Do It or Delegate It?

Regardless of someone’s position, I’ve noticed each and every person neglects to delegate the many simple and time-consuming tasks that are keeping them running from morning until night, while feeling ineffective and highly stressed.

Coach’s Insight: You won’t miss the money, you’ll always miss the time!

Here’s a simple tactic to help you get a handle on your time. It makes perfect sense to pay someone else $15 an hour to cut the grass (wash the car, clean the bathroom, make copies, run errands) if you can’t stand cutting the grass. This is especially true since you make far more than $15 per hour! I have uncovered many high-level CEOs actually making their own copies, sending faxes and going to the supply room for more paper clips!

The solution to making a long-term shift in how you execute your day (especially if, right now, you’re not in agreement with me) is to do some simple math. You make $200 per hour for your services – divided by 60 minutes, making each and every minute worth $3.33. Your assistant makes $18 per hour, or 30 cents per minute. The same five minutes you’re making copies (costing you $16.65) instead of asking your assistant to do it ($1.50) is wasting $15.15. Not a big number, right? This is, I’m sure, the amount of loose change in your car. Stay with me. Waste five minutes every hour, eight hours a day, all year and you’ve wasted …$30,300. Or just about what you’re paying your assistant.What!? You don’t have an assistant? I’ll address that in a future blog …Its your assistant’s job to … um, assist you! If you take a moment to reflect on each and every task you’re doing, I would guess a number of them include activities you could delegate to someone else. I’ve discovered the lion’s share of executives are wasting about 30-40% of their time. How about you?

Spend fifteen minutes making a list of all of the tasks you’re doing that your assistant can do (so you can focus on revenue generation) and immediately begin to delegate those tasks. The question to ask yourself is: “Do I need to do this or can someone else do it?” Trust me, in the long run, you won’t miss the money. You will be so glad you’re no longer doing those tasks -- you’ll be more effective and efficient, which means you’ll make much more money (and have the time to enjoy it!).

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