David Ricardo
Better at Both, and Still Hand One Over
Keep the job where your lead is widest
On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817), chapter 7, 'On Foreign Trade', and its footnote
You are the best person for every job on the list. Ricardo's question is what each one stops you doing.
What actually happened?
In his 1817 book Ricardo set out a sum. Cloth in England takes the labour of 100 men for a year, and wine takes 120. In Portugal the same cloth takes 90 men and the same wine only 80. Portugal is better at both, so instinct says it should make both. He showed the opposite: Portugal should leave the cloth to England and make wine. Between them, the same men end up with more cloth and more wine.
Count what you give up, not how far ahead you are
Portugal saves 10 men on cloth and 40 on wine. Every batch of cloth it weaves is wine it did not make. The question is not whether you beat the other person, but what the job in front of you stops you doing.
You draft proposals faster than your assistant and build spreadsheets faster too. An afternoon on the spreadsheet costs a proposal only you could write.
The stronger one should still pick one
In a footnote he makes it two men who both make shoes and hats. One is better at both: a fifth better at hats, a third better at shoes. Surely both gain, he asks, if the better man makes only shoes?
Because you can do every job on the team, you most need to find the one where your lead is widest and give the rest away.
The work you hand off will be done worse
Handing it over does not mean it is done as well. England needs more men for the cloth, and the sum still comes out ahead, because the men Portugal saved went to dearer work. Slower and rougher is the price of dividing labour.
Your assistant takes a day on the spreadsheet and you fix two cells in ten minutes. That day, you finished the proposal.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: you keep taking more on because you do each thing better than anyone near you, and none of it gets finished.
Ask first: how far ahead am I on this job, and how far on that one? Keep the job where the lead is widest and hand off the rest in order of what each costs you.
Where it goes wrong: using it to push off the work you dislike. He counted what is given up, not what is enjoyed, and the job you find easiest is not always the one to keep.
Lines to keep
The question is not who is better but what each gives up.
Better at everything still means doing one thing.
Slower hands on the work you gave away are the price.
Same situation, other people are asking
The work at home genuinely never ends.My day comes in pieces. Is that why nothing deep gets done?I was busy every hour and moved nothing that needed real thought.Everything urgent gets done and nothing important does.There's never enough time · all 11 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.