What Should You Delegate or Outsource? 3 Steps to Help you Decide

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If you stopped by the other day, you probably know I confessed about my need to delegate and outsource more. If you didn’t catch it, go ahead and check it out. I’ll wait…

Done reading? Great!

I figure my “confession” may move some of you to let go of more as well. Just in case, I want to share 3 simple steps that can take you from control freak to delegating diva – or dude.

The 3 steps are simple: Evaluate, Sort, Prioritize. Lets take a look at each.

Step 1: Evaluate

One of the first steps you should take when trying to decide what to outsource is evaluate your daily responsibilities. What projects, tasks, etc are you responsible for? What’s on your plate?

Spend some time listing every project you have to complete, and make sure you note every task that is related to each project. When you begin outsourcing, you may find it helpful to delegate related tasks and/or outsource an entire project to the same provider.

Step 2: Sort

Once you have a list of your responsibilities in front of you, you can review each task and decide what you need to handle, and what you should delegate to someone else. As you review and sort the tasks, make sure you take into consideration the complexity and due date, as well as your strengths and weaknesses. You will notice some things are more suitable for outsourcing than others, and guess what? That’s fine.

At the end of this step, you should have the responsibilities from the first step sorted into 2 lists. Label the list of tasks you plan to handle “In-house” and the list you will delegate to someone else “Outsource.”

Step 3: Prioritize

It’s now time to prioritize! Lets start with the “Outsource” list. Again, you will need to pay close attention to the due dates in this step. The tasks that require immediate attention should be at the top of your list. As you begin to outsource, you can delegate the high priority tasks until you work your way through the entire list.

The fact that you’re ready to delegate more is a wonderful thing. My recent decision to let go of a lot has certainly freed up a considerable chunk of my time.

But, before you jump out there, make sure you spend some time on each of these 3 steps when deciding what you should handle and what you should delegate.

Do you have any outsourcing tips or tricks to share? If so, I’d love to hear them in the comments section below.