Comparative advantage: How to cut your to-do list in half using 1817 economic theory

Tiffany Dufu, an expert on women’s leadership, might have a solution for you

Pressure to stay ahead is a common reason many successful professionals are on the verge of burning out (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

The end of your working day is approaching and you look at all the items still waiting to be struck off your to-do list.

Yet again, you’ve piled so many things on your plate and failed to complete even half the tasks you’d set yourself. Sounds familiar?

Tiffany Dufu, an expert on women’s leadership and the author of the new book Drop the Ball: Achieving more by Doing Less, might have a solution for you.

In her book, to be released on 14 February, Ms Dufu explains how she balances a career with a busy personal life. She urges woman to stop striving for perfection in both their professional and personal lives: do more by expecting less of yourself.

Pressure to stay ahead is a common reason many successful professionals are on the verge of burning out and so – according to Quartz – Ms Dufu recommends using the theory of comparative advantage, a principle developed by the classical economist David Ricardo in 1817 to explain the benefits of free trade.

The economic principle stipulates that countries should specialise in a certain class of products for export and that they should import the rest, even if the country can make all of the products better and faster.

Applied at home this means more will get done when we focus on what we do best and most efficiently, and delegate the rest.

“We live our lives by default, kind of like the ringtone on your iPhone that never changes because it’s working fine,” Ms Dufu told Quartz. She says, however, that if we start to be more selective – choose to intentionally drop some balls if you will—then we can achieve more.

Speaking to Forbes for an article last year, Ms Dufu summed her theory up by saying that “more will get done at home when we focus on our highest and best use and delegate the rest”.

“Until we modernize our expectations about who should do what at home […]we will never see more women at the highest levels of leadership, no matter how many we train or sponsor or vote for”.

On her website, Ms Dufu writes that her aim in life is to “advance women and girls” and says that she strives towards seeing “a world in which women’s gifts and voices are fully harnessed for the benefit of all of us”.

“I’ve experienced firsthand that power comes from having a clear purpose and the passion to pursue it,” she writes. “Brave authenticity, uncompromising integrity, and graceful resilience along the way don’t hurt either.”