One of the common things I hear from people in business is, “Hey Ben, there’s not enough hours in the day!”, I ask you this… if I could honestly come along and add another 5 or 6 hours to your working day, is that what you really want? Well, of course not. What you want to do is become more efficient. And so the tool I am about to show you is a great way to just get a bit of a start on maximising the amount of time left for yourself rather than working!
Create a Skill/Fun Chart
One of the challenges with delegating work to other people is that some things are more difficult, so skill required is high. You can see at the bottom here of our matrix we have ‘skilled’ ; from low skill to high skill. Then there are some things we enjoy doing and some we don’t. So can you see the matrix here on the left hand side is low fun versus high fun. Overall, we’ve got nine squares where we could put tasks into.
What I want you to do is to think about all the different tasks that you do in your working week and note them down. This could be over a period of a couple of weeks, every 30 minutes write down in your diary what tasks you are doing at that particular time.
When you have done that you can go through each task and decide, is that a high skill or low skill task, and is it high fun or low fun for you? So let’s use an example… say that every afternoon you go and do the banking. Well, is that a high skill job or low skill job? Most likely it’s a low skill job. We know it’s going to be somewhere here on the left hand side. Let’s say that you enjoy doing the banking, that would make it a ‘high fun’ task. Now you can place it on the Skill/Fun Matrix.
If it’s fun, it get’s done! If you enjoy doing it, you’re more likely to get it done. If you don’t like doing that particular task, then you’re going to avoid it, you’re going to put it off. Work out what are the things you don’t like to do. Anything that is low fun, are the things that you really should delegate out first; these are the things that you don’t want to do, and you can find somebody who on their matrix this is high fun stuff.
Here’s a clearer example; bookkeeping, I find it very low fun, is it high skill? yes but it is low fun for me. So, I have to find somebody who thinks that bookkeeping is fun! I know it’s hard to believe but they’re are people that are happy and actually love doing bookkeeping! They are called bookkeepers… Give them your books and you can focus on doing the stuff that you enjoy doing.
Let’s face it, if you enjoy it then you’re going to do a better job. So, in your business work at what are the things you absolutely love doing and what are the things you hate doing, and get the people to do the things that you don’t like doing. Find somebody else to do it. If you don’t like doing it, outsource it. Find somebody else to get that job done for you so you don’t have to worry about it any more.
About the Author
Ben Fewtrell is a sought-after Business Coach, Keynote Speaker and trainer who has featured in Virgin’s Inflight Magazine and Entertainment Portal, SKY Business and “Secrets of Top Business Builders Exposed”. He is also the host of the popular Business Brain Food Podcast where he interviews leading experts on anything and everything business.
