Since the inception of Reven Concepts, I have been reminded that I cannot do everything alone. I try each day, but it is not sustainable in the long run. When I try to do it all myself, I frequently become less efficient and teeter on the edge of burnout. I knew there had to be another way to do things, and that was when I realized I had to empty my plate. I had to begin to take the steps necessary to get my mind back into alignment with my purpose and passion and have other people do the tasks that do not need my direct touch. Today, I will break down the delegation process and the benefit you will gain from delegating any non-essential task.

The Steps To Delegation

1. Do you enjoy what you are doing?
2. Do you have time to keep doing what you do?
3. What do you give up if you keep your current workload?
4. Can someone else do it better than you?
5. Zone of Genius

Step 1. The Joy Aspect

Enjoying the work you do should be the basis for delegation. Many business professionals have a heavy workload filled with tasks they do not enjoy doing. I know firsthand how soulless some tasks can be, but they must be done. At the start of Reven Concepts, I felt I had to do everything myself. I soon realized how quickly burnout would set in if I were doing tasks I did not enjoy. For example, I like the idea of social media, but I cannot stand to be on there for endless hours making comments and posting posts. I love creating content but would give up all the backstage stuff.

Asking yourself what you love about your work is an important question. Using me as an example again, I enjoy writing, even though some days it can feel tedious. My mind becomes foggy if I do not write for an extended period. Writing helps to keep me alive, and I even implement it in my coaching practice with my clients. I have found it to be extremely powerful and uplifting. Though there might come the point in my life where I will seek others to create content for me, I now enjoy it too much to give up.

Another thing I love is having my podcast, Coaching In Session. I wish I could say that I knew what I was doing when I started the podcast, but I had no idea. It was a learning process, and it has stretched me as a person and helped further my coaching career more than I could have imagined. I went from the idea of wanting to have a podcast, to not knowing how to start one, to looking for people to start a podcast with, to me saying that I would create a podcast alone because I have a message that must be shared with the world.

Writing, my podcast, and coaching are all aspects I love when it comes to the work I do. Though it might not seem like much of a text, it is a FULL workload that requires many aspects of mindset. I have to ensure that I am implementing healthy eating, sleeping, and working out. I also have to ensure that I am spending enough family time because I know how valuable that is at the end of our journey in life. There are many things we can love about the work we do, but you have to make sure that you can limit that list to at least three main ones you focus on.

Step 2. Timing

Times can appear to be fleeting in many cases. The truth is we all have the same 24 hours in a day. However, some factors separate highly successful people from the average joes of the world. Here at Reven Concepts, we help people find the value in habits and how to manage better because if they can at least do that, they can create more opportunities for them later in life. Many people misplace or rather misuse their 24 hours a day. 

One thing I do with most of my clients is to have them write out their 24 hours. Once we have a template to go off of, we can begin to adjust things to their proper order. For example, if they want to be more healthy, we look at their schedule to see where we can add time to be more conscious about health. This can include exercise, meal prep, or meditation. We are looking to replace a current block of time with something you would rather be doing.

People often have time to do the things that matter but will keep the stuff on their plate that do not. For example, I could have kept 2 hours of my day working on social media, but I decided to delegate that process because I knew it could be done by someone else, and I do not love to do it. I created two more hours in my day even though I still have the same 24 hours. I have learned that delegating work and assignments helps me create more time to do the work I truly want.

Step 3. What do you lose, and what do you gain?

At some point in your career, especially if you are a business owner or entrepreneur, you must look at the give & take or what you gain and lose. This idea doesn’t have to come about with a scarcity mindset because you should be doing what you want rather than what you feel obligated to do. One significant area people fail to pay attention to, and upkeep is on is their health. They will work a job and not have time to eat healthily or exercise during the day. What this does, in the long run, is cause you to break down in both the body and the mind.

That self-sacrifice for a seemingly superficial gain, money, shouldn’t be what we are focussed on. Though having money is a good thing, many people sell their souls to make a dollar. You have to ask yourself if working all these hours is worth it in the scheme of your life. Most people are entwined in the system and will work till they are 65 and find out that they wasted their prime years building something they couldn’t keep. Many people trade time for money, and in the end, that trade is just money to compensate for the loss of your life.

You have to figure out what you truly want to live for, so you can make the right choices. Yes, you can keep having a huge workload and have no free time or personal life, but for many people, that is not a good living. I cannot tell you how many wealthy clients come to me to help me get their life back. The reason is that they allowed their work and workload to take away their freedom, their family, and their sense of self to create a lifestyle that society has led us to believe we need to have when in reality, we should be the ones to determine what we want, what we have, and how we move.

Step 4. Are you the best person and the only person for the job?

I find that many people get into the mindset that they have to do everything themselves. This creates burnout and fills your schedule with tasks that are not your forte. Growing up, my grandmother had several properties that she owned. She would have us help her maintain them. We would clean, paint, cut the grass, etc., to have the property continue to create income for her. I can tell you at that time in my life when I had to do those things; I hated them. I would rather play with friends or play video games instead than do manual labor. However, today I can see many lessons she instilled in me by doing that work; it was a life lesson I wouldn’t trade.

Though I have the skills and capabilities to do lawn care or home maintenance, I choose to delegate those tasks to someone else. It is not that I cannot do them, but I have to see the task as if it is something I love and if someone can do it better than I do. Since I do not enjoy or find any joy in doing those, I do not need to force myself to do them. I can find someone passionate about painting or landscaping and have them do the work. That frees up my schedule and creates work for another person to make a living.

I will say that as a parent or business owner, there will be times when people will not or cannot do the job better than you can. The steps to delegation will help you create a mindset that understands that you might have a secretary who manages your schedule and emails, and you have to sign off on the email knowing that you could have done a better job. Perhaps you have a child who maintains your yard for a weekly allowance, but they are not better than the landscaper you had before you reassigned the task. 

Learning how to give a task away is an incredibly freeing mindset. That is because you are allowing someone else to take the reins and learn and grow rather than having to be the person that does everything. Of course, there will be times when other people are better suited for a task than you are; on the contrary, times when you are better suited. Learning to delegate any non-essential task to another person is a smart business move. You do have to do your due diligence and ensure you do not have incompetent people doing work for you because if that is the case, it could create more work for you in the long run when you have to fix their mistakes.

Step 5. Zone of Genius

One of the best things when you delegate tasks to others, is that it frees up your schedule to be in your zone of genius. Your zone of genius is going to be where you shine the most. You will find joy in the work you do, and the work that you do will be meaningful and impactful in some way. Whether that be you are working as a radio host, and when you are immersed in that workflow, you create an atmosphere of pure delight for your viewers and yourself. This is something that you find extremely rewarding. Though other people can be radio hosts for you or a station doesn’t mean that you do not love what you create.

In your zone of genius, you can change the world. It can be challenging to change the world when you are worried about 99 other problems on your plate. If you learn how to focus on the things that matter and delegate all other no essential tasks, you will find that you are creating more meaning in your life. Many people search their whole life for their purpose, and one of the reasons they have such a difficult time is that they have all this junk in their schedule that stops them from reaching the areas they should be spending their time.

When you are in your zone of genius, you will find that you can create more abundance in your life than if you still did all the small things. For example, if you charge 200 dollars per hour for your services, but you spend 2 hours cutting the lawn every Saturday. If we go down the steps of delegation, we must first figure out if we love it. If we do, we have to go into the idea that if I do the lawn, what do I lose? You might realize that you are losing 400 dollars every Saturday when you can pay a landscaper $100 to do the same work. Hell, they might even do it better than you.

When you start to see time as what you can gain in your zone of genius, it is a no-brainer that you can have other people do the work for you, so you can do what will potentially have a more significant impact on your life and the world. Of course, you might love to do the lawn, and it is therapeutic, so not looking at the money you could earn in those 2 hours on Saturday and seeing what you gain from working those two hours differently might be what you need. I will say that it is more common for people to delegate things they love for more money. This is neither good nor bad because you must weigh the pros and cons.

The pros and cons of being or living in your genius can determine if you will succeed or fail. In life, there is no proper balance that we should try to attain; however, there is a balance each person should try to manage. For example, my zone of genius is writing and coaching. However, I enjoy spending time in my garden. Yes, I could make more money on a call than in my garden, but I have decided that working in my garden helps me be a better coach, father, son, brother, and husband when I step into those respective roles. Money can buy me many material things but cannot create fulfillment in the areas of life I seek to have, full and overflowing.

In closing, the steps of delegations can be a long journey, but the result will create a better mindset. The mindset that comes with delegation will be more transparent and more concise in all the things you do. You will start to see the things that matter most to you rather than the things society might lead you to believe. I find that delegating my workload and non-important tasks to others helps me live more fully. Many things come with delegation, such as humility, graciousness, and kindness. Do not fall victim to an uneven workload or sense of self-righteousness. Learn to give away any task that doesn’t fill you with something good, and focus on the things only YOU can do and share THAT with the world.

 

Until then,

Michael Rearden

Founder of Reven Concepts