> Yes, you could probably get it done better and sooner
This is a really hard one for me when under pressure: knowing that I can do it myself correctly in about an hour, but giving to to someone else who will probably take several iterations before it's right, resulting in a week or so turnaround and probably 8 hours of work. Or worse, half a week and it never being "right" because we just don't have time.
I've struggled with this a bit as a new manager, and eventually came to the realization that I was so afraid of micromanaging that I was letting people struggle and fail more than I needed to, by not giving them detailed enough instructions.
If you could do the task yourself in an hour, then you could also probably give very detailed instructions in 45 minutes (which ends up with a written plan in a google doc or similar spelling out every detail of how it's going to be done), or even pair on it to get them started.
Maybe you haven't saved any time over doing it yourself (maybe it's even taken MORE of your time!), but you've ensured the thing got done right, and you've also helped level up the skills of the person who did it, so that next time they'll be more capable of taking on a similar task alone.
This is a really hard one for me when under pressure: knowing that I can do it myself correctly in about an hour, but giving to to someone else who will probably take several iterations before it's right, resulting in a week or so turnaround and probably 8 hours of work. Or worse, half a week and it never being "right" because we just don't have time.