Saying NO to activities that drain you

Are there items on your to-do list in your professional or personal life that you hate doing? As humans, we seem to value struggle and are impressed by those who work harder and suck it up. Sometimes the to-do’s that demand this approach are reasonable and necessary; more often, these lingering items on our list are distractions that slow us down from reaching our goals and make us downright unhappy.

I have spent the last two years identifying the most effective ways to outsource my life to minimize the pain of doing stuff I hate so that I can focus on what I’m best at. In my career as an entrepreneur / sales and leadership coach, I emphasize “highest payoff tasks” and minimizing distractions. I help clients develop a more disciplined approach to the activities that deserve most of their energy and attention. I try to also model that every day, to “practice what I preach.” We are constantly getting sucked into activities, tasks, conversations that derail and slow us down from reaching our financial goals, not to mention our optimal level of happiness. I'm most interested in helping people, myself included, create more effective professional and personal lives. My mission is to help a million kids...have parents who have passion and purpose at work and at home.

Here is a process that might minimize some pain and make a difference in your day-to-day effectiveness:

First, make a list of the things you do that bore you, drain your energy, and that you dread or avoid. Put each item into one of three buckets:

I could teach / ask someone else to do this.

I just need to do it today or tomorrow.

I can take this off my list for now.

Time is a finite resource. The more time you spend on the activities you are best at and that give you the most comparative advantage, the more results you are guaranteed to achieve. If nothing else, this mentality opens space for other activities, such as strategic planning, creative thinking, and basic self-care (e.g., exercising, going to the doctor, having lunch with a friend, picking up your kids from school).

“From my research, the difference between the [most successful people] and the rest of us can be found less in what they choose to do and more in what they chose NOT to do. They are rigorously discriminating about how they choose to deploy [their time and energy]. No matter how tempting the offer, they refuse to get sucked into activities that they know they will not enjoy.” Marcus Buckingham, The One Thing You Need to Know About Great Management, Great Leadership and Sustained Individual Success

In The 4-Hour Work Week, which I highly recommend, Ferriss tackles the subject of outsourcing your life in very practical ways. I recently saw him speak and asked him if there was one thing that keeps people from being optimally successful. He said quite simply, “The inability to say no” to the short-term gratification of checking something unimportant off your long list and to short-term monetary offers that are not aligned with your longer-term goals.

As you begin to redesign some small yet significant pieces of your day-to-day work or personal life, here are three tangible action items you might consider that have worked for me. I started with three things that made an immediate impact (within 90 days) in my daily effectiveness, happiness, and revenue results.

1. I created a master list of all the tasks I didn’t want to do.

I was conscious of the fact that some things on the list would take time to feel comfortable with (e.g., doing my banking), and others might be a stretch to ask someone to help me with and not feel like a lazy loser (e.g., booking a dinner reservation for my wife and me). Some of the things on my list got me excited: ordering tickets for an upcoming concert, booking my business travel, doing research for the book I was writing, scheduling my car for servicing, organizing my receipts, talking to a customer service rep to reconcile an issue with a bill, helping me create an online webinar invitation, cleaning up and organizing my inbox. When I was creating the list and the three buckets, I tried to frame it in my mind as an ‘experiment’ so I wouldn’t get too worked up. My goal was just to put things on paper, then consider getting help with or letting go of some items on my list entirely. As the saying goes, “The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.”

2. I hired a virtual assistant for a 30-day trial.

I live in San Francisco, and my assistant lives in the thriving metropolis of Seymour, Indiana (my home state). It truly doesn’t matter where they live. If they are local, there are some advantages, but it is not necessary. Put an ad on Craigslist or ask people you know for a referral. You’ll find all sorts of resources if you Google “virtual assistant.” Do NOT hire your spouse.

To start, I gave my virtual assistant Sara a couple of tasks each week for four weeks with short-term timelines for completion. Examples of initial assignments: clean up my Salesforce database and merge with my Outlook contacts, design PowerPoint slides for an upcoming presentation, make a client proposal look nicer and convert to a PDF, schedule a doctor and dentist appointment for my wife and me, research my cell phone plan to see if I can get a better deal…you get the idea. Giving her these tasks that I had been avoiding finally got them done while also testing her skills, responsiveness, and style.

I created a straightforward 30-day agreement with phone check-ins at the end of each week where we reviewed what was and wasn’t working. I committed to a block of hours at an hourly rate of $20/hour, totaling $400. I had a ballpark idea of how much time the assigned tasks should take, but I didn’t worry about the exact number of hours she spent on them. I find that if I give the right kind of person trust and flexibility in these situations, they will typically give me more output and responsiveness for my money, not less.

3. I was willing to stretch through my mental roadblocks.

Much of the resistance to this process is psychological. I had to get over the idea that I was “just being lazy,” that “it's easier just to do this myself,” and “how I could justify paying someone to do these things.” I had to let go of the part of my nature that struggles and complains.

The other psychological roadblock to this process was the periodic urge I would get to take everything back when Sara made a mistake. I had to be clear and firm, but also realistic that it would take time to get a system down and eventually have Sara be able to “read my mind.”

I have suggested hiring a virtual assistant for both work-related and personal tasks to many clients and friends. Ninety-five percent of them just won't do it. It’s not that expensive (as little as $200-$500 per month to start) and it's not hard to make the case to justify the investment. The psychological resistance is the hardest part to work through, which I wholly understand. Thanks to my successful outsourcing experiment, I’ve minimized the drama and stress in my life and am happier than I’ve ever been. Even if you can’t bring yourself to outsource parts of your life, at least consider saying “no” or “not now” to tasks that really aren’t important. Focus on what energizes you and more quickly gets you to your goals.

Recommended book: The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss; The One Thing You Need to Know… by Marcus Buckingham

Onward.

Tom