Time Management Tips – Do, Delegate or Dump

What Are You Willing to Do?

Let’s face it, running a successful business takes effort and a lot of hard work (although probably no more than running an unsuccessful business or hobby!) Running a home and a career also takes effort. And I know that many of you are willing to work hard to make a success of your business, your career and your life. But here’s what I see and hear on a regular basis

1.Women who feel the need to do it all themselves – the marketing, the sales, the delivery, the follow up, the admin, the book-keeping, the finances, in fact all the work that needs doing in their business.

2.Women who have additional household and family commitments they take responsibility for on top of their work, who then feel guilty when things slip.

Although it’s admirable and natural to want to do your best for yourself, your business, and your loved ones, what it often means, in addition to your business not growing or being as profitable as you want, is that you’re exhausted, and frustrated when quite literally there aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything you want to do! And that’s because you’re trying to do too much, and when you’re trying to do everything and no-thing seems to be working, it can be easy to lose sight of why you’re actually doing what you’re doing in the first place!

Do you ever feel like this?

Like you’ve too much to do? Like - what’s the point? Nothing seems to be working anyway? Like you’re not appreciated?

If so, you need to get clear and do something different. Here are 2 tips to help you.

Tip #1

Ask yourself why am I doing all of this? Don’t do this on a superficial level, but really ask yourself and write down your answer.

Now ask yourself why is that important to me?

Keep asking this question and writing down your answer until you can’t come up with anything else, and until you get to the real reason. There should be an emotional hit at this point, a powerful feeling that you get. This is your big why.

Tip #2

Take a look at your ‘to-do’ list and ask yourself what absolutely must be done? Be honest with yourself here, because you’ll probably find that there are lots of non-income generating things on your business list and non-critical items on your personal list. We’re looking for essential not desirable items at this stage.

Now ask what must be done by me? Then use the 3 Ds – Do, Delegate or Dump! It’s important to resist the temptation to focus on the cost of getting someone else to do the work, and to focus instead of the cost of not i.e. the money you’re losing in the business because you’re not focusing on what will bring in the income. Or the physical and emotional cost of lost time with your family or children. Really examine which is costing you more and decide to find a way to delegate or just dump.

Here’s why it’s important to get clear on and connect to your ‘big why’ – because this will provide your real motivation to do what it takes. When you tap into this regularly it will counter any thoughts and feelings of overwhelm or pointlessness.

And when you really examine what you’re doing and make decisions about what to do yourself, what to delegate and what to stop doing altogether (or at least for the time being) this frees you up. It gives you the physical, emotional and head space to focus your attention and be more productive. And the added benefit of delegating is that you form a team – a team of people all pulling together to get you exactly what you want.

Powerful stuff don’t you agree?

So what are you willing to do to really get the life and business of your dreams?