It’s no surprise to any of us that many leaders tend to log a lot – too many – hours every week.
A Harvard Business Review study revealed the leaders they observed worked 9.7 hours per weekday, on average. They also added that these leaders conducted business on 79% of their weekend days, averaging 3.9 hours daily along with 70% on vacation days, averaging 2.4 hours daily.
When you add that all up, you get a total of 62.5 hours a week. Oof.
So how do you manage your time as an executive to get hours back in your day, week and month?
It’s simple. You delegate.
How To Save Our Most Valuable – and Precious – Asset: Time
Your time is one of your greatest — and most valuable — assets. And luckily, we all have an even playing field with the same number of hours in a day.
How we manage and spend it, however, is what can make or break us.
There are many ways to track your time and improve your time management skills. And if you constantly find yourself at the end of each day asking, ‘Where did the day go?,’ it may be time to implement some of those skills. Here are a few that will get you started.
Set A Schedule
… and stick to it. Pick a day – preferably at the beginning of each work week – to list the week’s priorities.
Then, organize your time based on your set priorities, either by making an hour-by-hour breakdown or a bulleted list of tasks for each day.
Track Your Time
First things first: Complete at least one day of time logging. From the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed at night, list every task and the total amount of time spent on it.
This way, you’ll have a solid baseline for what occupies your time – and can move on to the next time management skill.
Apply The 80/20 Rule
The 80/20 rule says that 80 percent of your results come from 20 percent of your efforts, so effective time management suggests that you spend 20 percent on the task(s) that will yield the greatest results.
Don't Multitask
Seriously. Somewhere along the way, ‘multitasking’ was exalted on high, right smack dab next to ‘busyness.’ And while we’ve been led to believe that multitasking is the holy grail for effective time management, it’s decidedly not.
Pick one task, and stick with it – and nothing else – to completion.
Delegate
Sometimes, effective time management means hiring someone to whom you can delegate so you can multiply your efforts.
Hire people you can trust, and give them the work you don’t have time for – or the work you don’t know how to do.
How To Delegate
When is it time to delegate tasks? Is it when you’re sacrificing sleep to get more things done? Is it when you’re deafened by a cacophony of notifications? Or when you’re drowning in mounds of paperwork?
The short answer is a resounding ‘YES!’ The long answer is more like a ‘YES! How have you gone this long without delegating?! You’re just one person.’
And the less you do, the more you can accomplish. Doesn’t that sound nice?
The best way to start delegating is by communicating your expectations, clearly defining the tasks, and discussing the deadline. Once these tasks are done, talk about what went well and decide on any additional actions.
Once you do this a couple of times, you’ll begin to build trust and confidence in your employees. And then in exchange, you’ll begin to delegate more and more.
Delegation isn’t simply a way of unloading your responsibilities; it’s how business owners and leaders can benefit from the powerful, multiplying effects of entrusting others to do that for which they are hired.
This resource will help you map out the various things you do each day so you can get back to what only you can do — and give the rest away.
Top Tasks That Executives Can Delegate To Save Time
Once you identify what you should be delegating, you not only free yourself from a busyness mountain of your own creation, but you also, in turn, develop the kind of employees and leaders that allow you, them and your business to grow.
Some of the best ways to start identifying what could be delegated is considering the tiny, tedious, teachable, terrible at, time-consuming, and time-sensitive things that you do every day.
Here are a few ideas of what some of those things could be ...
- Gathering data/research from your industry
- Management of accounts payable and accounts receivable
- E-commerce support
- Monitoring productivity or profitability reports
- Processing payroll
- Transcribing webinars, short videos, podcast episodes, etc.
- Communicating with vendors, customers, and your team on your behalf
- Booking travel
- Tax preparation and filing
- Managing your meeting schedule
- Responding to social media direct messages and comments
- Handling minor customer service concerns
- Managing your inbox – scanning and flagging important emails for you
Take Back Your Time With a Virtual Assistant From BELAY
Consider this your sign to hire a dedicated professional who can bring their experience and expertise to your organization so that you can start saving more hours every month.
You shouldn’t have to do everything. Let a BELAY Specialist help – today.