You know you should.
You want to.
Desperately even.
You know things would be so much better if you could do it.
What am I talking about?
Delegating.
Sound familiar?
You know your life would be sweeter, easier, and more efficient, and you’d probably be more effective if you could delegate more, but you’re stuck and stumped with where to start.
Need a stark incentive?
The buck stops here.
I’m sharing the benefits of delegating (in case you need some more convincing), and how to get started with the 5 T’s. In next week’s post, I’ll share more tips.
Dina Smith, of Cognitas, a coaching company, in an article in Business Spotlight, says to “quantify the dollar value of your time and determine what it costs you to do the task yourself….. Consider the costs one or three years from now if you don’t change.”
If that seems a bit too calculated, think of the overall benefits of delegating. You’ll:
- Seriously impress yourself
- Have more time (to fill or, gasp, leave, empty!)
- Get the benefit of someone’s perspective and input on your work
- Have more headspace to focus on the things you really want, need, and love to do.
“Okay, okay,” you may be mumbling to yourself, “But I don’t know where to start.”
I’ve got you. Here’s your starting point.
In the same article, Jenny Blake, author of “Pivot: The Only Move that Matters is Your Next One,” explains that there are five types of tasks to hand over.
Read through the five with pen and paper or an electronic note on hand to brainstorm which specific tasks you could start delegating in each of the categories.
I’ve given you an example of each category.
Notice that delegation doesn’t always have to be to a person; you can ‘delegate’ tasks to tech tools.
Let’s dig into five types of tasks to delegate.
1. Tiny
- Wee, little tasks have a nasty habit of adding up into big time suckers.
- Figure out what tiny tasks are eating into your time and strategize how you can delegate them.
- Example: I run a monthly Learning and Development Roundtable, which has a whole long list of regular, repeating tasks that I share with my Virtual Assistant team. The tasks are in a checklist, and each month I copy the list over and start afresh. I was spending a small amount of time unchecking the copied and pasted list, until I, you guessed it, added that tiny task to the VA tasks.
2. Tedious
- Pardon the yawn, toss the tedious; these are the ones that make your brain go numb with boredom.
- Example: I write a weekly article (this is an example) that I share on LinkedIn and Facebook. I love writing the article, but not so much the posts to share it. It’s tedious. Enter ChatGPT, which, after a lot of prompt testing, comes up with the tags to put alongside it.
3. Time-consuming
- Tasks that suck your time and are black hole heralders fit here.
- You know, the ones that you swear will only take about 30 minutes, and hours later, you’re still slogging away.
- Example: I’m smack in the middle of reviewing my social media strategy. It’s a monster task, and one that can easily overwhelm me, not to mention be super uber duper time-consuming. I’ve delegated, if you will, to collaborating with the AI tool called Claude. It’s actually fun now and saving oodles of time.
4. Teachable
- Tasks that you can teach someone else to do fall into this category.
- Example: I’ve been working with a Virtual Assistant since 2010. As a solo-entrepreneur, it’s been a lifesaver.
- And a huge thing that’s made it possible is my SOP’s (sanity optimization plan a.k.a. my Standard Operating Procedures).
- My wee business has an SOP that is 100+ pages long. And any time there are some errors or misunderstandings, the VA adds comments to the document to capture the learning. Voilá eminently teachable
5. Terrible
- These are the tasks that you, pardon my French, suck at.
- Example: I get a bee sting on my soul when I know I have some kind of learning that I want to share, but it’s taking me too long to find it.
- Enter ‘delegating’ to the tech tools of bookmarking on my browser and Flycut, my clipboard manager.
- Oh, the sweet siren song of ease and efficiency fills my heart, each of the 30+ times I use them every day.
You’ve got important work to do, including resting and rejuvenating in these troubled times.
Time is one of the most valuable resources at your fingertips. So make some time to prioritize how you spend your time and how you can delegate based on the five categories: tasks that are tiny, ridiculous, time-consuming, teachable, and/or you’re terrible at.
You’ll thank yourself later, while you enjoy your freed-up time.
Now go on and learn, laugh, and lead
Learn
- Again, read through the five categories of types of tasks to delegate with pen and paper or an electronic note on hand to brainstorm which specific tasks you could start delegating in each of the categories – tiny, tedious, time-consuming, teachable, and terrible.
Laugh
- Sweet surrender to the bliss of delegation isn’t that far away. Take me away, Calgon!
Lead
- Share the 5 T’s (tiny, tedious, time-consuming, teachable, and terrible) with a friend and/or colleague and work on them together.
P.S.
- The next Learning and Development Roundtable (May 21) is “Working with all kinds of people (yes, even the difficult ones): Simple skills for real-world teams.” Grab your free spot here (which means you’ll automatically become a member of the Roundtable and get free access to 13+ years of Roundtable resources).
- Interested in amping up your public speaking skills – for UN staff only? Check out the online workshop I’m teaching on May 20 and 21. More info, including how to register.
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