We often overcommit ourselves to activities that don’t bring us closer to our goals or vision of success. Deciding what to delegate is as easy as recognizing the activities that are not maximizing our success. Stop committing to and engaging in those activities. Instead, start delegating them!
What Is Holding You Back From Delegating?
You may believe it’s more cost-effective to complete tasks yourself. That’s not always the case. You need to consider not only the monetary cost but also the opportunity cost.
According to Jeff Shore, “Too many business owners impede their revenue growth doing everything just to save a few bucks.”
Or, you might think you’re the only person qualified to do the work. One of my clients, Heather Nunez, said her motto for delegating is “Move it from my To-Do List to their To-Learn List.” I think that’s brilliant.
The truth is, for you to invest your best time into your best activities, you have to invest in others.
What To Delegate
Delegating tasks empowers others and gives them chances to learn. Tasks that feel like burdens to you, could feel like blessings to them. What you’re delegating may not be your best activities, but may be theirs.
Let’s say you know you don’t lead meetings efficiently. You struggle to start and end meetings on time and have a hard time keeping them focused. Your greatest contribution to meetings then maybe your expertise and experience alone. Delegate someone else to facilitate meetings if that is their strength. By minimizing your weaknesses, you’ll be able to capitalize on your strengths.
Even if you’re more than capable of handling certain tasks, quite often you should delegate them anyway. Time is a finite resource and yours should be spent accomplishing your highest value tasks. If you are kept busy by tasks that are not bringing you closer to achieving your goals, you should delegate them. Tasks possibly worth delegating fall into two categories: Specialized and Unskilled.
Specialized Tasks
Specialized tasks require education-based knowledge or involve a unique skill set.
Unskilled Tasks
Unskilled tasks can generally be completed by anyone for a low wage.
Many times you find yourself facing one-time projects that need to be completed. These are excellent opportunities to delegate to either skilled or unskilled labor who can complete the tasks effectively for the right price. Project-based tasks include website development, logo design, mailers, or database clean-up to name a few.
Decide what to delegate so you can focus on your highest value activities. Time spent doing tasks that can be completed by others is wasting valuable time that should be spent working toward achieving your goals and vision of success. Delegating is essential to increasing your productivity because it frees up your best time for your best activities.
