Why I’ve Become More Mindful About What I Delegate

It’s convenient to outsource work but often more satisfying to roll up

your sleeves to do it yourself.

Moshe Bar’s family in the treehouse they builttogether. PHOTO: MOSHE BAR

Of everything I have done, little has brought me as much joy as building a

treehouse for my children around 15 years ago. Armed with power tools and two left hands, I spent about a year turning a collection of crooked beams into an enduring structure. We all loved it so dearly that my now 20-something kids and I decided to tattoo its image on our skin.

I’ve spent some time trying to figure out why this labor-intensive project

brought me so much satisfaction.

The treehouse itself was great fun, but the process of creating it, demanding as it was, invigorated me and lifted my spirits in ways I did not expect.

I learned that I was in good company. Psychological studies consistently show

that people value what they have worked for. This phenomenon is called the

“IKEA effect,” named for the prideful pleasure people feel when they assemble

the Swedish manufacturer’s flat-pack products themselves.

In one particularly amusing study from 2011, social psychologists at Harvard

Business School found that people prized Lego constructions they built

themselves over identical pre-assembled models. The phenomenon is apparently

not exclusive to humans. Scientists have observed that rats and starlings

consistently prefer the food that they worked to get over the same food received

without effort.

I thought of these studies after a recent family cooking class. The recipes were

for simple ramen and gyoza, but my 13-year-old daughter declared that the meal

was the most delicious she had ever tasted. Our investment in every detail of the

process clearly elevated the experience.

Modern life often prizes prepackaged conveniences. We buy ready-made

products, eat frozen pizzas and replace what’s broken instead of fixing it. The

more successful we become, the more likely we are to outsource jobs that we

might have once done ourselves. Yet the effort of involvement is what gives

meaning to so much of life.

I had to be reminded of this recently. Last year I began to notice that though I

had been productively busy, I wasn’t as excited as I used to be. Not bored, not

tired, but a spark I’d long enjoyed was gone. My youngest daughter noted, with

incisive candor, that my “wow” wasn’t as loud as it had been. She was right.

Ever the scientist, I started probing my routines and habits, searching for what

might be missing in my life. The insight came, unexpectedly, during a Talmud

study session in November with my beloved teacher, Rabbi Shabtai Rappoport.

People are more attached to the furniture they assembled for themselves, a phenomenon known as the 'IKEA Effect'. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

We were discussing the concept of shlichut—delegation—in Jewish law, which

permits certain commandments to be performed by a proxy. For instance, you can appoint someone to make a charitable donation or officiate at a wedding on your behalf. Other commandments, such as praying or visiting a sick friend, must be performed firsthand. The distinction typically depends on the nature of the task. When the outcome is what matters, delegation is acceptable, but when the experience itself is important, you should do it yourself.

One needn’t be a Talmudic scholar—or a patron of IKEA—to draw inspiration

from these rules. What I had been missing wasn’t success, leisure or even

purpose. What I lacked was being more involved in the process.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve found myself delegating more of the lab-work I oversee,

focusing more on the big picture. Similarly I let others tutor my kids and tend to

my little garden. My distance from the granular details of my life and work was

by design, but it seems to have left me feeling disconnected from it all.

Participation is a form of commitment, and commitment allows for a richer

experience.

A recent family trip to Japan for my birthday confirmed this theory. The older

children and their mother took upon themselves the burden of planning, sparing

me weeks of logistical headaches. The vacation was fabulous, but I sensed my

family enjoyed the results even more than I did. My lack of involvement rendered

me a guest rather than an agent, and who wants to be a guest in their own life?

The connection between actions and feelings—between engagement and

fulfillment—can be seen in a relatively new and popular treatment for

depression called behavioral activation (BA). Beyond low mood, one of the most

challenging symptoms of depression is anhedonia, a diminished capacity to

enjoy ordinary activities, which often leads to avoidance and withdrawal.

Studies show that encouraging patients to get up and do the things they used to

enjoy, such as cooking or meeting with friends, can be just as effective as talk

therapy in boosting moods and well-being. BA works because it helps patients

override their avoidance and regain a sense of control over their lives. Activity is

also often easier to manage than analysis.

A board game created by Bar and his daughter. PHOTO: MOSHE BAR

Staying active and involved isn’t only the best way to enjoy life but also to prolong it. This goes beyond the well-known effects of exercise on physical and

mental health. Being involved in purposeful activities that require mental engagement, such as hobbies, social interactions and volunteering, has been shown to improve resilience and reduce dementia.

Brain research confirms that cognitive involvement in process-based activities

increases brain plasticity, enriches connections between neurons and lowers

neurodegeneration. This helps explain why retirees who stop working but don’t

fill their days with other demanding activities experience an especially steep

cognitive decline.

Although this insight hasn’t quite nudged me to start washing my own car,

cooking all my meals or running all the experiments in my lab, I am now more

mindful about what I delegate. I hold on to the projects for which experiencing

the process matters.

As a crafts project on a rainy day, my daughter and I invented a board game. It

isn’t the most exciting game or the most sophisticated. It is honestly a little silly,

but we play it far more often than the ones that came shrink-wrapped from a

store.

Pleasure and meaning, it seems, aren’t necessarily about ease. There is delight in

involvement, in details, in rolling up our sleeves and making what we want

happen for ourselves.

Moshe Bar is a neuroscientist at Bar-Ilan University in Israel and at

Massachusetts General Hospital and the chief scientific officer at Hedonia.