When you have a task to do, before you start, ask yourself ‘Who can do this for me?” Delegating or outsourcing work saves you time, leverages other peoples’ skills, and lets you focus on what you do best.
This philosophy and practice has been game changing for me.
In fact, in my practice, my motto was to “Only do what ONLY I can do (and delegate everything else).”
You might want to follow suit.
It’s not always easy to do. We resist delegating things because we believe we do them better, but that’s not always true. I’ve had employees who did things I could never do as quickly, efficiently, or as well.
We also resist because it’s risky to entrust certain tasks to other people. If they make a mistake, we pay the price or we have to spend more of our time fixing their mistake. But while that is generally true, crunch the numbers and you’ll see, in the long run, you come out ahead.
“It’s quicker and easier for me to do it myself.”
Also not true. Yes, we have to invest time training and supervising others; the question is, is that investment worth it? For me, it is almost always more than worth it.
So, that leaves our egos. We don’t like the idea of turning over our work, our important clients, to other people. But you get used to that. Especially when you see how much more profitable and satisfying your work is. And, did I mention how much more profitable it is?
Will it be as profitable for you?
Make a list of the things you do that ONLY you can do and imagine what it would be like if you could spend almost all your time doing just those things.
Yeah. . . it’s worth it.
