Everyone has a TO DO list
You don’t have to waste a lot of time in book stores or talking with friends to hear that the single best tool to improve your productivity is a good to do list. Well I’m calling BS. I don’t think it’s the best tool or best strategy, when it comes to helping you become a high performer.
It’s not what you need to do that’s critical.
It’s what you need to not do that’s critical.
Everyone’s always surprised
When I talk about delegation in public speaking engagements I regularly mention the IBM study I read (a long time ago now) that suggested it was worth delegating if a subordinate could accomplish any given task in less than 10x the time it would take a supervisor.
Ten times is a big number. I struggle if someone is going to take 2x longer than I would. I want to take it back and just do it myself.
But doing something, just because I can, isn’t strategic.
Instead, I need to learn to delegate. It helps my teams and it helps me. And that means I need to constantly be aware of what I am committing to not do.
How we get distracted
I’ve discovered that the biggest things that derail productivity in my day are those things that
- I know how to do
- I like doing
- I get praise when I do them well
- Others could do
- Take me away from what only I can do
Let’s agree on something right now. There are some things that only you (or I) can do.
We have the skill, experience, voice and access to do the thing that only we can do. But when we get focused on something else – with anything else – we’ve stepped out of the realm of high performance and are now hanging out with a group that could only be called “distracted.”
We’re stealing opportunities
It’s not just that we’re distracted. The truth is that we’re also robbing our teams of opportunities to learn and grow. When we do it all we’re naturally limiting the opportunities that we could have been creating for others to learn and grow. We know it’s not good, but we keep doing it.
So how do we get past it? How do we ensure we’re creating opportunities for our staff (to learn and grow) while also focusing on delivering world class service to our customers?
Easy. Create a NOT TO DO list.
My NOT TO DO list
I love Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. And my team, filled with engineers, doesn’t have a clue how to use it. So they send me images to resize. Or images that need new titles (or other text) on them. It’s easy. It’s fast. It lets me open up Adobe products I may not have used in a bit. And my guys love that I can do it, and do it quickly.
But there are others in our organization that have the tools and could do it. So I’ve recently put it on my NOT TO DO list.
I also love playing with networks and hardware. It’s from the old days of building computers by hand, I’m sure. And we have hosting accounts with Rackspace, Hosting.com, VPS.NET and others.
But I shouldn’t be messing with any of those. There’s no need. So until I hear of a need, it’s on my NOT TO DO list.
I could go on with all the things on my NOT TO DO list, but that’s not the point. I think by now you get the concept. That’s the easy part. The hard part is creating your own list. Because only you know what gets in your way. Only you know what derails you. Only you know what woos you, even if it shouldn’t.
So go get started. Define what you aren’t willing to do, and find others who will do it (even if they take longer).
What’s on yours?
Go ahead, comment below and tell me what you’re putting on your NOT TO DO list.
Great post, Chris! One thing that I have put on my NOT TO DO list is social media for clients. I have been delegating that to my colleagues, who use social media daily and need to learn how to use it for businesses. I can steer them in the right direction and the work is all them. Yes, it may take them a little longer to learn exactly what type of material works, but in today’s environment they need to learn how to utilize this great tool. It has given me time to focus on other projects.
Hi Chris, great post. I manage a small team of developers and I’m delegating more and more work on a daily basis. Previously I was a developer myself, but these days, I’m helping my staff by removing any barriers that get in their way, arranging meetings when needed, taking new work requests and prioritising/scheduling them with management. While I still do some hands-on work myself, this is reducing. I’ve found that there are certain tasks that certain members of my team do really well, so I aim to delegate those more than any other work.
As for what I’m putting on my “not to do” list, I mainly steer clear of big tasks that I can technically achieve on my own, as I don’t have a lot of long stretches of uninterrupted time so it’s difficult to concentrate on those larger tasks.
At times when we’re really busy, I find the best approach can be for the whole team to have a “blitz” day where we all work on the same project, and we all work on different things. This has produced some incredibly productive days and has helped to keep everyone highly motivated and enthusiastic, as we invariably get things done faster when we work together closely.
I am really trying to identify things that need to go on my “not to-do list”. I’m dragged ten directions every day, and prioritizing this list is pressing right now : ) Thanks, Chris.
Awesome post… Now if only I can do this….
I love this. I tend to be a “do it all” and have trouble delegating. Control freak. But you’re absolutely right. Recently I hired a production assistant who I’ve been giving some small tasks to (big step for me though!) and it’s worked out well. I feel that little tug of oooohhhh my baby….. but I get over it pretty quick when I see stuff getting done that I don’t have to think about, so I can focus on MY stuff.