How to use delegation to take some of that pressure off yourself...
Posted on 11th November 2022 at 15:52
Being able to delegate tasks that are holding you back and draining your time and energy is no longer a luxury exclusively available to those with a huge team behind them. No matter what the size operation you run or scale of business you have, delegation is one of the most effective ways to free up some time and headspace to focus on what's most important to you.
What is delegation?
Delegation is the act of handing over all of those niggly jobs that:
a) You’re struggling to squeeze into your day.
b) You don’t enjoy doing so you keep pushing them further and further down your to do list.
c) Drain your energy and leave you feeling tired and unproductive afterwards.
For a lot of people, identifying these jobs is an easy task, but allowing yourself to let go and delegate them to someone else proves far more difficult. There seems to be a million and one ways to talk ourselves out of it…
“What if they don’t do the job as well as I can?”
“What if they just don’t get my business and what I’m trying to achieve?”
“In the time it’ll take me to explain how to do this job to someone, I could have done it myself - twice!”
“I’ve managed this long…”
When we hold onto these tasks though, we run the risk of overloading ourselves and setting ourselves on a path to burnout. We also often lose precious time we could have been spending on the important tasks that will really get us closer to our dream personal or career goals.
So how can delegating even a couple of tasks help?
Once you’ve finished reading this part of the blog, I’d like you to take a minute to close your eyes, and imagine yourself six months from now. You’ve handed over all of those tasks that you didn’t enjoy, that were draining your time and were leaving you de-energized.
How are you spending that extra time or making use of that extra headspace?
Maybe you finally have your weekends and evenings back to spend with friends and family. Or you are now spending more time actually focussed on looking after yourself, growing in yourself or your business or feeling more balanced and have more of a ‘stepped back’ perspective.
How does that make you feel?
Really focus on how much lighter and happier it makes you feel. This feeling is what you want to be working towards.
How to identify which tasks to delegate…
Delegating isn’t something you have to dive head first into. In fact, most people start by dipping their toes in the water and handing over one or two things until they feel confident enough to take that next step.
Identifying which tasks to start with can feel a bit daunting at first, but here is the best way I have found to begin.
Choose a day in the week and make a list of every single task you do that day. From sieving through your emails to sending invoices, talking to clients, doing the bookkeeping and even doing the hoovering in your lunch break. I find it’s best to note down these tasks throughout the day rather than trying to remember all the little details one evening.
Once you’ve got your list, get out a highlighter or different colour pen and highlight all of the tasks that, if you're completely honest with yourself, someone else could (in an ideal world) be doing. Be honest with yourself. You don’t have to hand over everything in one go, so make sure to include everything that you could delegate to someone else.
Take a look at your list of highlighted tasks and prioritise one or two to get started with. For me, this involved hiring a virtual assistant for a few hours a week to help in my business and asking a cleaning lady to pop over fortnightly to help out around the house. Before these felt like luxuries, but now they have become investments in myself to free up my headspace to focus on the things that are most important to me.
The most important part of this process though is that you trust the person you choose to work with. If you don’t already have someone in mind then talk to the people around you and find out who they use or have heard great things about.
If you’re feeling like you’re on the course to burnout and you would like some help identifying the best systems and processes to put in place to free up your headspace, arrange a completely free call with us today. We’d love to hear from you.
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