Life & Wisdom Quote by Agatha Christie

Efficiency, in Agatha Christie’s hands, is never just about saving time; it’s about controlling the room. “Never do anything yourself that others can do for you” reads like a brisk household maxim, but its bite comes from how coolly it frames delegation as a kind of power literacy. It’s the voice of someone who understands systems: who does the work, who gets credit, who takes the risk, who becomes invisible.

Christie wrote in a world thick with servants, secretaries, porters, nurses, and all the quiet labor that made middle- and upper-class life run smoothly. The line carries that social reality without apologizing for it. “Others” isn’t abstract. It’s a class of people, an infrastructure. The subtext is slightly chilling: competence isn’t merely a personal virtue; it’s something you can outsource, the way you outsource mess. It also hints at gendered survival. For a woman building a serious career in the early 20th century, refusing unnecessary tasks isn’t laziness; it’s boundary-setting in a culture eager to hand women the unpaid, unending admin of life.

There’s a Christie-esque irony here, too. Her novels are built on the idea that what looks like minor, delegated work - tidying, serving tea, running errands - is exactly where motives and secrets hide. The maxim flatters the delegator, but Christie’s fiction keeps whispering a warning: when you let others do everything, you also let them see everything. Delegation buys freedom; it can also buy you blind spots.