Divide and Conquer

To get started breaking down what needed to be done so that I could effectively delegate or outsource certain responsibilities, I first had to figure out what I did all day. (Oddly enough, this wasn’t exactly easy, at least not at first.) How do you name all the things that have to get done in a business each day?

To get a handle on it, I started at the top. What did I do immediately after coming into the office each day? From there, it would be easier to move through my day and week.

• First, I generally did a quick check of my email to see if there were any time-sensitive to-dos or messages waiting for me, but there was nothing there to delegate, really, at least not at this point.
• After that, I went to my Backpack account, where I keep all my recurring to-dos. (I have a template that houses a weekly checklist sorted by day that I simply copy each Monday for the new week.) Within my checklist, I had a variety of tasks. Some of them had to do with things like planning and accountability, others had to do with my writing, but most of them were administrative in nature (prime territory for delegation).
• At some point each day, I had to go back to my email box to sort through any new appointments and book guests for my radio show, magazine interviews, and podcast, which meant adding data to my calendar, as well as other locations to keep my content production schedule running smoothly.
• I also needed to sort through pitches and press releases each day, figure out who I wanted to book, and coordinate interviews.
• Then there came the actual production of content, which included things like editing down recordings and transcribing some of the interviews.

On and on, I went through my days, figuring out all the steps required to do every job I do. I noted each task on a separate index card and then divided them into groups based on context (grouping scheduling/booking tasks together, editing and publication tasks together, lead generation tasks together, and so on).

Once I had all the roles and responsibilities divided, I could decide what would be most beneficial to outsource or delegate at this point, but that required me to break things down a little more.

Focus on Highest and Best Use

To keep everything in perspective, I had to think in terms of “highest and best use.” There were certain tasks that were absolutely the most important things for me to be doing in my business. They weren’t the urgent fires. They weren’t the tasks that needed to somehow get done by someone at some point. They were those tasks that directly generated income or interest in my business, and there were only a few of them. Those few tasks were my “highest and best use” tasks, and I knew that they should have the majority of my attention each day.

In an ideal setup, I would only focus on those tasks 100 percent of the time. Of course, perfection was out of the question, but I could at least organize my workload, as well as the workloads of those who work alongside me, to focus on our individual highest and best use tasks as much as possible.

Obviously, the administrative tasks were not my highest and best use activities. I could quickly eliminate around 25 percent of my workload by delegating those to someone who charged 25 percent of what I made, so that had to be the top priority.

Organize and Execute

I decided to start with getting help in two main areas — scheduling and editing/transcription, but before I could do that, I had to organize all the tools and resources and develop a specific system around each role. That included things like:

• Setting up a branded email address for my scheduling assistant.
• Creating an email signature to clarify to guests her role within my organization.
• Creating canned email responses within that assistant’s email account to communicate in a consistent way with guests
• Creating a step-by-step checklist of “how-tos” that outlined each and every task the assistant had to do.

Once I had all that in place, the rest was pretty easy. Each time I got a new appointment confirmation email, for instance, I simply forwarded it to the new scheduling assistant with the following action in the subject line, “[Book].” There are only five or six actions that my scheduling assistant takes care of each day, and I start each email type with one of those actions so that she immediately knows what to do.

Until I know she has the hang of it, I’m saving all of the emails I send to her in a separate folder. Once a day, I’m running through them and making sure that nothing is fallen through the cracks. There have been a few hiccups, but nothing earth-shattering, and I’ve already seen a major reduction in admin time each day.

What steps do you take to make your outsourcing and delegation as painless as possible?

Photo by Flickr user Wonderlane, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Getting it clear is one thing (be prepared to spend a day or two doing this if you have thousands of emails), but keeping it clear if you have dozens of emails coming in every hour can be a real challenge.

First, you should try following these simple rules:

1. Process to empty. When you process your email, don’t just read it, but actually process it. And get your inbox to empty every time, don’t leave it full of messages.
2. Take action on every message. Reply to, forward, delete, or file every message, or make a note on your to-do list and file it. Don’t just read the message.

Those are really all the rules you need. But sticking to them and keeping up with the every-growing flow of emails is not always as easy as it sounds. If that’s the case for you, try these tricks:
1. I Want Sandy. Ever since Mike Gunderloy reviewed the I Want Sandy digital personal assistant service more than a week ago, I’ve been giving Sandy a test drive. And you know what? It’s not bad at all. It helps remove those “action” emails from my inbox (or action folder) because now I can email Sandy real quick to get a reminder when I need it, and then archive the original email, as I no longer need it as a reminder. When the reminder comes from Sandy, I can always find the original email with a quick search.

If you don’t use the I Want Sandy service, all that really matters is that you have some kind of to-do/reminder system outside of your email that you can call up with a keystroke or two in order to note any actions you need to take later. If it takes too much time or effort to make that note, you probably won’t do it, and the email will have to sit in your inbox (or in another folder, which isn’t any better).

2. Auto text. You might have a lot of similar email that requires pretty much the same few responses each time. In that case, put your common responses into AutoHotKey (or other similar text replacement program) so that you can type in a few keystrokes and have the text automatically typed into your email. This will save tons of time, shortening your email processing time and allowing you to process to empty.

3. Five sentences. I’ve been using a version of this for awhile, but Mike Davidson hit the nail on the head when he created the Five Sentences system: Limit all emails to five sentences or less, and you’ll spend much less time responding to email. Yes, it will force you to say less, and to choose your words more carefully. Yes, that’s a good thing. It will drastically cut your email processing time down.

4. Send the ball back in their court. If you aren’t sure what to do with an email, it may be because you don’t have enough information. Instead of letting the email sit in your inbox (or another folder), reply quickly to the person, asking for more info. Another thing I’ll do is tell them I can’t do something now, and ask them to check with me in a week (or a month, or whatever). In any case, the trick is to get the ball out of your court, and into theirs, and the email out of your inbox and out of your mind.

5. Forget folders or labels. If you follow the first tip, and get all actions out of your inbox, you don’t need an action folder or label, or other folders labeled @home, @office, etc. to keep emails as reminders of actions. So take those out of your system, because they’re basically more inboxes where you’re storing stuff. Just use one inbox, and clear everything out of it.

Another reasonable use of folders is for emails that require longer replies that you can’t get to right now. An @reply folder, for example. Well, if you follow the Five Sentences rule, you don’t need that folder either.

And if you’re using Gmail, you don’t need folders to find stuff, as search works even better (and doesn’t require filing).

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