had a hard conversation with a vendor about a
missed deadline. Reformatted a spreadsheet for finance. Interviewed a
candidate. Drafted 3 versions of the same proposal for different
clients."]
CONSTRAINTS: For each item, classify it as Volume, Structure, First
Draft, Translation, Formatting, or Keep (stakes/taste/relationship/
judgment). Do not reclassify something as delegable just because it was
tedious — tedious and high-stakes still means Keep.
OUTPUT FORMAT: A table with columns Task, Classification, and a one-line
reason. End with a short list of the top 3 I should delegate next week.

2. Pressure-test whether a specific task should be delegated — either model.

ROLE: You are a skeptical advisor helping me decide if a specific task is
safe to delegate to AI.
CONTEXT: The task: [DESCRIBE IT, e.g. "Writing the layoff notification
email to a team of 6 people, using talking points from HR"]. Why I'm
considering delegating it: [e.g. "I hate writing these and AI drafts
faster than I do"].
CONSTRAINTS: Answer honestly, not reassuringly. Apply this test: if this
went wrong, would I have to explain in a room why an AI wrote it? If
yes, tell me plainly to keep it and explain what part, specifically, AI
can still help with (drafting language) versus what I must own (the
decision, the delivery, the judgment about tone for this specific
team).
OUTPUT FORMAT: A verdict — Delegate, Delegate Partially, or Keep — with
one sentence of reasoning and, if partial, exactly which piece is safe
to hand over.

Where this goes wrong

• You delegate the drafting and let that quietly become delegating the decision. A drafted layoff email is fine; letting the draft's tone decide how you actually deliver the news is not. Reread anything high-stakes as if you wrote it cold, not as an edit pass on the AI's version.
• You keep everything because letting go feels like losing control. Volume and formatting work don't build your reputation — the judgment calls do. Hoarding the volume work just means less time for the parts that actually need you.
• You use "it's faster if I just do it myself" as the test. Speed isn't the question. The question is whether a wrong answer costs something real. Slow-but-safe volume work is still delegable; fast-but-risky judgment work still isn't.

The 2-minute version

Ask: could a smart junior person do this well from my instructions? If yes, it's volume, structure, draft, translation, or formatting — hand it over. If the honest answer involves "because only I know" or "because it's my relationship," keep it, and let AI draft the language, not the decision.

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