Normalize Weaponized Incompetence

People are burned out. It's been a rocky few years, and it seems that everyone is constantly being asked to do more with less. But I personally believe that you have more power to say "No" to busywork and unfulfilling tasks than you even realize. You don't have to do everything.

A term that I came across in Cal Newport's book "Slow Productivity" that captures this sentiment well is "Weaponized Incompetence." It comes from the brilliant physicist Richard Feynman, who worked on huge projects from the Manhattan Project to investigating the Challenger space shuttle disaster. No one could doubt his competence in physics, but when it came to more mundane busywork and bookkeeping, he just... didn't. And soon people would stop asking him to do those things, giving him more opportunity to maximize his impact.

This is only possible when you are relentlessly focused on the quality of your work and when you're clear about what you want to contribute to the world. Every time you say no, you are free to focus on countless other more meaningful tasks. Start by identifying your core competencies and the tasks that truly align with your goals. Then, gradually reduce your involvement in non-essential tasks.

The best thing you can do for yourself is become comfortable with strategically allowing unmeaningful tasks to pile up and fall through the cracks. You don't have to do everything. You can't do everything. So just don't, because life is too short to pretend otherwise.

What's one task you can say 'no' to this week?