WHY YOU DON’T DELEGATE

If you still have a difficult time thinking of ways to delegate, whether at home or in the office, you may want to consider why this is. Many people hesitate to ask for help or to assign work to others for a variety of reasons. Let's look at some common ones and consider if any of them may apply to you.

• You assume that no one can do a job as well as you do, or you nitpick the work of others.

• You may feel that if you don't do things yourself, others will look down on you.

• You're simply used to taking on all chores and responsibilities by yourself and have a hard time asking for help or giving up work to another person.

• You are often made to feel guilty if you don't take on extra responsibilities and chores.

• You enjoy the rush and pressure of trying to do too much.

While it may be uncomfortable, especially at first, for you to start delegating tasks, it's going to be necessary to learn this habit and skill in order to maximize your time. When you begin to hesitate to pass along responsibility, consider a few points:

• Children need to learn responsibility and how to care for themselves and the home. It's better for them to have chores around the house than not, so giving them age appropriate work is good for them as well as for you.

• If both parents work outside the home, why would one do the majority of the housework, child raising, and so on? This can be damaging to one's health if someone were to get overworked and frazzled.

• Allowing someone else to have responsibility can build their self- esteem and self-confidence. They can also feel appreciated and part of a team, such as at the office.

• If you're overly critical of the work of others and assume you're the only one that can handle certain responsibilities, might this be a reflection of an ego out of control? Why is your way better or "right"?

• When you assume that others will look down on you if you don't take on everything yourself, might this be untrue? How do you know what others are thinking? And is their thinking more important than the goals and plans you have for yourself and the ways you want to maximize your time?

Delegating may be something of a skill but it is one you can learn. Often it gets easier along the way. Keep reminding yourself that you have better things to do with your time than trying to do everything in front of you, and that you will accomplish more if you think of quality projects you want to care for, not just the quantity of projects.

YOUR TIME IS YOURS

With all this information we've shared so far, what would you say is the most important point when it comes to maximizing your time?

No doubt the idea that time is limited is important. When you understand this, you realize how you should never fritter it away. It becomes most valuable and something you need to guard and protect.

Or perhaps you're realizing how you should never let another person's priorities take precedence over your own. When you do, you're allowing them to steal your time just as you would allow someone to steal your money. As you learn to make your own priorities a, well, a priority, you learn how to set your schedule and your calendar so that your time is used wisely.

There are many good points we've made so far about time and how to spend it. We've also covered many points regarding how you should view time and the things you do to fill it.

But one very important point to consider above and beyond all others is that your time is your own. It's belongs to you, not to your boss, your family, your friends or anyone else.

You might immediately argue with this, saying that when you're at work, your time does belong to your boss. Or that you do need to spend time to care for your children. This is all true to a certain extent; your boss does have the right to tell you how you'll spend at work and having children, a

relationship, a home, and friends and family will all mean demands on your time.

But the bottom line is that you choose to dedicate your time to these things. You choose to have a job with a boss that tells you what to do. Those hours during the day are yours and you can easily sit at home and refuse to work, but you choose to devote them to a job. Those hours you spend with your children are yours, but you've chosen to give them away to your children - and rightly so.

Realizing that your time is your own to keep or give away as you please should help you to understand all the finer points of maximizing your time. When someone interrupts and you step away from your project, you have now chosen to give away your time to them. That's your time to do with as you please, so it's up to you to make that decision. When someone else's concerns take priority over yours, you've chosen to give away that time that is yours to their needs.

Of course there are times when this is a good thing; no one is saying that you should suddenly become selfish and do only what you want, when you want, all the time. If you decide to have children then it could be said that you owe them a debt of time since they need attention from you, both physically and emotionally. So does your partner and your friends as well.

And certainly giving away your time to others has its own advantages. You give your boss eight or nine hours every day in exchange for that paycheck you get every week. This in turn means you have a home in which to live, food to eat, and so on. Your time has become a tradeoff with benefits to you, not just the other person.

This is true in personal relationships as well. If you tradeoff your time to give some to friends, you have strong bonds with them in return. They'll be there for you when you need someone to talk with or when you want to go out and have a few laughs. You give time to your partner and in return have a loving relationship. Giving your time in these ways will benefit you.

But again, you're making a choice. There are many people out there that choose a different course of action. They're indifferent to the time needed to invest in a relationship or the time children need in order to grow and mature properly. Often this selfishness of refusing to give up one's time has very poor results for everyone.

It is important however to strike a balance in what you give away when it comes to time and what you keep for yourself. No one can force you to give your time away; the only thing anyone can do is put a choice in front of you, and then you need to make that choice for yourself. Your job puts a choice in front of you for either earning a living or sponging off someone else, so you choose to go into work every day. Having children means a choice of dedicating some time with them in exchange for a strong family life or seeing your children be neglected and no doubt developing behavior problems because of this. Your time is yours and every minute of every day you choose how you'll spend it.