Listful Thinking

When I get into the office on a Monday morning and ask coworkers how their weekend was, I get a similar response from many people, “Too short!” Time—it’s what everyone complains about and wishes we had more of. But maybe that’s because many of us are not using our time wisely enough.

Even very productive people have trouble getting everything done throughout the day. But the secret really is being able to delegate. If you can take something off your plate so that you can work on something else that you’re better at, you will be much more efficient.

You may remember Tom Sawyer as a troublemaker, but he was also a master at outsourcing. You can see how he used it to his advantage in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, where he wanted to get out of doing his chores.

In case you don’t remember the story, I’ll summarize. Tom is in trouble again, and his Aunt Polly isn’t happy with him. His punishment is to spend his Saturday whitewashing the fence. But Tom would rather do other things with his time, so he cleverly convinces other boys to do the work for him. He tells them what a pleasure it is to whitewash a fence and that not everyone is cut out for it. Tricked into doing Tom’s work, the boys trade things like an apple, a kite, a piece of chalk, some tadpoles, marbles, a kitten with one eye, and many other trinkets for a chance to try whitewashing the fence. Three coats of paint later, Tom had quite a collection of booty without having to break a sweat.

Tom could paint the fence himself, but he didn’t want to do it. Does that sound familiar? How many times have you been faced with an errand, like going to the drug store, or a task, like updating your blog, but felt pressed to find the time or the will to do it? Tom teaches us an important lesson: outsourcing will set you free!

Outsourcing is getting someone else or a service to do tasks for you, so that you free up time to do the things you’re really good at. (In Tom’s case this meant relaxing outside and collecting goodies!) Outsourcing also cuts down on the pressure we put on ourselves. “There’s this shared kind of cultural story that the busier you are, the more stressed you are, the more important you are,” Heidi Hanna points out.

I used to be a control freak about everything I had to get done at work and at home, but when I realized there was a better way, I quickly retrained my brain. Now, I think in terms of who can do some of those jobs well. Then I can focus on going to my day job, writing this book, maintaining my blog, and going to dinner with my husband. These are things that only I can do, and I’d much rather give my time to them. I could recode my website or go grocery shopping, but they’re not the best use of my time.

One of the most effective and successful outsourcers I’ve ever met is Ari Meisel. When Ari was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, he was able to figure out a way to get off his meds and live a healthy life, with the help of his doctors. I interviewed him about his journey for my day job. I quickly found out that his experience led him to perfect “the art of less doing” in order to keep his stress levels down. Ari created LessDoing.com and wrote a book, Less Doing, More Living: Make Everything in Life Easier, to help people “optimize, automate, and outsource everything in life and be more effective at everything.”

Ari believes that you shouldn’t waste your time doing things that other people are just better at—which allows you to do what you’re great at and really want to do. “Skillsets that we lack, that other people have, that we’re really not best served learning ourselves and probably couldn’t reach the same level of expertise are best outsourced,” says Ari Meisel.

You’ve probably used a travel agent in the past, right? Well this is the same sort of idea. You could scour the Internet looking for the best deals and recommendations, or you could leave that to someone who could do it better. Then you can use that extra time to take on another client, who will help pay for that ziplining adventure package you want to add to your vacation.

I’ve been raving about the movie Limitless ever since Jay and I saw it in 2011. If you haven’t seen it yet, you need to! Not only because Bradley Cooper is easy on the eyes but also because it’s a very entertaining thriller. I guarantee that by the end of the movie you’ll want the drug called NZT.

NZT allows people to access 100 percent of their brain instead of the 20 percent we normally use. It’s like being your best possible self—and then some! Bradley Cooper’s character, Eddie, learns languages in a fraction of the time and recalls all sorts of information and memories in a flash. He writes a novel in just days and becomes rich fast by learning the ins and outs of trading stocks.

Talk about crossing off everything on your to-do list! Wouldn’t it be nice to whiz through all the things you need and want to do? Well, you can—without NZT. It’s possible with outsourcing.

I’ve written a lot about how important it is to remember that you are just one person. Give yourself a break sometimes! It’s not always possible to get everything done on your own, which is why sometimes you have to ask for help. I finally took my own advice and enlisted the help of some interns. Wow! Has my life gotten better. It’s really amazing what giving up a little control can do.

You can keep track of your ideas. Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night with a brilliant thought? Maybe you write it down, but then you lose track of the piece of paper or get caught up by your life again and forget your inspiration? When you have help, you have someone who will keep track of all your “crazy ideas” and help manage the things you forget. A simple, “Hey! You wanted to do this, how would you like to proceed?” from a helping hand will keep you focused and on track.

You will have more time. Maybe you have a great idea but no time to implement it. An extra set of hands to do research or reach out to a contact will allow you to get more done. If there’s too much on your plate, get an extra fork!

You can make more money. You might be more successful if you have someone to help manage your workload and keep track of your ideas. Maybe you’ll finally get to develop a new idea because you’ll have the means and the assistance to get it done.

You will experience less stress. Having too much on your to-do list distracts you from really focusing on the task at hand and can diminish the quality of your work. Delegate some of what needs to get done, and you’ll be less stressed and produce better work.

In Stressaholic: 5 Steps to Transform Your Relationship with Stress, Heidi Hanna points out, “Multitasking decreases performance and actually wastes time and kills energy and all of these negative things. People are really drawn to do it because they feel like they need to get more done in less time.”

Technology goddess Carley Knobloch founded Digitwirl. com (which has morphed into CarleyK.com) because her crazy life as a life coach and mom of two was driving her into the ground. She told me that getting things off your plate that make you feel terrible is a big win. “Wouldn’t I love to not have to run two extra errands so I can just stay with my kids a little bit longer or just so I don’t have to feel drained after I go to Costco? I would rather pay someone to go to Costco any day of the week. It’s worth it to me not just because of the money but also because of how I feel at the end of that experience. I’d just rather not feel that way,” she says.

You will enjoy camaraderie. It’s always good to be able to rely on someone who has your best interests and goals in mind. Hiring help will keep you balanced. You’ll be able to trust an intern or an assistant to maintain your tasks and schedule, while you redirect your own brainpower. You’ll have someone you can run ideas by and who’ll also make sure you’re taking a lunch break when you’ve got a particularly hectic day.

If you’re still hesitant to recruit someone to help you, ask yourself the following questions:

✓ What big ideas would you launch if someone else could manage the details?

✓ What have you been meaning to do that keeps getting put on the back burner?

You will be very surprised by the number of things you can outsource in your life. The possibilities are many. I’ve outsourced a variety of tasks, including my grocery shopping, my housecleaning, research, blog-post formatting, and social media management.

✓ A podcast

✓ Editing

✓ Transcribing

✓ Writing blogs

✓ Social media maintenance

✓ Research

✓ Ordering supplies

✓ Making appointments and schedules

✓ Travel planning

✓ Getting French citizenship (!)

“The things that everybody says is ‘Oh it will just take a minute; I’ll do it myself.’ Nothing takes a minute, and those are the things that if you can get enough of those done, it really, really adds up to something special,” says Ari Meisel.

Did You Know? You Really Can Pay People to Do Any Task

In a New York Post article titled “NY Full of 24-Hour Lazy People,” Reed Tucker details several things to outsource. He notes that for a price, you can practically delegate any task, even having someone else drive your car for you. For twenty bucks an hour, a guy from Brooklyn will drive you wherever you want to go—you just supply the wheels. (http://bit.ly/1tvY2lZ)

1. Packing a healthy lunch for your child (Yep, there’s a service that will do it: InBoxYourMeal.com.)

4. Housecleaning (Leave the tile scrubbing to someone else while you organize your fall sweaters by color.)

6. Rearranging furniture (Need to move around some large furniture pieces to make room for your Christmas tree? Hire a mover.)

7. Picture hanging (Make your home a bit more “homey” before your parents come to visit.)

Have I convinced you? Let me help you find good help. Okay? The first task when hiring is to figure out who “gets” you. If you’re going to use a virtual assistant to help with work tasks, it’s important that you mesh. When you’re delegating important aspects of your business, you want to make sure you can rely on that person. For some other tasks, though, any reputable assistant will do.

1. Elance.com—great for building a workforce. Post a freelance job and hear back from qualified designers, writers, graphic artists, accountants, marketing specialists, virtual assistants, and just about any other specialty you can think of.

2. FancyHands.com—by far one of my favorite outsourcing companies. I use this service regularly, and it’s been a huge help. They will do any virtual task as long as it takes about twenty minutes to complete. They will make reservations and do quick research. But they don’t do physical tasks like picking up your dry cleaning or coming over to cook you dinner. Fancy Hands helped me plan a trip to Italy, research contractors, and find a guitar instructor for my husband. You pay for tasks in batches of five, fifteen, or twenty-five tasks, and they bill monthly or yearly.

3. TaskRabbit.com—another one of my favorites. This company was started because the CEO needed food for her dog but was working late. So Leah Busque dreamed up a solution. “Even if I am marginally better at doing something, it makes sense to outsource it if my time can be better spent doing something else,” she explained in her guest post on my blog.

A TaskRabbit will help you cross off to-dos like food shopping, buying a gift for your friend, and even delivering a singing telegram! You pay per task and can take multiple bids on your project. The TaskRabbits who are bidding on your task don’t know how much others are willing to be paid for your task, so it’s pretty competitive, and if you like a particular TaskRabbit, you can hire him or her again.

4. Handy.com (formerly Handybook.com)—a great resource for finding a cleaning service, plumber, or a handyman. The idea is to spend less time scouring the Internet for reputable and reliable service people. Think about all the time you will save Googling sites and names!

5. Guru.com—another service to help find freelancers. You can find technical, creative, and business types on this site. Whether you need an online chat specialist, a poet, or an event planner, you can find that person here.

6. Wun Wun—an app from a New York start-up that, unlike other services, specializes in deliveries. With this app, you can have anything you want delivered to you anywhere in Manhattan, the Hamptons or San Francisco. Your favorite dessert, a pair of new jeans, cases of wine for a party—you name it, they’ll deliver it.

7. Zirtual.com—a sort of matchmaking site of virtual assistants. You fill out a profile, and they pair you with the best person for the job. Then you have one dedicated assistant to help you with your tasks. Fees start at $99 a month. The virtual assistants can help with research, scheduling, purchasing, data entry, e-mail processing, phone calls, and much more.

8. Hire an intern—interns are usually free labor. Interns are also probably doing schoolwork along with your projects, so they’re not dedicated solely to you. I’ve had several amazing interns help me maintain my blog, research this book, and handle my social media. I chose interns who are interested in my industry. I’ve given them tours of studios, introduced them to experts, critiqued their résumés, and given them career advice and guidance. I happen to like doing all those things, but they are time-consuming. So even though you are getting “free” help, if you’re good to your interns, it will be a bit of a time investment as well. Keep that in mind. The process of finding someone can be a bit of a challenge as well, but once you find that person, the payoff is immense. I put an ad on Linkedin.com and reached out to local universities with internship programs.

Now, the part you’ve been waiting for: how much will outsourcing cost me? Well, first thing about this is, what is it worth to you to have help? I believe that if you can do just one more project per month, with a little assistance, the investment is well worth it.

Ari Meisel told me that he has saved 3,000 hours and half a million dollars over the last two years because he’s outsourced so many tasks. Those numbers are staggering. Let’s be realistic: this is all a bit subjective because it depends on how much you value your time, what your own personal skill set is, and how much money you have. But really, wouldn’t you rather have 3,000 hours to play with your kids or lay on a beach instead of running errands? That half a million could come in handy too!

Here’s another idea: how about bartering for assistance? When you barter, you trade services with someone who can help you out. So for instance, I could write copy for a web designer’s personal website, and in return, she could make me a new logo for my website. See how that works? You can use something you’re good at to get something you need—without money ever exchanging hands. This option is more time-consuming, so decide what makes the most sense for you.

In theory it’s an amazingly freeing thought to give your chores to someone else. But unlike Tom Sawyer—not everyone has such an easy time delegating—it definitely takes some practice. Here are a few tips:

1. Be organized. Write a list of all of the things you can delegate. Be super specific. This list might include scheduling appointments, coming up with menu ideas for dinner, picking up items for an upcoming party, managing an overflowing e-mail inbox, and redesigning blog logos, among a variety of tasks.

2. Be realistic. You know yourself better than anyone, so be honest about what really takes five minutes to do and what can be outsourced.

3. Be humble. Don’t try to be a superhero and do it all. That idea is so passé. Be smart about what you’re good at and stick to that.

4. Be clear. Ari makes a checklist of every process he has his virtual assistants complete for him. He has fifty-three checklists at this point, for all sorts of tasks, including paying bills. The more work you do upfront to make sure that your hired help understands the task, the more seamless the transition will be.

5. Be grateful. Now that you have extra time to do the things you really want to do, smile! You’ve effectively outsourced things that you could have done yourself but didn’t need to. Now you can spend more time with your family, go on vacation, read a magazine, or take a nap. Relish it!