I am convinced that you have great capacities but, also, that your time is limited. When the amount of work "exceeds" you, delegating tasks becomes a necessity.
I know that it is not easy and that, many times, the lack of confidence encourages us to face everything alone. I think we are all prepared to do it; only that we must exercise and develop the capacity and the art of delegating.
Once you acquire the practice, I assure you that your day will be simpler, more efficient and you will be able to focus on what is really important: your professional growth.
What tasks should not delegate:
To begin with, it is important that you distinguish what you cannot delegate. We are going to do a review of the things that you should do on your own, either by pleasure or by necessity. I am referring to those activities that constitute the heart of the business, those that require the knowledge and skills that only you possess.
For example: if you are a Leadership Coach and you want to create a digital product to reach more people through the internet, you may have to record videos, audios and write about the theme that you are going to develop in the products you will create.
This will require your skills and the knowledge that constitutes your specialty. The content of the course, the videos, your audios, etc. They will be your main responsibility and you should focus on this, and surely you will be happy to do it !!.. as long as you delegate the rest of the tasks to an ideal Virtual Assistant for you. Why do I say this? Because if in addition to preparing your product info, you also allow your time to be demanded by:
- respond to the emails that arrive from your sites, manage your blogs, prepare valuable material to share on social networks, various administrative tasks, or worse, perhaps you have learned to do everything yourself during these years and it is likely that you are used to taking care of website maintenance tasks, graphic design and even some programming so as not to depend on them but… is that your specialty?
Unless it is, you are not making good use of your time.
Most likely, at this moment more than 50% of the tasks you are doing are not the heart of your business or your specialty (… and I'm being very optimistic about the percentage).
What is the danger of continuing to do things this way? Well, most likely this dispersion will end up wearing you out and taking you away from your most important goal, the one that will generate more value for your business and more income.
To better organize myself, and detect what to delegate and what not, I usually use a very practical online application that I like for its simplicity. SIMPLEGTD www.simplegtd.com. This application allows you to create "contexts", where actions are listed, you can create contexts to highlight the most important tasks of the day and another to record those that can be delegated. In an upcoming video I'll show you how to use simplegtd to detect which tasks to delegate.
Maybe you should spend a little time training your Virtual Assistant in some tasks that you handled before and tell him what your goals are. The rest will be pure profit. Just think how much she could do for you.
Responding to emails from clients and prospects? Manage your blog? Internet searches for different and varied objectives? Centralize and coordinate all the work commissioned from suppliers? … A big difference to be able to deal with one person to having to deal with 3, or 5 or more.
Surely you are taking care of a lot of things that, at this point in your career, it is no longer appropriate for you to do.
What tasks IF you should delegate. Exercise to detect them:
- Make a list of all the things you do in the day. Collect that information over the course of a week into a text file. Separate from that list all the tasks you want to focus on, those that you want to do yourself because you like them, because they are part of your specialty. Set them aside. I assure you that once you do that, there will be many things on the list. What to do with them? Are you still doing them or do you delegate them? Delegate the rest of the tasks, of course!
Hmm, I know, at first it can be a bit scary to give that responsibility (s) to someone else, especially if delegating that task requires a bit of training or worse, providing confidential information, such as usernames and passwords, and others Similar "obstacles".
Well, do not be afraid, once you find a professional and trustworthy VA, relax and leave everything in her hands, she will guide you and request what she needs to do the job. In most cases the VA will be trained to do almost everything you do yourself today, perhaps even better than you.
But if the task that you are going to delegate requires your training because, to mention an example, you have to handle an application that your VA never handled, well:
to. you can meet her in an online conference room to show her how it's done, (Adobe ConnectNow has a desktop sharing feature and it's free) or
b. you record a video tutorial for him the next time you find yourself doing your homework (you will do a 2 × 1). GoView is a free and very good application to record your computer screen. You can also use this application that I discovered recently through one of my virtual assistance clients: Jing or Jing Pro. Today I had the opportunity to try it (you can see the video here) and I can recommend it to you with confidence. It allows you to record videos and publish them to be shared with the people you want, in two simple steps
c. You will build a tutorial in a text file or by email. The method you prefer, the one you like the most and the most practical you find. (I usually use the videos, and many times when I have to give my "feedback" on a job and I don't have time - or desire - to write long emails, I simply record a "voice note" and send it by email).
Once this is done, you can focus on yours. What a relief!!! True? This is how I felt when I began to delegate more and more things to my VA. My life completely changed, professionally and personally too! Being an entrepreneur woman and a housewife, the mother of a 3-year-old girl and with another baby on the way, imagine that I have had no alternative but to become an “expert” in detecting tasks to delegate.
This simple exercise that I just mentioned to you, combined with the method that I will share soon in a video, are helping me to advance in other projects that were abandoned due to lack of time.
Of course, I have not "completely ignored" the tasks that I delegated, because I want to be aware of the things that happen in my business and it would also be a bit childish to think that my VA will read my mind and do things as they are. I would. This is a team effort, delegating to a VA will give you time back but it is necessary to interact with it to coordinate the work, review them when necessary, give your "ok", and do "your part" when your VA has already done his to that the work can move forward and be completed.
So now your task will be mainly "Coordinate" and your VA will take care of "executing".
You will find free time that you will want to use for the growth of your business, and also why not, for your personal development. Seize it!
Set your goals, dare to dream of the moment when you can fully focus on them while your right hand, your Virtual Assistant and their team, take care of the rest.
You will dedicate yourself to being more productive, to face projects that interest you… and to increase your income!
Now please tell me and share your comments with others at the end of this post:
What things would you do if you had more free time?
What chores would you get rid of if you could?
What is the most important goal for your business that you would like to achieve in 2010?
