Why Delegating Tasks Before a Vacation Never Works | Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla Unearths a Delicate Truth | Do You Have Free Will?

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Why Delegating Tasks Before a Vacation Never Works - Harvard Business Review

Have you ever returned to work from a vacation only to stare in disbelief at unfinished work you believed you’d carefully assigned to others? It’s frustrating, but the fault may actually lie in your own approach to delegation. The necessary work starts way before you set up your “out of office” message. All too often, managers confuse true delegation with simply asking staff members to do things — usually to lighten their own load. But that doesn’t create the accountability or empowerment people need to really own the task. Before you delegate a task, think through how handing it off might develop the other person’s skills or make use of their unique strengths. And when you hand it off, focus the conversation not only on key deliverables and outcomes, but also on what the employee will learn or gain by owning the task. And the next time you come back from vacation, you should find the work humming along without you.

Has returning to work after your vacation left you feeling less than refreshed? Have you stared in disbelief at unfinished work you believed had been carefully assigned to others during your absence? If so, you are not alone. But at the risk of blaming the victim, you may be more responsible for your fate than you realize. These feelings may be a sign that you need to reassess your overall approach to delegation. The time to do this is way before you prepare for your next leave.

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Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla Unearths a Delicate Truth - The Atlantic

How did one of the most storied romances in American history produce a terrible loneliness?

In Priscilla, Sofia Coppola’s sensitive, minor-key portrait of Elvis Presley’s ex-wife Priscilla Presley, there’s a fleeting shot of the King (played by Euphoria’s Jacob Elordi) performing onstage. His back is turned to the camera; as he opens his arms to the crowd before him, he lifts his signature cape and his body blocks out the lights.

It’s an unusual perspective. In the many depictions of the icon, Elvis tends to be seen the way his fans saw him: in the spotlight, with his artistry on full display. But Priscilla—as rendered by Coppola and embodied by Cailee Spaeny—had a different point of view. He was a silhouette, a shadow, a man she could not see clearly.

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Do You Have Free Will? - The Atlantic

A new book by Robert Sapolsky argues that we’re not in control of or responsible for the decisions we make.

The challenge to the cherished notion of free will comes from what philosophers call “causal determinism.” This is the idea that everything that happens is the product of prior causes, stretching back into a past that was not up to us. We do not originate our choices ex nihilo; instead, they are determined by our history. As Sapolsky puts it, bluntly:

The intent you form, the person you are, is the result of all the interactions between biology and environment that came before. All things out of your control. Each prior influence flows without a break from the effects of the influences before. As such, there’s no point in the sequence where you can insert a freedom of will that will be in that biological world but not of it.

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I Didn’t Know I Could Feel So Tired - The Atlantic

My daughter’s rare condition means she almost never sleeps through the night. But for years, I blamed my parenting.

I can count on two hands the number of times my daughter has slept through the night since she was born nearly nine years ago. The day I brought her home from the hospital, I laid her down for a nap, tightly swaddled the way I’d been taught. She dozed off quickly, but a few minutes later, she began to cry. I checked her diaper, offered milk, and rocked her, but nothing worked. She cried harder, arching her back and wagging the fragile egg of her head to and fro. This went on for an agonizing 20 minutes, until abruptly her eyes fluttered open and the crying stopped. She yawned, stretched, and then drifted back into a peaceful rest.

An hour later, she stirred again. And then again and again, every hour, for the first three months of her life.

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