Don’t Do the Dishes

 

I was making breakfast this morning and put a bowl in the sink and noticed a handful of other dirty dishes in the sink. I dislike dirty dishes in the sink, but I dislike doing dishes more. I considered doing them, but then thought about all of the other things I needed to do today and felt a sense of relief knowing that the dishes would be done by tonight.

Why?

Because I have an awesome husband that will do them.

Before him, it was the nannies that I hired to help me with my son when I was a single mom.

Before that, it was my first husband.

So, am I just lazy? Heck no! If you know me, you know I’m incredibly productive.

So, what gives?

I reflected on the trend. I reflected on my dislike of doing dishes and realized there is a moral to this story…

I do the vast majority of the cooking, I will do laundry, I will pay bills, I will do most other things in the house, but dishes? Ugh. I actually get a sense of satisfaction out of many of those other things, but dishes just don’t do it for me. For some people, it’s their thing. Good for them, it’s not for me!

But, the dishes have to get done! So, what do I do? I outsource it! It’s not a thing I enjoy doing, nor is it the best use of my time. There are other people in the house that are fully capable and get much greater satisfaction out of doing the dishes, so I let them do the dishes and I do things that I’m better at or that give me greater satisfaction.

It seems like such a simple thing, but I think about how this applies to small business owners, PMO leaders, project managers, pretty much anyone who has too much to do.

Have you ever noticed that you tend to get done the things you like to do and the things that aren’t your favorite somehow take forever to get done? Well, yeah. Those other things are boring!

So what do you do about it? You find other people to do the things you don’t like to or shouldn’t be doing!

I can hear you saying, “Well, that’s great, but everything falls on my shoulders to get done and there is no one to help me.” OK, let’s go with that for a minute.

You have limited time during the day. Are you spending that time doing the most important, most impactful things that you should be doing? Are little things or things you despise doing getting in the way of your big rocks that really matter? Are you spending too much time procrastinating over the stuff that you really don’t like doing and then don’t have time for the most important things?

In my free time, I run a 60+ person volunteer team for my nonprofit and many of them are project managers. However, most of them are falling into the same trap of taking on tasks themselves instead of mastering the art of delegation and creatively leveraging the people around them to make things happen. Some of these managers are acting like individual contributors. You know why? Because it’s hard to get volunteers to do the things you need to do when you need to get them done. You know why? Because they are people. People have stuff to do. People have busy lives. People have other priorities. You know the difference between those volunteers and your work environment? Not much. It’s the same busy people with busy lives that all have other priorities and not enough time. You know all of those people dedicated to your projects? Yeah, they have other stuff to do too…even if they are allocated to you full-time.

So, how do we increase our productivity?

By not doing the dishes…or whatever your equivalent less than desirable task is that someone else could do.

What if we all focused on doing the things we like to do and the things that only we can do and then leveraged those around us to do the things they like to do? That way, all of the work gets done and we aren’t wasting energy on the procrastination, missing the most important things that only we can truly do, etc.

Project Managers, Small Business Owners, Business Leaders, Anyone Trying to Get. It. Done. Through Others:

Your job is to act like the orchestrator. You don’t play the instruments. You conduct the orchestra. You make sure everyone else is playing their instruments when they are supposed to. You provide guidance and direction. As the orchestrator, what you own is the plan. Make sure that you focus on the plan and guiding everyone to follow your plan. DO NOT rescue the musicians by playing their instruments for them. It’s not sustainable and if you stop conducting to go play an instrument, who is going to lead the rest of the musicians through the sheets of music?

What if you are a single person company? I would highly encourage you to google “virtual assistant”.

What if you have a team (project managers, small business leaders, etc.)? Get the team together and create a “sense of we” between all of you.  Work with them to figure out who should be doing what, how to make sure your energy is focused on only what you must do, how you are going to hold each other accountable for delivery (not just you holding them individually accountable), and how you can work together to get to the best outcomes.

Then go Get. It. Done! All of you…doing what only you can do.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article.

I welcome your feedback and insights. Please leave a comment below.

See you online!

Warmly,