Well, delegate it? Sure!
Delegating is Fun
Delegating is one way to increase your time efficiency. If you give some of your workloads to someone else, then your burden is reduced, and you are free to concentrate on other tasks.
Simple, no?
The process of delegating involves;
- identifying tasks you alone don’t have to do
- finding the best person who could do it
- making clear what needs to be done
- keeping track of their progression
We consistently hear from experts to prioritize our tasks and spend our time on only the most important things.
Less important things can be delegated (ouch) or even set aside (oh no, no, no!)
Peter Drucker, a time management expert, said, “First things first; second things, not at all.”
The author of the third habit of highly effective people says: “Put first things first.”
You should be spending your time on the most important things that require your attention and delegating things that are not your top priority. Isn’t it obvious?
One would like to think procrastinators would leap at the chance to lessen their work. Makes sense, Right?
Here's the thing, when people are asked to think specifically of a project they could give away, they usually object rather than feel relieved. Does not make sense, but why?
Here are some reasons why people don’t delegate:
- I should be able to do it all myself: Perhaps in your pursuit of perfection, you believe you should never have to ask for help. So you interpret delegating to mean that you have failed to meet your responsibility or that you are less competent.
- I thought of hiring someone to clean my house while I was busy but I know my friends and women at work who are organized enough to do it all, why can't I? We don’t think delegating is a failure. It’s a skill. The real failure lies in stubbornly holding on to every item in your life, which results in only half of them getting done.
- I’m the only one who can do this right: This is another perfectionistic pitfall. Although there may be some things that you—and only you—can do, is that true of everything on your list of unfinished chores? Even if someone else wouldn’t do it quite your way, it would be better to have it done differently than to leave it undone altogether. If you delegate, you will not have total control. You may have to stand that loss for the sake of accomplishment.
- Delegating is a cop-out: You may feel too guilty to ask for help. You may believe that because you’ve been Very Bad, you now have to be Very Good to make up for it. You may feel that you don’t deserve to be helped, so you can’t delegate or rely on others. Refusing help is a good way to procrastinate yourself into martyrdom.
- I was the only person on the team who wasn’t prepared for the 6, I felt so awful that I wouldn’t talk to anyone about it. They did their work; why should they have to help me with mine? I wanted to be especially ready the next time, but I wasn’t, so I didn’t go to the meeting. Then I left the job; This stoic and self-punitive approach does not increase your productivity; it only increases the pressure and, thus, your suffering. Adding pressure is adding problems.
- I might delegate the wrong thing to the wrong individual: Even if you agree in principle that there are some matters you could shift to someone else, you may procrastinate in deciding what to delegate and to whom. It’s best to delegate to someone who can help you, who doesn’t hold a grudge against you, and who isn’t a procrastinator or a perfectionist. It also helps to release tasks that don’t require your constant supervision, or that you’ve defeated the purpose. But if you assume there is one right way to delegate, you will be unable to decide while you consider every possible angle, looking for the perfect solution. Anything you pass along will lighten your load, whether it’s mundane or important.
- I’d run out of distractions: Imagine yourself getting help with many of the tasks that now bog you down. What then Without the pressure of all those urgent demands, you’d have less standing between you and the really important things you’ve been avoiding. You’d be brought face-to-face with your fears.
So if you can pare down your list of things to do, be forewarned that you may at first feel more anxiety than relief.
But if you persevere, and if you confront and address your underlying fears, relief will probably come later.
