The Weight of Delegating: 5 Solutions to Unburden Your Mind
When asked how to free up more time, I often recommend delegating.
This involves identifying tasks in your life that don’t have to be done by you and asking someone else to step in.
This could be outsourcing tasks like mowing the lawn to a yard care company, asking your spouse to take on some household chores, or asking a colleague to lead the charge on specific project deliverables.
The end goal is to give you more time to spend on bigger-picture projects or self-care by removing any unnecessary obligations you’ve put on yourself.
While delegating is a helpful strategy to achieve that goal, it’s important to address the added weight that might actually come from delegating. Especially for women.
The Argument for Delegating
In our personal lives, women often feel like it’s required to handle the lion’s share of household chores.
We tend to be the planners and constant decision-makers for the household.
Women are tasked with constantly making multiple little decisions just to keep everything running smoothly. And we rarely get to be the ones who just “go with the flow”.
The constant decision-making could be things like:
What side dish should we bring to family dinner?
What gift should we get for your cousin’s wedding?
What vacations should we plan for the year?
Where should we go out to eat on Friday?
All of this can add up to feel like an extra burden, draining our energy and leaving less bandwidth for other endeavors.
This doesn’t end with our personal lives.
In the professional world, women can often find themselves at the center of every project from idea conception to execution. This puts us in the position of being the go-to person for solving problems, making decisions, and ensuring every detail is perfect.
This level of involvement may initially seem commendable. And it may even be a piece of how you’ve moved up the corporate ladder. But, to quote author Marshall Goldsmith: “What got you here won’t get you there.”
These professional burdens can quickly become overwhelming and start to actually hinder your career growth. Not to mention, eat up time outside of your regular working hours.
We need to first start to release the expectations that all of this is our job. Then…yep…delegate.
The Mental Load
Unfortunately, delegating is often not as simple as just asking someone to take over.
When women delegate tasks, whether in our personal or professional lives, it can often come with the unintended consequence of extra mental load.
Delegation adds the responsibility of overseeing, coordinating, and ensuring tasks are completed correctly. This could look like:
Writing a “honey-do” list of exactly what needs to be done
Racking your brain anticipating questions
Gathering resources or documentation that you suspect might be needed
Worrying about the things the person might do wrong that you think you’d do better
This all may feel more cumbersome than keeping the task for yourself in the first place.
Many of us also have an inherent desire to maintain control. Delegating means losing some of that control.
We’ve achieved a certain level of success up until this point, so releasing the tight grip on all the tasks we have on our plate may feel like the end of a previously successful path.
Learn to Delegate with Ease
Delegating isn’t easy.
And it’s completely understandable if you’ve avoided the delegating burden up until now.
But delegating is an essential skill to learn and practice if you’re serious about being in control of how you spend your time.
Luckily, there’s hope.
Try these five solutions to make delegation a little more manageable:
Recognize the Value of Delegation
First, you have to be on board that delegating can help solve your time crunch.
There is a world where delegating makes things easier and can come without the massive load on your mind.
Sure, you probably can handle everything yourself. But, how has that been working for you so far? My guess is you’re exhausted. Overwhelmed. Anxious. So…it may not be the best long-term strategy.
Delegation is not a sign of weakness. It is a strategic and empowering move to allow you to focus on high-impact tasks and achieve better results, and a more enjoyable life in the long run.
2. Select People You Trust & Communicate Your Needs
Choosing the right person to delegate tasks to is crucial.
Identify individuals in your personal or professional life who are capable and willing to take on the responsibility. This ensures the task is in good hands, reducing the anxiety associated with delegation.
Choose people, such as a spouse or trusted coworker, that you can be open with, then clearly communicate your needs.
Let them know you need the task not only off your schedule but off your mind. You will need them to be in charge of making any necessary decisions and running with them. If they do need your feedback, ask them to come up with their own decisions to offer up for you to respond to.
Be clear. The right people will get it.
3. Establish Regular Check-ins and Updates
Handing off a task can still come with some anxiety.
Even if you have delegated, it may still be on your mind as you worry whether the task has been completed or not.
If this is a challenge for you, implement a structured system of regular check-ins with whoever you delegated the task to.
In your personal life, it could be a quick run-through over Sunday night dinner. At work, it could be a more standard 1:1 meeting every other week.
This ensures you remain informed about progress, while also creating opportunities for your delegatee to ask questions or seek guidance.
Scheduled check-ins mean you can reduce the worry about the status of the task. There will be a predictable framework for communication, eliminating any need for constant monitoring.
4. Let It Go
To be honest, it is very likely the delegated task may not be done “perfectly” or to your standards.
Stop stressing about this possibility. It’s definitely going to happen.
Just because you’re better at doing something, doesn’t mean it’s the most productive use of your time. Done is better than perfect. And a done task you didn’t really want to spend time on in the first place, is priceless.
5. Practice Self-compassion and Patience
Delegation is a skill that takes time to develop.
Be patient with yourself and with those you delegate to.
Mistakes may happen, but they are opportunities for growth. This growth will not only be an opportunity for those doing the tasks to improve, but you’ll also get more comfortable with delegating.
So, instead of taking setbacks as failures and proof you need to do it all, view them as lessons learned in delegation to improve your future efforts.
The weight of delegating can feel overwhelming.
Especially if delegating is something you regularly avoid.
But there is a way to effectively use this tool to reduce your workload, without adding additional stress. It just takes a little practice!
And if you need to light a fire under your new delegatee, send them to the 7 Days: Consider it Done! Guide to help them avoid any procrastinating bad habits so they’re set up to deliver!
Check any project off your to-do list in just ONE WEEK?
Download the 7 Days Consider it Done! Workbook.
