Less Stress, More Summer ⇪

Our aim at Athena is to give you your time back so you can spend it in the ways that matter most.

In each issue of our newsletter you’ll get unique delegation tips.

Go. Keep Going.

In 1969, Apollo 11 was minutes from touching down on the moon when an alarm flashed on Neil Armstrong’s control panel.

Mission Control had never seen this error before and neither had the astronauts.

For a few tense moments, the most important mission in human history hung in the balance. The safest choice? Abort.

Thankfully, one person knew exactly what to do.

Jack Garman, a 24-year-old backroom engineer, had spent months preparing for this exact moment. He had memorized every possible computer error, mapped out failure scenarios, and prepped a handwritten cheat sheet of critical alarms.

While the rest of Mission Control scrambled for answers, Garman calmly told flight director Gene Kranz:

“Go. Keep going.”

That single call saved the moon landing, all because Garman had built up the knowledge to make the right decision when it mattered most.

Jack’s expertise with Apollo’s error codes meant he didn’t just recognize the alarm — he knew what did and, in this case, didn’t matter.

Intel’s legendary CEO Andy Grove defined this as Task-Relevant Maturity (TRM) — a person’s experience, knowledge, and skills for a specific task. The higher their TRM, the less direction they need and the more confidently they act.

Your delegation style should consider your assistant’s current TRM. If their TRM is low for this specific task, they need clear instructions, structured feedback, and guardrails from you at first. If it’s high, then they should be making independent decisions with minimal oversight.

Read Athena’s playbook on developing your assistant's TRM here.

Less Stress, More Summer

Every year, I tell myself: This will be the year.

I won’t be the parent frantically Googling “best STEM camps Boston” in mid-May, only to find out everything filled up in February.

Instead I’ll have a system with summer camps booked, packing lists prepped, sunscreen stocked, and the dog sitter arranged so summer feels effortless. Summer will be a long exhale instead of a logistical scramble.

But all of a sudden it’s halfway through the school year and I’m already feeling behind.

This might all sound familiar.

Most parents approach delegation backwards. They wait until they’re drowning in to-dos, then scramble to offload tasks.

It doesn’t have to be this way — being a parent shouldn’t mean you have to drown in logistics.

So I made a list. It’s not just a checklist, but a starting point for building a system for delegating as a parent.

Check out Athena’s mid-school-year delegations for parents here.