"It's quicker to do it myself"

Your fourteen-year-old, in this example, has never used the washing machine. Showing him would take twenty minutes, including the conversation about why he has to. Doing the load yourself takes eight. So you do the load.

The sum is correct. It's correct today, and it'll be correct next Tuesday, and every time you do it you'll be right. That's why this belief is so hard to shift. It wins every single instance, and single instances are all you ever meet. Over a year, though, you've spent seven hours on his washing to save twenty minutes, and you've raised a fifteen-year-old who can't work the machine.

The same sum runs at work. A newer colleague could take over the monthly figures, but explaining them would cost you an afternoon and doing them costs an hour. Two years later you're still doing them, you can't take the last week of any month off, and you describe yourself as swamped.

My rule of thumb is that if a job repeats, the explaining pays for itself by about the third time. That's a guess and you can adjust it. What matters is doing the sum over the year, because the habit only ever does it over the afternoon.

Behind "quicker" there's often a second belief, which is "nobody else does it properly". This one deserves a closer look, because sometimes it's true and often it means something else. The towels get folded in half and you fold them in thirds. The dishwasher gets loaded in a way that offends you. The slides go out in a font you wouldn't have picked. In each case the job was done. It wasn't done your way.

A useful test is to ask whether the difference shows in the result or only in your feelings. Towels folded in half dry people just as well. If the figures don't match the bank, that's a real fault and worth insisting on. I think most of what gets filed under "properly" is preference, and you're entitled to preferences. But you should know you're paying for them with your evenings.

I also think "quicker" and "properly" are sometimes covering for something harder to admit, which is that handing a job over means giving up control of it. Someone else decides when it happens and how. If you've organised your life around being the one who's on top of things, that's a real loss and it's uncomfortable. It's better to admit it than to call it efficiency.

Consider what the habit does to the people around you. A household or a team where one person knows how everything works has a weak point. When that person gets flu, nothing runs. The others have also been kept unskilled, and then, quite often, resented for it. The partner who's "hopeless with the school forms" may never have been left alone with one. People can't get good at things you won't let go of.

You might object that some jobs really are one-offs, and some really do need your standard. That's true. If it won't repeat, or a mistake would be expensive, doing it yourself can be the right call. That's a plan, in the sense of chapter 2. The habit is when the answer is always "I'll do it", and you haven't done the sum.

When you do hand something over, a few things help. Hand over the whole job and not an errand within it, so the other person owns the result. Say which part of your standard matters, such as "it has to be in by Friday and the totals have to match". Let the rest go. And don't redo their work in front of them. If you refold the towels while someone watches, they learn that helping you is pointless, and next time they won't.