The Agile Attorney Podcast 089. The Four Ds of Productivity: Removing Bottlenecks & Managing Capacity
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Sep 30, 2025 Discover the Four Ds of productivity: do it, delegate it, defer it, or drop it. Learn why only two of these options truly relieve bottlenecks in legal practices. Explore the hidden dangers of delegation, and how it can lead to unexpected quality assurance issues. Dive into the challenges of deferring tasks as simply passing the buck to your future self. Uncover the emotional difficulty of dropping commitments, but see how it can enhance focus and productivity in your law practice.
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Four Ds Aren't Equally Useful
- The four Ds are do it, delegate it, defer it, or drop it and they appear everywhere in productivity advice.
- John Grant says only two of these choices are reliably good options in practice.
Prioritize Doing When You Can Finish
- Do the work when you have the information, skill, and an uninterrupted block of time to finish it.
- Treat 'do it' as the preferred choice because it produces closure, client satisfaction, and payment.
Ben Hudson’s Boomerang Delegation
- Ben Hudson delegated upstream work and found it boomeranged back to him because his attorney-review bottleneck couldn't keep up.
- The delegated work piled up and increased his backup instead of freeing capacity.
