Freelance Apple

Being successful  does not make you manage your time well,

Managing your time well makes you successful

R Pausch

There are several reasons why a freelancer delegates tasks to a fellow freelancer or to someone else. Whatever the reason for delegating a task there is surely one thing which you should achieve by delegating a task and that is to get more time. This article will illustrate the advantages and occurrences when you should delegate tasks and the manner in which to do so. This is all part of ‘Productivity Week’ where we are aiming to help freelancers make the most of their time. Productivity week continues until 9th March and is about to get a lot more interesting. Make sure you are not left in the dark by subscribing to our RSS

If it costs money, what is the advantage?

1. Profitable
If a client asks you for a further service which you is not in your skill-set, as opposed to turning the client down, you ought to delegate the further tasks to someone you know who can offer this service. This type of delegation is profitable as well as saving you and the client time. Also when you have too many clients you can take on more than one if you are delegating tasks to others in your field.

2. Less work
Another advantage is that if you delegate the tasks to someone else, there is less effort involved for you. They needn’t do it faster than you, or as fast as you, so long as they are doing it within deadline. Of course as a freelancer we need to make an income which means that you ought to take care that you make a good mark up between the client and the fellow freelancer.

3. Time efficiency

This is the core reason as to why I delegate anything to anyone. It saves you time. If you are a designer taking on a new project means that you must spend less time with your loved ones, you ought to delegate this task to someone else. This being profitable and being less work are minor reasons compared to being efficient with your time even if it costs you money.

Before you shake your head at my last point of losing money for time, let me conjure up an example which reflects my point. Your wife wants you to mow the lawn whereas you want to spend time cooking with your son. You should delegate the task of mowing the lawn to a gardener and go ahead with cooking with your son. Money is not half as important as those precious moments you will spend with your boy, plus the gardener will to a better job.

Manners

I once had a boss who delegated a simple task to me saying “Shoaib, I need you to do this and this, because honestly I hate doing it”. I felt horrid and I’m sure anyone else would at doing the rubbish which nobody wants to take on. We need to learn a few lessons here:

• When you delegate a task, do the ugliest part yourself. This will motivate the person you delegated to and seems fair.
• Do NOT dump when delegating – that is not the purpose of delegating work
• Give authority and responsibility to the one you delegated to
• Give them a specific time, date and a specific reward and a specific penalty for them for failing to complete task. Without this they will not meet the deadlines
• Let the person you delegated to use their own initiative so just give them the basics and don’t interfere with their ability
• Treat them with dignity and respect showing love and care for their feelings

Final Word

Look at your to-do list and recognise those things which you can delegate to someone else. When you have delegated those things you will have time to do more work or to spend with your loved ones. I would suggest that if you delegated so much work that you are free for more than 40 hours a week, you should spend more time doing work otherwise spend your valuable time with family and friends.

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