On October 2, 1945, a small sign was mailed to President Harry Truman. His friend Fred Canfil, a U.S. Marshal, had seen one while visiting the Federal Reformatory in El Reno, Oklahoma, and asked the warden to make a copy. It was painted glass on a walnut base, about thirteen inches long. The front read, “The Buck Stops Here,” and the back said, “I’m From Missouri.”
That saying comes from poker. In the olden days, players used a marker called the buck (often a knife with a buckhorn handle) to show whose turn it was to deal. If someone didn’t want to deal, they could pass the buck to the next player.
While we may not be making presidential decisions, we still find ways to pass the buck.
Earlier this week, I skipped attending an hour-long educational webinar on taxes and retirement planning I’d signed up for. Instead, I decided to outsource the job to my AI assistant, asking it to watch the webinar and give me a CliffsNotes version. Eventually, while I spent my time scrolling through creative memes, my “assistant” produced a one-page summary of the webinar. Being able to delegate watching a presentation like that felt like finding a $20 bill in last year’s winter coat (which, by the way, also happened this week).
Handing things off has never been easier, and most of the time it’s the smart thing to do, especially for a control freak like me. I also realize this can go south pretty quickly unless we’re clear about what decisions to hand over to others (including AI) and why.
Finger-pointing
In 2018, researchers Mary Steffel and Elanor Williams published a study of eight experiments on why we have others make choices for us. In one such experiment, participants had to choose between two foreign films. When both films seemed equally appealing, 54% preferred to ask a friend to pick, even when that friend hadn’t seen either film. Researchers explained that this was a way we avoid regret. We feel worse about a bad choice when we make it ourselves.
When we ask the server what she recommends at a restaurant we’ve never tried, we’re relying on her judgment and knowledge. Or maybe, we simply want someone else to blame when the risotto tastes like wet cardboard. If we make the wrong choice, we’re left with the annoying realization that we made a poor decision. Getting her to pick is easier on our conscience.
In an earlier post, I called avoidance “a universally favorite coping mechanism in the face of fear.” Delegating a decision that I’m afraid of getting wrong is almost the same thing, except it seems more sociable.
Shifting cognitive work
In a 2016 review, cognitive scientists Evan Risko and Sam Gilbert evaluated the concept of cognitive offloading: something we do every day when we shift mental work onto tools, reminders, calendars, and other people. It’s impossible to function without it. Nobody, not even self-proclaimed nerds, wants to keep memorizing twelve-digit confirmation numbers for sport.
One study asked people to type trivia facts into a computer. Those participants who were told the computer would save what they typed remembered fewer trivia facts than those who were told it would be erased.
In 2023, I wrote that “in this age of soundbites and summaries, the ability to delve deep into a topic is an endangered skill.” (That was before I started handing recordings to an assistant.) For the webinar, the bottom line was all I needed.
But for a subject I want to understand clearly and have an opinion on, slogging through the messy middle is usually the only way to understand the subject. It’s never a wise decision to offload thinking and understanding.
Deciding what to delegate
I’ve agonized for twenty minutes over which brand of olive oil to buy, then impulsively said yes to a commitment that takes up all my precious weekend time.
It seems straightforward to ask an AI assistant to summarize an hour of dense tax slides. But deciding what to do with that information, and what risks to take (or not), is still something not worth delegating.
My rule of thumb now is to focus on the big picture; anything that can be reversed or is minor can and should be delegated. If making a poor decision costs ten dollars or ten minutes of annoyance, I’m happy to push that to the “delegate” pile. I’ll let Maps tell me which route to take, the waiter suggest which side dish to pick from the menu, and a travel planning app pick a hotel (as long as it’s not on the highway). In fact, we should delegate such decisions to free up mental bandwidth for the ones that do matter. Like which photo to post on Instagram (/s)
Importantly, we need to check with ourselves when we have a sudden urge to read one more review or ask one more person when we already have enough information to make a decision. In that case, it’s really avoidance at play, or probably a search for a scapegoat.
“Responsibility, n. A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck, or one’s neighbor.”
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)