Delegate or Automate When You Can

As time is a limited resource, it is not possible for any one human-being to do everything on his or her own... There simply are not enough minutes in the day. Still, since our inability to get it all done alone does not eliminate the never-ending to-do list, it is imperative to come up with alternatives, particularly until cloning becomes feasible for us all or we get our Inspector Gadget tools.

When evaluating your to-do list, consider what requires your unique skill set versus what can be accomplished by someone else; alternatively, consider what can be done more quickly or more thoroughly by another individual. Delegate or automate when you can. In any instance that you delegate or automate the completion of a task, you open up time in your schedule to allocate elsewhere.

Resources for delegation are not limited to existing members of your team. There are endless options for delegating many different types of tasks via Help Tap, Upwork, Fancy Hands, Fiverr, Guru, Moonlighting, Task Rabbit, Thumbtack and 99Designs. These websites include options for all instances of budgetary constraints and many skill sets. Likewise, consider automation as delegating to a computer, and evaluate the many options for automating tasks to best fulfill your needs. If This Then That, Podbox, Zapier and social media managers, like Buffer, Edgar, Falcon Social, Hootsuite, SocialOomph or Sprout Social, are all excellent for automation. Once you know which of your to-do items can be delegated or automated, find the resource to do so.

Delegation and automation are powerful tools for getting more done in less time and, thereby, boosting your productivity while maintaining your peace of mind and not missing opportunities.

What are some tasks on your to-do list that could be delegated or automated? Which of these tools might you be able to implement in your own productivity toolbox?