"How to Use Delegation to Improve Your Time Management | Evan and #AWeberChat"

Gold, Silver, and Diamonds. Question: How much does delegation play in effective time management?

Delegation is outrageously important in effectively managing your time, especially at the entrepreneur level, because you're gonna start doing everything, you know, like you're gonna have to do everything. But as your business grows and as you grow, you know, you're gonna have to be able to, you you know, trust others to do certain things to free you up for doing the things that you're really, really good at. But then also, you know, admitting to yourself that there might be things that other people are better at than you are. You know, so like if you're an entrepreneur that has a blog and you're doing all the graphic design for your blog posts, you might not be a natural born graphic designer. That might not be your strong point. So there's gonna come a point, a juncture where you know, you're making enough to justify delegating that task and paying someone who's a professional graphic designer that is gonna take that time away from you. So you're gonna have that time back. You're gonna be able to allocate it in other parts of your business. But on top of that, they're probably gonna do a better job than you, and that's okay, you know. So like being able to develop trust with other people is important. In terms of getting ahead, if, If you're spending a lot of time doing menial tasks like mowing the lawn, for example, and you know there's a kid two houses down who would love to mow your lawn for $20 a month, be okay with, you know, if you can afford it, relinquishing that $20 a month, and you're gonna get that time back, and you're gonna be able to allocate that time in a smarter way. So there's things with delegation where it's like, There's the day-to-day, you know, the tasks that absolutely have to get done and they can be done by anybody. Be prepared to delegate those. And then there's the tasks that you're doing that you probably shouldn't be doing. Be prepared to admit that to yourself and find the best person for the job and start developing a relationship and developing trust with that person to know that they have, you know, your business and your interests in mind. So that you can pass that off and focus on other aspects of your business.

Yeah, I love it. The order that I like to go in is eliminate, automate, delegate. So chances are there's a lot of things that you're doing already in your business that, that just shouldn't be done. So there's no point giving them to somebody else because it's not high value, high leverage. It should be eliminated from the business completely. Step 2 is automate, where if you can automate an important task, it's way better to do that than to give it to somebody else to do. Right? Because, you know, it'll get done faster. Computers don't make mistakes, they don't take vacations, uh, and, and chances are it's a much more menial task, you know, don't necessarily want to give to a human being. And then the third is delegate. So you eliminate first, automate second, delegate third. And I think understanding that to do something big, you have to build beyond yourself. And a lot of entrepreneurs have a hard time hiring, and especially with their first hires, and make mistakes and often feel like Man, I can't get the right person, so I'm just going to do it all myself. And they retreat inwards. But to do something big, to really have an impact, you have to be able to build a team out because you can't do everything yourself. And understanding, again, back to the understanding point of leverage, you are great at something, you want to focus on that and what you love, and then use people who are better than you, like you said, at other skills to help round out those weaknesses to help you get to where you want to go. Yeah, I mean, I agree. It's a huge factor in effective time management for your business.