Most executives don't have a delegation problem. They have a decision-making problem. They waste cognitive energy on choices that don't deserve it, then lack bandwidth for the decisions that actually matter.

At Google, I trained thousands of people on decision intelligence - the discipline of turning information into better action. The same frameworks apply to delegation. The question isn't "what can I offload?" It's "which decisions require my unique judgment, and which don't?"

Here's the uncomfortable truth: most of your daily decisions don't need you. Not because they're unimportant, but because they're not worth your time to optimize. A good-enough decision made quickly beats a perfect decision made slowly.

The Clairvoyance Test

Before investing time in any decision, I run what I call the clairvoyance test. Imagine a psychic could give you the perfect answer - the objectively right choice, with all information revealed. How much would you pay them?

If your honest answer is less than $100, you're over-investing. That "which hotel for the NYC trip" decision? The "which vendor for the catering" choice? You'd pay maybe $20 to know the best answer. So why are you spending hours on research?

This is precisely where your EA becomes invaluable. They can make these decisions faster than you can, and their "good enough" is indistinguishable from your "perfect" when the stakes are this low.

Training Your EA to Think Like You

The magic of decision intelligence isn't just knowing what to delegate - it's building systems where your EA can make decisions you'd be proud of. This requires explicit training, not osmosis.

I use a progressive autonomy model: shadow, predict, act. Week one, your EA watches you make decisions via Loom recordings where you narrate your reasoning. Weeks two and three, they predict what you'd choose before you decide. By month two, they're making calls autonomously that you'd never second-guess.

What This Looks Like in Practice

When the system is running smoothly, you'll notice something strange: your phone buzzes less, but with higher-signal notifications. Your EA is making dozens of decisions daily, and you only hear about the ones that matter.

Designing Your Decision Calendar

The final piece is restructuring your calendar around decision types. High-stakes decisions get protected blocks with no interruptions. Low-stakes admin gets batched into 30-minute windows where your EA has pre-prepared everything you need to rapid-fire through approvals.

The goal isn't to eliminate decisions from your life. It's to ensure that when you do make a decision, it's one that genuinely benefits from your unique perspective, relationships, and judgment. Everything else is noise.

After a decade of training executives on decision-making, I've learned that the best leaders aren't the ones who make the most decisions. They're the ones who've built systems that make most decisions unnecessary for them to touch.