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?

Do You Practice Single-Tasking or Prefer Multi-Tasking?

 Today’s business professionals are expected to wear more hats than years before, pushing themselves to get more done in less time, and that can make it appealing to multi-task. Unfortunately, in reality, multi-tasking has the opposite effect on one’s productivity, minimizing outputs and increasing stress. It’s a lose-lose situation!

Instead, let us take time to celebrate today’s Single Tasking Day. 

While projects are a conglomeration of different tasks, if you break projects down into individual tasks and create a list of what tasks need to be done, you can work your way down the list, one by one by one. Start each task with a verb that drives action, assign a “when” for each “what” to be accomplished and set a timer for how long you can block out distractions to focus your efforts on each of those tasks.

Now, don’t get me wrong… I’m not discounting the value of simul-tasking, but that is very different from multi-tasking. Whereas multi-tasking involves bouncing between two tasks that require thought and focus, simul-tasking involves pairing any activity that requires thought (like reading your daily feed of blog posts) with an activity that can be done mostly automatically (like walking on a treadmill). Simul-tasking can help mark two things off your to-do list at once; however, it does require just the right pairing of activities, and it’s not always possible to find tasks that can be done without thinking.

As you are working on single tasking, consider the interruptions you face in a typical workday, whether that’s emails, calls, texts, folks stopping by your office, pings or dings of notifications and more. If you are accustomed to responding immediately to each of those emails, calls, texts, visitors and notifications, consider this: Those folks reaching out to you don’t know if you are sitting at your desk or in a meeting; if you block off a bit of time to really focus on the task at hand and respond to those needing your attention once you are done, those folks will assume you’ve been in a meeting, you get more accomplished in less time and you no longer have that task hanging over your head as an item you must do.

Take action and attempt single tasking this week. Then, let me know how it works for you. I’d love to hear your successes or what you found most challenging about it!