Find 10 Hours of Work You Should Not Be Doing

Find 10 Hours of Work You Should Not Be Doing

You are the founder. You are the CEO. And the customer service rep. And the tech team. And the marketing team. And the executive assistant.

That is often the way many businesses start. However, you’re here because you are successful, established and maybe even have 1 or more team members. So why are you still doing all the things? 

Today, you are going to get clarity around your role as CEO and identify what you should stop doing. 

Here’s how to find 10 hours of work per week that YOU should not be doing.

Step 1. Inventory: Brain dump your daily activities. Or spend an entire day tracking your activities as you do them.  This is an important step so don’t skip over the exercise! Be thorough.

Write down everything, from checking the mail (like USPS with a stamp on it, old fashioned mail), to answering customer service emails, to content creation, sales and marketing activities, paying your phone bill….. 

ALL. OF. IT. 

We suggest doing this for a couple of days to get a complete look at what you’re really doing with your time. After all, it’s most likely that no two days are the same, especially if you are wearing many hats. 

Step 2. Grading. Now it’s time to grade each activity as I, C, or E   

Incompetent (Hell No) 

Competent (Meh)   

Excellent (Hell Yeah)  

Clearly, you should NOT be doing Incompetent activities, whether that is struggling with tech, being bogged down in the weeds of overwhelming numbers or impatiently replying to the 57th request to reset a password. Whatever those things are, they are the top things you should get off your plate and delegate to a team member. 

The next two categories are not so easy. 

Competent. This is actually the biggest danger zone. We all have things we are ‘meh’ at. We ‘can’ do them, and often we don’t see anyone else around to do them, so we raise our hand and do the ‘meh’ thing. It doesn’t light you up, and you’re no expert, but you can check a box and get it done. 

Do you really want ‘meh’ blog copy? Or ‘meh’ customer service email answers? Or ‘meh’ graphics? NO. No, you don’t. 

These are probably sapping your energy, they are not something in your genius zone – something ONLY you can do –  and someone else is probably Excellent at these tasks.

Competent zone activities should most likely all be delegated as well. 

Excellent. Most people assume this is all the things you should do. Like many other assumptions… that would be incorrect. For example, PVA Founder Trivinia is an expert at calendaring. She has color coding, time zones, reminders and all the details in one spot when she does it. 

However, when we subjected this calendaring to a few simple questions, she could see it is not something she should be doing. 

  1. Is this something ONLY Trivinia could do? Requiring her face? No
  2. Is this something that added to the bottom line of the business? No
  3. Is this something that can be taught for someone else to handle? Yes

If your “excellent” activities fail these three questions then you should not be doing those activities as well. 

What remains from your inventory should be ONLY the activities that you can do, require your face, and are in your genius zone!

If you have been honest with yourself, the rest is 10+ hours of work you can delegate today! 

If you’re having trouble finding those 10 hours and interested in learning about what an Executive Assistant can do for your business, schedule a strategy call with us.

If you’re interested in learning about what an Executive Assistant can do for your business, schedule a strategy call with us.

Our virtual team experts will help you determine how your business can benefit from our Priority Executive Assistants.

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.