Macromanage

Don’t police the little decisions. Police the big ones, and then let the sub-decisions run wild.

Let’s say your department has to stay within a $10,000 budget for the upcoming project. The wrong thing to do is try to approve every individual expenditure. The correct thing to do is give the team a $9,000 account and let them use their discretion. And if you don’t trust your team to use their discretion… well, that’s on you, pal. You either hired them, trained them, or both. Why didn’t you do a better job?

It’s the same with my kids. I don’t believe in policing their every intake of food. It sounds exhausting. Instead, I just only buy things that I’m comfortable with them eating without my supervision. That means that I only buy things that are healthy and not terribly messy. In practice it means a lot of fruits and raw veggies, pre-cooked chicken and other lunchmeats, cheese, and hard-boiled eggs. They can eat as much of that stuff as they want, and I don’t have to spend every five minutes attending to my children’s appetites like a waiter.

If you want less stress in your life, save your decisions for setting the parameters, and set them around the decision space such that any decisions made within that space are satisfactory.