“You don’t need a secretary,” said Nassim Nicholas Taleb. And he was right.
You don’t need someone to manage your chaos. You need to eliminate the chaos.
In the old world (before 2020), a secretary was a status symbol. Proof that your life was too big, too busy, too important to manage alone.
In the new world, you don’t need a gatekeeper; just a filter would make it and for this, you need clarity.
You need fewer meetings, better filters, and the courage to say “no.”
Taleb was against the illusion of importance. The belief that being too busy means you’re doing something right.
But busyness is often a form of laziness. A refusal to prioritize. A way to avoid hard decisions by drowning in easy distractions.
The truly effective don’t outsource their thinking. They simplify their systems.
If your day is a blur of calls, emails, and calendars managed by someone else, ask yourself: Is this necessary, or is it just normal?
Technology gives you leverage. Clarity gives you power. But both are worthless without ownership of your own time.
So, you don’t need a secretary. You need to take yourself off autopilot.
