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Balancing Your Energy: Delegate & Defer

So let's move on to delegation delegating is interesting we also are delegate torrey phobic in this culture it's because there's this weird story that's come around delegation that to delegate is to say you're not good at something or that you're not good enough to be doing it all so we don't delegate we also have a story because I deal with a lot of perfections we also have this story that we could never get somebody else to do it as well as we would do it ourselves well guess what get over yourself because it's not true you just need to be a better delegator you need to learn to delegate so that that works um it's it really makes sense tow live your strengths and do the things in your business in your life that you do well and if it's something you truly hate doing find a way to delegate and their creative ways to do that I worked with a lot of small business owners in a a small town a number would come off with some fun ways to do it taking interns um you get a different perspective...

you give somebody an opportunity to learn something new and at first yes that's worked for you isn't it to teach somebody else to do something but it's the old teach a man to fish story it's if you teach somebody to do something they may actually add to what you're doing, I cannot believe how I relieved I wass when I finally hired somebody to do my quickbooks. Now I can do math, but every time I went to do quickbooks anything, and it was like somebody was stuck in the sole head of may I love developing the content of my business. I love being one on one with my clients or in front of a group. It feeds me, and I'm an introvert tooth, but that feeds me. But to sit there and do quickbooks, you know, and of course, I had an expectation I was supposed be able to do it perfectly because I used to be good at math yada yada, yada yada, yeah, I hired somebody to do it, and then I realized, you know what? I could spend that same amount of work and generate income more than enough to pay her to do it. So I was so stuck in this silly thing until I hired her to do it and got to actually experience the lightness in the freedom that came from. I just don't have to do it. And now when I get an email from quickbooks about something or other than I just ford, and and every time I do that, I smiles like yes, I'm not doing that, you know, I'm totally not doing that and it works it really works and when we were first starting out in business that's really scary because you don't have enough money and you think, well, I can't delegate and the question is, well, could you make more money by having this person start to do it? Can you figure out some creative arrangement where you trade services at first or something? They're creative ways to do this but first get rid of this stuff you don't like to do because it does drain you it drains out the fun part of you and that's the part that's going to be more creative and then do it again delegate some more stuff, but when you delegate delegate well, in the very beginning of this um first session, we talked about some of the things that stress us as individuals and one is unclear expectations, so if you're going to delegate, do it by not stressing the other person be really see specific about your expectations include parameters time what you expect the product to be, the more structure you give to that the better but you also want to give them some intrinsic motivation to do it don't you remember what intrinsic motivation is autonomy, mastery and purpose so give them a little wee leeway let them own something about it you know, think about what the main purposes I need my quickbooks done, I actually really don't care how she does some of it, I really, you know, I need to know that it fits my financial perspective and we needed to, you know, to build that out, but that when she does it, that the time, you know, I could care less, I give her some autonomy to be her own boss within doing that, and I'm hoping that that works and she knows she's the master I don't, I don't have to do that. I'm totally not, and I'm good with that, but so when you delegate, make sure you have clear expectations, you've given the time that you want it so everybody knows and there's not that play of you know, I'm I expected you to assume that I needed that by tomorrow or yesterday, um, don't don't do any assuming when you delegate and make sure you give them some buy into the project. So what? What kinds of things could you possibly delegate in your own lives right now? Well here's the question from renewing and I may be confused here so bear with me since cindy but I think this is about delegation because they're basically asking how do you approach others when you need help with taking things off your plate so you know you need to delegate what's the best way to approach people and have them help you because I think that's the stumbling block for some people online and sometimes you actually don't know good point um sometimes you really haven't figured out exactly what it is that you need to help with you just know you're overwhelmed and that's when looking at your your business or your life is assistant can be helped for and actually just look at it and you know look around and find where your rug is you know when I look at handling the finances there's no question there's a dog for me so what do I need the help with I I have figured out a lot of that is a small business owner with a group of small business owners by talking it out and brainstorming formed a mastermind group those air so supportive t figure that out and then approaching the other person um I did the scary thing and put ads on craigslist and said what I was looking for basically but I hadn't completely teased it out and she and I talked it out together we brainstormed it together so you don't necessarily have to know it totally clearly you can say I'm overwhelmed and these are the things that air they're weighing heavy for me and I'm not exactly exactly been sure how to ask for help yet, but maybe I could bounce this off of you and will become clear to both of us and if it doesn't, you move on or you asked somebody else who's doing it well, you know um mentoring is an interesting thing I have a friend who's just dynamo business person and when I feel myself going, I just you know, mayor, how you doing all that you know, what do you do and that's how I learned about interns like, wow really there people who do stuff for free that's pretty cool and they're thrilled to do it because they're learning and if you think back to when you first got out of school and you wanted some experience and what a business wass and was so hard to find you're doing it's it's definitely a win win if you interview well, does that help? I hope I hope so too. I have another question from violetta because one of the challenges they have when they're delegating or when they're saying no it's that they feel stressed about having to explain why you have got what we were saying about yesterday wasn't about the politeness issue wanting to be polite wanted because they say people maybe don't wantto do the same thing but you just don't want to hurt the personal light of them by saying you have to do something else so I think they're different types of things and ways that we delegate there things where we do want to explain because we want their buy in they're going to do a better job if we do some explanation and it doesn't have to be you know, warren peace explanation can just be just being clear yourself be clear yourself before you speak there are other things where you're the boss and you've got a delegate and it doesn't necessarily need a ton of explanation but if you want engagement it should have some uh I thought I find parenting an interesting place for that discussion when I've worked with professionals or business people who are parents or if you've even babysat or taking care of siblings there's that time in the grocery store line check out when the little child is begging for something and they're two ways to say no to that there's the you hear those parents are babies there's wherever we're like no, we don't have candy now and they go into this whole long explanation and sometimes I'm sort of seeing there smirking thinking, you know, like a rational explanation isn't landing here you know, we have a two year old desire for candy, not time for rational explanation and the more effective way to be at that moment is toe have the presence of a boundary to say know this you know we're not doing that so in our adult lives their places where we can play with those two versions of press since the place where I really want you to understand why I'm saying no, but I want you to understand why I'm asking you to do something because I want you engaged in it I want the connection that julia mentioned I want to make sure that I'm streamlining the businesses simon mentioned so I want explanation and there are other times when your presence is what's really important and you just set a boundary with how you say it I'm sorry I really can't and that's it and so that comes from your being being before doing always helps and being clear so that's deleting things off the plate delegating some things off the plate making some white space we need white space to be creative we need white space to be happy we need white space to make room for the things that are thrust on our plate at the last minute by somebody where the crises of life that occurred and wipe some of the plate clean we need white space so the third way is to defer some of the things we have to be a little less greedy about everything we want to do I want toe learn spanish and I want to learn spanish well because, you know, I couldn't do that perfectionists thing, I don't have time for that right now. I mean, I barely have time to do what I'm doing and still managed to do the things that a priority in my life have seen friends and getting outside in nature to exercise the things that feed me. I don't have time to learn spanish right now, it needs to go on my someday maybe list, and you need to update that list, maybe here, lee, but I have a place to put it because you know how much effort it takes to carry it around to carry it around in your mind, all the things that, you know, I really want to do this project in the basement. Well, every time you now when you do that to yourself and you don't put it on an actual list, yes, I actually two slides for this. When you don't put in the actual someday maybe list, then you're carrying it around, and that takes effort, and then we translate that we do all of this really subconsciously, because most of what we do is subconscious, we translate that, then two doing down to this space where we walk into the basement and our energy drops, and we don't even remember why is that I mean, we're just we're weird the way we're wired to do this, we don't we don't realize why our energy is dropping and it's, because somewhere in our brain we talked this little space that we were goingto make this cleaned up creative work space here, and we haven't done it yet, so we skip all those steps and we get to the hug, so this is a way to just free up your play little bit, write it down, I'm going to do that basement project when I can get to it, I can't do that right now, I'm going on that I can't do it right now, but I have this list that I'm going to keep with my yearly list, my yearly meeting list of those things that I thought of that I kind of like to dio and a year from now, I may look at it and say that's, something I really don't want to dio or a year later, I mean, look at it and say, that's, something I want to do this year and now I'm going to bump it up to the realist that makes sense, so I think we all walk around with this this heavy list in our minds, so as we do this stuff, we want to take back our choice, we wouldn't talk to her inner critic we want to reduce the risk distractions that air on our list we could go down a zillion rabbit holes when I was first starting marketing I all I do is go down rabbit holes and I haven't found a rabbit went toe what thiss but but we can get really distracted by doing that stuff um you ever heard of the pareto principle the eighty twenty rule that we we really get eighty percent of our benefit from twenty percent of what we do so it's finding that twenty percent and getting rid of the rest of the distractions deleting some of the information overload like the email I've been on an email purge I've unsubscribed from more things I think you wouldn't believe on dh I can't tell you I mean, sometimes I'm unsubscribe ng from a list that I got on from a person that I met neck working that I really connected and I can't tell you that I don't feel this momentary oh my gosh, what if she sees this that I just unsubscribe from her newsletter cause liketo I don't have time to read it and I've deleted it for the last six months, so every time I opened my email and it's sitting there and it's something that I don't have time to read, I feel guilty when I waste of me I just started on subscribing I turn off the news a lot I go seek the news I want and I don't listen to the news because it's information overload I now reduced the number of resource is that coming to me? Because as an entrepreneur or even when you're in business, we were overloaded by resource is and there's always that feeling, especially for those of us grew up in an era when that was a problem there's this feeling that the next one's better such as reduced the information overload, come down to what's essential and, as I said earlier, be really clear about your expectations and clear about your boundaries because when you don't have a good boundary what's leaking out is your energy it's just seeping seeping out? And when you, when you state those boundaries, it feels really good. So by doing that, you're really taking back your choice it's a lot. It sounds like a lot at first, so do this in baby steps just one tiny thing you can take off your plate what's this and when you do the weekly meeting, where is one little thing I could cut out of my week on? What would I love to replace it with white space downtime, sitting and thinking, listening to music, calling a friend going outside? What would I love to replace it with what's important to put me back on my calendar? And where do I make that space for me? So I'm either gonna have to delete something, delegates something or defer something to get me back in my life, and that just really matters any thoughts coming up from that online or from you guys? Erica, clarify boundaries? Um, okay, I've worked out a pretty good with other people, but what I realize is that I'm not very good within myself. So, like, with that worry, for example, I don't have a boundary with myself that I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole with the worry, um, and it's, something that I've in the past I've known okay, don't go down the rabbit hole, but I haven't explicitly said I have a boundary with me that when I that worry comes in, I'm not going to follow it, and instead I'm going to use my strength of gratitude. Tio replace excellent point, so our frontal lobe that sets up the attention and decides of all the things we could be paying attention to, what are we going to pay attention to? Is what needs to kick in there and say, I'm not gonna pay attention to the worry one right now, it's still going to be going on like the cable car chain and san francisco it's still going but I'm not gonna hook that one I'm going to choose another one and that takes some some effort to dio one of the worry ones that's kind of fun two things one worry box you write it down you put it in the box when you decide you want to worry about it, you get it out of the box every now and then empty that box and crack up that some of the things you put in there it's like really I mean that we've all seen that quote, you know what we were worried about five years ago, what the vast majority of it didn't happen and the rest of it we don't really care about um so that's coming back to that bigger picture but if you physically have a place where you write it down, stick it in the box, it could be kind of empowering and another is to set aside worried on one of the jobs of the frontal lobe is to decide toe organize into prioritize and you can use it to your benefit to do that to say, you know what? I don't want to be thinking this right now I want to be thinking this, but I'm going to say I'm going to give myself permission to do my worrying I'm going to do my worrying on my walk this afternoon that's my worry time now what happens to most clients that I've done with this by the time they get to the walk in the afternoon the worry is kind of gone but if you say so this is a time I'm thinking about it this is a time I'm not it's it's a really fascinating thing to dio I had a friend introduced me to the pomodoro technique have any of you all heard of that it was fascinating for me because I have a d d so my mind's bouncing all over the place anyway but the pom adora technique you set a timer for twenty minutes and twenty five twenty five minutes and then during that period of time you on ly work on one thing well I was in hysterics the first few times I did it watching my own mind ping because if you to me the hard part wasn't focusing on what was in front of me the hard part was not focusing on the eighteen billion other things that kept going through my mind eat so you could play with that to set a timer and say I'm not going to think about that during this period of time because I'm going to be thinking about this so every time that little other thought intrudes you just say to it hello goingto let you go by because right now I'm thinking about this and when I get my five minute break we can talk, but right now I'm doing this and it's fascinating to just watch your mind do it. Um you can, um, look up pom adora technique they have a great website and they have a good ass. Yeah, and actually, there are a bunch of them now, um fascinating way to work and can help with procrastination, so I really do like that. Anything else coming in? Yes now, particularly about the inner critic people asking how you address the steps below about reducing your distractions. Clarifying expectations is that the way you address it? No that's that's a separate work. And what is your advice on addressing you in a critic? It seems to be something that people will you just stop it if you have never seen the youtube of the bob newhart show on stop it, watch it because he talks to a woman who's neurotic and tells her it's hysterical we all have an inner critic and I and I will say this over and over thank you. First give yourself some compassion thank you for speaking up and then let it know that you have this now you hear that voice and you you know you have other voices in your head you're not I'm not saying you're crazy, but you know you have different tracks why do we listen to the inner critic one the inner critic voice above all the other voices why don't we do that to ourselves so it's starting to take the space we're instead of telling it it's bad and hating ourselves in judging yourselves for having it allow it okay I haven't inter critic I have a friend who's named her sasha I just love that you can name your inner critic but have a conversation and say you know thanks for speaking up and in fact you've saved me in a lot of situation but right now this isn't helping and I want to think of this more creatively and then go look at your postcard of your strengths do something to distract yourself away from that sounds silly and it works it truly works it sounds like a great idea now laney is getting confused but not confused I'm sorry apologized but suddenly concerned about the way to delegate they're saying they just can't they say there are so many things they know they need to do it I mean pay bills those sort of things that we just have to do but they just procrastinate all of the time and they tell themselves they're give themselves a reward if they'll do it but they even talk themselves out of that um so they really just want some advice on how do you do how do you stop that procrastination stop procrastination is was my middle name for a lot of years um and I'm a little confused by the question whether this is about delegating or procrastinating, so I think I'm gonna answer the delegate part first and that's really taking the time to spend some time on the system of your life and deciding what would help it and then making a commitment to find somebody to help there's a commitment step there that really matters to find somebody to help the procrastination in general, like, you know, I need to pay bills I need to do that and the reward there was a study that came out red just this morning that way, when we set the reward and the values together, our brain operates differently, we can't really carrot and stick ourselves reward and punishment ourselves is the minute you've put a reward there, you probably, at the same time put a punishment or a judgment on it. What it's fine to say, you know, I can call my friend and go out for a walk after I finish this task, but if you've also added into that, I'm a bad person because I should have already done this task, and I could have gone for a walk three hours earlier if I'd only done this earlier in the week, and if you start that whole spiral that we all know and where it lands, then that reward was sort of false. If it's a reward that points out where you haven't shown up already, it's really a self criticism that looks like a reward. I do recommend the pomodoro technique for things like that you could do just about anything for twenty five minutes, and it feels really satisfying and that it keeps track of how many times you've done it and you can build in a reward for having spent twenty five minutes doing the bills. Um, that would be fine, littler bites, and this is this is a lot of what we'll do in session three we make our goal or the thing that we want to do bigger than it is by adding in the emotions, or we chop off too much littler bites. If you could pay bills for twenty five minutes and call it a day that's your wind for the day and you will be twenty five minutes ahead of where you were yesterday with it. It took me a long time to learn that and be gentle with yourself as you do it really be gentle and kind with yourself, so I'd like to end with another breath work just so we do it together and keep learning, so get yourselves situated again and just a comfortable position, hands on the tummy and if you'd like, close your eyes. And bring your attention to your breath hopefully you've been breathing the whole time but this is something you can bring your attention just follow it from the coolness of your nostrils down to your hand allowing it easily to come in and out no effort and in just a minute I'm gonna count for you five five five again and you're going breathe in for five and hold for five and out for five and I'll guide you with what to think about for that so we've had a lot of a lot of ideas bouncing around and I want you to check in with yourself on the first one so take a deep breath in and out and in how are you physically mentally emotionally and spiritually hold two three four five keep scanning and exhale three four five and in what do you need in this moment and hold two three four five and out two three four five and in who do you want to be right now in this life and hold two three four five and out two three four five and then let your breath come back to normal can you guys delegate deleting toofer so when you get stuck and this gets repetitive and that's a good thing because you learn that way but when you get stuck on the delete delegator differ you look at your plate you're overwhelmed co do the breath work go do something that comes you stretch. Use your body to relax to self massage. Can do the that that's included in the workbook, a number of different techniques you can do to calm down. In the moment, some people do tapping it's an interesting process. Do something that calms you down, and then come back to it with your whole brain. Power up that frontal lobe.