Less Busy Lab

Everyone needs to learn to delegate effectively in the age of AI, even if you don’t manage any humans. AI agents will research the paper, write the draft, crunch the spreadsheet, just about anything you need, short of grabbing your coffee. So why does it still go sideways so often? In this episode, Alex and Moah reveal the ways delegating tasks to a machine are the same as delegating to a person — and the science that explains why most of us are bad at both. Research shows the CEOs who delegate well make 33% More revenue — yet 75% of top CEOs admit they're bad at this one skill.
Along the way, Alex and Moah dig into why we struggle to let go, like the psychology that makes your own work feel superior and the cognitive bias that mistakes long hours for good results. To help you level up your ability to delegate, they walk through the five levels of managerial delegation, the 1974 Harvard Business Review classic that asks "who's got the monkey?", and the military’s concept of "Commander's Intent". You'll leave with one concrete assignment: find the single task on next week's plate that only you can do, and hand off something else to a person or a machine. The hard part was never the handoff. It's the trust.
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Links from the show!
Gallup: Companies with CEOs who delegate better https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/182414/delegating-huge-management-challenge-entrepreneurs.aspx
9 Tips to Delegate Effectively https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/how-to-delegate-effectively
Commander’s Intent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intent_(military)
Who’s Got the Monkey? https://internalmedicinefaculty.wustl.edu/app/uploads/2018/05/Whos-Got-the-Monkey-HBR.pdf
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*Correction: We misstated a statistic in the audio. Delegator CEOs had a 3-year growth rate that was 112 percentage points higher (1,751% growth vs. ~1,639% for low delegators.)

Ever close your laptop and realize you're snapping at your kids over the smallest thing? You might be experiencing what researchers are now calling AI brain fry but even if you've never touched an AI agent, the underlying problem is one we all share: our brains were never built for the amount of multitasking we are handling today.
Moah and Alex dig into why multitasking exhausts us (even as we're getting more done), the unsettling stat that our average focused attention has dropped from 3 minutes in the early 2000s to 47 seconds today, and what actually helps.
In this episode, you will learn:
Why our brains weren't built for the always-on workday
The 7-second cost of a single notification glance
The 2.5% of people who are actual "supertaskers"
How to leave a "start here" note for your future self
Good news, though: you don't have to become a luddite and swear off AI to maintain your sanity. Moah and Alex share practical tactics like subtask boundaries, self-interrupted context switching, and the "routine complex cycle" for making the work more sustainable for your mental energy. If you've ever snapped at someone at the dinner table because your brain was still stuck at your desk, this one's for you.
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Links from the show!
Got to-dos? Get GQueues! gqueues.com
Boomerang for Gmail boomeranggmail.com
Boomerang for Outlook boomerangoutlook.com
Switching at breakpoints is better for your focus than being interrupted: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/oasis-a-framework-for-linking-notification-delivery-to-the-perceptual-structure-of-goal-directed-tasks/
Gloria Mark: Why our attention spans are shrinking https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/attention-spans
Digital dementia and shrinking gray matter: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32062336/

*Correction: In the audio we said time between task switches used to be three to six minutes, but the median was actually two and a half minutes.

How much are bad meetings actually costing your company? The real number is probably worse than you think, and the dollars aren't even the scary part. Bad meetings breed burnout, stall decisions, and have a nasty habit of multiplying.
This week, Alex and Moah dig into why meetings spiral out of control: the FOMO that keeps people showing up, the "meeting creep" that fills calendars without anyone noticing, and the cognitive recovery cost that makes a bad meeting even worse than the time it stole.
They introduce Meeting Defrag, a framework for leaders who suspect their team's calendar is working against them. You'll hear about the CEO who was almost fired because of a really bad meeting he ran, and what happened when one company deleted every recurring meeting (12,000 of them) in a single day. They leave you with a four-question checklist for evaluating whether any recurring meeting on your calendar deserves to stay there.
Plus: Moah surveys the Boomerang team about their own meetings and discovers what the team actually values about their daily standup, and it's not what you'd expect.
Links from the show!
Only 35% of people think they’d be missed in a given meeting https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/will-ai-fix-work
Impact of Meeting Free days https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/102394/1/The%20Surprising%20Impact%20of%20Meeting-Free%20Days.pdf
Meeting Load Paradox https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0007681323001167
Calendly State of Meetings Report https://calendly.com/resources/guides/2024-state-of-meetings-report
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Boomerang for Gmail boomeranggmail.com
Boomerang for Outlook boomerangoutlook.com

You know you should start that project. You know the deadline is looming. So why are you watching TikTok instead? It's actually not a willpower problem, and it’s not poor time management.
In this episode, Alex and Moah dig into the surprising science of procrastination. It turns out that the conventional wisdom about why some of us put things off, wait until the last minute, and even miss deadlines entirely is inaccurate. Instead of doubling down on unhelpful advice, they reveal the tactics that can actually help you get work done on time.
Along the way, you’ll learn about a nude French novelist (one of history’s most famous procrastinators), the three types of procrastination (and why only one is harmful), and three evidence-based strategies you can use to break bad habits.
If you've struggled with procrastination your whole life, there's hope. And it doesn't need to involve nudity ;)
Links from the show!
Seminal paper on procrastination https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17201571/
Procrastinators’ brain https://neurosciencenews.com/doer-procrastinator-brains-9724/
Temptation bundling for exercise https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074959782030385X
Meta analysis of intervention strategies for Procrastination https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1747938X18300472
Party tricks and Naked Writing https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2018/dec/30/party-tricks-and-naked-writing-the-eccentric-life-of-victor-hugo
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Boomerang for Gmail boomeranggmail.com
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Microsoft's annual Future of Work report is out, and it's packed with surprising findings about how AI is reshaping the way we work. But here's the thing: the report is mostly good news wrapped in some genuinely unsettling data.
In this episode, Alex and Moah dig into the 2025 report and address some uncomfortable questions: Is AI already better than doctors? What happens to your skills when AI does your job? And why are we having more meetings than ever, not fewer?
You'll learn the paradoxes of AI and the situations where a shortcut can become a time suck, why meetings are exploding and the counterintuitive data on pandemic work habits and what's changed, and practical tips for staying sharp so you engage cognitively alongside AI and maintain your edge.
This isn't another "AI will replace your job" panic episode. It's a thoughtful exploration of what the data actually says, where the hype ends, and what you should actually do about it.
Links from the show!
Microsoft’s 2025 New Future of Work Report https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/New-Future-Of-Work-Report-2025.pdf
Procter & Gamble Study: AI-human teaming https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3613904.3642414
AI performed better than doctors https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39466245/
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