Delegate — So that You Will Have More Time to Make Money

One of the rea­sons it took me so long to get started build­ing a busi­ness is because I con­sumed much of my time doing jobs that I could have let oth­ers do.  As a hus­band and father, it is easy to get so caught up in house­hold chores that there is not a spare minute to pur­sue your passions.

In my pre­vi­ous arti­cle, I talked about how analy­sis paral­y­sis can keep you at a stand­still and not move for­ward with your dreams.  For many years, I dreamed about cre­at­ing a web­site to share insights and learn together with you about alter­na­tive, non-job ways to earn a living.

It was not until a real­ized that doing a lit­tle bit per day is the way to reach a goal — even if it seems insur­mount­able at first.

I also recently real­ized, that I need to del­e­gate a lot more so that I have more spare min­utes in each day to reach my goals.  Here are some sug­ges­tions to free up some of your time to pur­sue your dream(s):

• Get some­one else to mow the lawn — I mowed my own lawn for many years and it took a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time every week­end to get the job done.  It was not until we moved to New Eng­land that my wife con­vinced me to have it done by pro­fes­sional land­scap­ers.   If you a frugal-minded like me, I know it “goes against the grain” to pay some­one $45 or more a week to have your acreage trimmed.  I used to have the thought that I could pay to buy a trac­tor with the money we spend on the land­scap­ers, but you will begin to appre­ci­ate it when your lawn looks great and you don’t have to mess with it at all to make it look that way.  It’s also nice not to suf­fer with the bugs, aller­gens, and var­i­ous rep­til­ian crea­tures you can find in your lawn dur­ing the sum­mer months!
• If you live in the snow belt, get your dri­ve­way plowed by a pro­fes­sional.  For the same rea­son as get­ting some­one to mow your lawn, you will save a lot of time and has­sle if the snow is taken care of with­out your inter­ven­tion.  We live in New Eng­land so we get a lot of snow every win­ter.  Last win­ter,  I pur­chased a snow pusher — a handy inven­tion that is bet­ter than a snow shovel to get us through a snowy win­ter.   But since I have a long dri­ve­way it took sev­eral hours to com­plete the job every time we received a sig­nif­i­cant snow­fall.  All that time I could have been spend­ing doing some­thing I enjoy instead!
• Get an accoun­tant to do your taxes — I used to do all my own tax returns every year and spent hours and hours prepar­ing the receipts and enter­ing all the data into tax soft­ware.  Being very detail-oriented, I also used to worry and sweat that I had done some­thing incor­rectly and pored over my return mul­ti­ple times to ensure accu­racy.  If you have a sit­u­a­tion that has any com­plex­ity at all — mort­gage, your own busi­ness, mov­ing expenses, etc. — do you your­self a favor and spend the money to get a good accoun­tant to take care of it for you.  You will be glad you did, it is a big time saver and will reduce your stress.
• Give your spouse more author­ity over the finances — For many years, I insisted on tak­ing care of all the finances in our house because that’s how my par­ents and grand­par­ents did it — the father was respon­si­ble for the money.  I also wanted to main­tain con­trol since I am so detail ori­ented.  I later real­ized that I had been con­di­tioned to think that was the best arrange­ment for every­one involved, but that was an incor­rect notion.  I have since learned to let go and let my wife direct a large por­tion of the bud­get.  It has worked out remark­ably well and has freed up time in my day to pur­sue other activities.
• Turn off the TV — or at least scale back the amount of time you spend in from of the tele­vi­sion each day.   Even if you replace that time with good read­ing, you will be amazed at how much more you learn than in front of the tube.

I hope these insights are help­ful to you.  My rec­om­men­da­tion is to exam­ine activ­i­ties that take a large por­tion of your time and see if you can del­e­gate them as much as you can.  It will get you that much closer to your dreams of mak­ing extra money!

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