Achieve Time Saving by Delegating Some of Your Work

This article shows how delegating some of your work can produce substantial time saving results. By having others do the grunt work, you are free to use your valuable time for more important matters. For example, you could determine how to grow your company and then let others do most of the actual work.

Time saving from delegating work

You only have so much time in life to accomplish your goals. But you can leverage this irreplaceable resource by delegating some of your work to others. Almost everyone who has achieved success in life used this time saving method. The remainder of this article will show you how to use this method and overcome typical objections to its use.

Overcoming the "I can do it better" attitude

Some people fail to use delegation because they believe they can do their work better than anyone else. This is probably true. However, the real choice is between (A) doing a limited amount of work that is "perfect" or (B) doing a large amount of work that is "good enough." By choosing appropriate helpers and supervising their work, you can achieve the results under "B" above. Most of the time achieving massive results that are good enough will bring you success.

Deciding what to delegate

Let's say you have three main uses for your time, as follows:

1. Deciding what to do
2. Deciding how to do it
3. Doing it

The most effective use of your time is deciding what to do. Thus you can decide what you want from life and then you can decide what goals to pursue to achieve your desired results.

Another effective use of your time, to a certain extent, is deciding how to do a particular task. This is where you can decide whether to use delegation for a certain task. Part of this decision-making process is deciding the quality needed for the various components of the task. For those few components that require the highest quality you might want to do the work yourself. Or you might have your best qualified helper do the work.

The least effective use of your time, in most cases, is doing the grunt work. This work has to be done of course, but the results usually only need to be good enough. This is where time saving from delegation comes into play.

Avoiding the hazards of delegation

There are two main hazards from delegating work. The first hazard is choosing the wrong helper for a component of a task or failing to sufficiently supervise this helper. Either way the work may not be good enough. You can overcome this hazard by gaining experience through trial and error. So when first using delegation only use it for grunt work that is easy to accomplish and that is not critical to achieving the desired results.

The second hazard is developing helpers who might decide to leave and start their own business. You can overcome this hazard by assigning helpers to only certain areas of your business. For example if a critical aspect of your business is obtaining customers or estimating the cost for a job, then never use helpers in these areas.

Choosing the best helpers

The best helpers are those people who are careful, dependable, loyal, and skilled in relevant activities. Thus they may require supervision but not much training. The types of helpers to avoid are those who don't take orders, think they already know everything, or are always complaining about something.

Final thoughts

So if you feel overburdened by having too many things to do and you have access to helpers, you might try delegating some of your work. This can be a great time saving method. However, it usually requires a certain amount of trial and error to use it effectively, at least at first.