You should learn something from anyone and perhaps everyone that you work with, good, bad or indifferent.
I learned this from a former business partner. It was a very positive thing, and I didn't always learn positive things from this business partner, but on this occasion, it was dead useful and helpful, although I've reframed it a little bit for my own uses.
When it was recommended to me, it was recommended as follows:
D - do.
D - dump.
D - delegate
D - defer.
Do, dump, delegate, defer.
Was how you filtered every single task that came your way, during the day, when 1000 tasks come our way all the time.
I've just reorganised these a tiny little bit as follows:
Delegate, defer, dump, or do.
In a world of trying to be effective and efficient, particularly if you have a position that constitutes any aspect of leadership, then do should be the last thing that you do.
You should delegate whatever you can to the most appropriate people whom you trust. You should defer things that are not appropriate to be done now because they're just a distraction and fall into the non-urgent, important category, and you should dump anything that is a distraction from the main attraction.
That should leave you with the things that you should do now (note - non-urgent important work is the most important work, but it should be scheduled to a time when you're not filtering work). What this does is give you focus; it gives you the chance to step back for 2 or 3 seconds when someone asks you to do something. It allows you to pigeonhole it into any of these four categories.
This will make you better, it will make you more focused, more deliberate, more effective.
It'll get you closer to the place where you want to be.
Blog Post Number - 4400
Colin Campbell, Chris Barrow, and an intrepid group of dentists will be cycling across the plains of Tanzania from Kilimanjaro in early February 2026. If you would like to support the charity, Bridge to Aid, and this extraordinary challenge, please click here.
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