You have only 24 hours in day and when the tasks start to swell the only way to become more productive is to actually delegate. Let other people do your tasks so you can accomplish more.

For a number of years I used to have a virtual assistant, st least I could organize and automate time consuming easy tasks. Well I lost my favorite assistant and then I didn’t have the energy to train someone else so I shifted back to doing every task myself. However, given my hit and miss experience with virtual taskers I don’t want to take that approach

So the million dollar question is how to delegate effectively ? As most management experts will tell you it’s all about finding the things you don’t want to do and then find people who will do it as good or better than you.

Finding the tasks you don’t want to do is a life journey. I take the other approach – figure out things I do love to do and then delegate the rest! I love to work with hands, I love to cook, I love to code, write and be creative – I’m a maker! So anything else I should delegate :-).

Now on to the part of actually delegating. I figure I’m not going to take the virtual assistant approach this time. But being creative depending on task one can find friends, family, hobbyists and volunteers to take up the task :-). I’m more believer in teams, so the delegate in this case is more like a team-mate! For e,g i want to delegate my competitive research on sponsorship of conferences to an enthusiastic volunteer working with the organization!

The key to successful delegation is being able to verify that the task was done appropriately! It’s important to make this the part of task definition. For e.g. as I define the competitive research I want to make sure that it’s faceted on $ amount received by the conference from each of the sponsors!

Dear Reader – Any additional thoughts on productivity vía delegation?