Tell me how the panelist caused you extra work.Last year I decided I was spending too much time doing jobs because I could do them, not because they were an essential part of my job. (My friend Myke Hurley would, in the spirit of his podcast Cortex, call this my “Year of Essentials.”)

So I resolved to, among other things, stop editing weekly episodes of The Incomparable. Since 2010, I’ve spent most Saturday mornings editing that podcast. And while I enjoy having complete editorial control and using that regular editing session to try out new techniques, it’s not an essential part of my life and my friend Steven Schapansky can edit it just fine.

But giving up editing meant that I’d need to relay any issues that need to be smoothed out in editing to Steven—and that was a problem. I’d file mental notes about stumbles, interruptions, digressions and the like, and then play them back when I was editing the podcast. When someone swore, I’d switch to the Finder, make a new folder, and give that folder a name like “poop1 23 min”.

This is an untenable situation if I’m going to hand over editing duties, so I needed to resolve to make a change.…