Why does delegation to rules fail?

The most common reason delegation to rules fails: Treating rule creation as a one-time event and never revising. A rule that was right six months ago may be wrong now because the context shifted. The deeper failure is confusing the comfort of not deciding with the quality of the decisions being made on your behalf. If you never audit your rules, you've delegated to a ghost — a past version of yourself who may no longer understand your current situation.

The fix: Identify three decisions you make repeatedly — daily or weekly — where you always arrive at roughly the same answer. Write each one as an explicit if/then rule: 'If X, then Y.' Post them where you'll see them. For one week, follow the rules without re-deliberating. At the end of the week, evaluate: did the rules produce outcomes as good as (or better than) deciding each time from scratch?

The underlying principle is straightforward: A rule is a pre-committed decision that prevents you from having to re-decide the same thing every time.