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The responsibilities that come under your remit might cause you to feel more than a little overworked. Are all the tasks you undertake and problems you solve actually your exclusive responsibility? This simple exercise allows you to explore which activities you really need to do yourself and identify the ones that can be delegated easily.
Task
Using the task sheet below, fill in the next 20 tasks you undertake, problems you solve, or decisions you make, one by one, as you deal with them. These 20 tasks may well be spread over the next couple of days.
1. For each task, note:
- the time you took to complete it
- a brief description
- its importance (‘5’ being the most important, ‘1’ being the least important)
Once you have completed 20 tasks (which might take anything from three hours to three days) spend some time analyzing the results:
2. How many of the 20 tasks actually required your complete involvement? If you find it difficult to answer this, imagine you were due to go on three weeks’ leave at lunchtime. Now, which of them really needed your direct input, and which would you have delegated under those circumstances?
- How many could easily have been delegated to somebody else?
- Are you spending too much time on trivial tasks that do not take real advantage of your expertise and experience?
