3 Steps to Share The Load: How to lighten your responsibilities

Do you know how you are responsible for ‘everything’?    You have a job, a household to manage, family and friends to enjoy, to entertain and to support, and the natural desire to work on your own skills- your health, your intellect, and your evolution as an individual.  Responsibilities have become more complicated, more varied and more mutable than in humanities’ past. There is a necessary stretch for us to become masters (or at least passably-competent) in our myriad demands.  With all of these tasks, it is easy to feel that an oppressive and overwhelming cloud is keeping you from buoyant productivity.  

There is a known answer to this dilemma.  This key factor in our well-being and success has been lost in recent generations’ path toward individual prowess and power, but by necessity, it’s coming back.  We knew that to have the energy, time and sanity to keep all of our responsibilities flowing seamlessly throughout the fabric of our lives, we had to form a community- and we had to delegate. 

What does it mean to delegate?  To delegate is a critical management strategy, used to divide tasks among appointed people.  Though that sounds easy enough, being thoughtful and prepared when you delegate tasks will make the transaction much more smooth and reliable.  There is certain finesse in presentation required when you delegate tasks to individuals or groups of people, and here are the steps to achieve delegator success:

1. List your responsibilities

2. Have a community of people to delegate

3. Continue to be responsible for your responsibilities

The very first thing in delegation management is to make a list. Whether it is household chores or business responsibilities, lists are made of tangible, concrete and measurable items to delegate.  Make your list, and then categorize which responsibilities fall under which domain of your life such as: home, work, self, family/friends, etc.  

 If your list starts out with wide realms of responsibilities, such as “Take care of the new puppy”, you will want to detail out a sub-list of all of the duties required to take care of the new puppy.  When you’re writing out this list and you’ve forgotten some of the steps or duties of your responsibilities don’t worry.  Just start going along your daily routine and then jot down what you’re doing, and what you’re thinking about that needs to be done. Once it’s on the list, then you can forget about it for a while, and continue jotting more things that come into your mind and that you encounter throughout your day.   

Once you have your list complete, go through and cross out the items that you can happily and ably do yourself (these are things that you do not want or need to delegate to another person).  With the remainder items on your list, make sure that you have detailed out as much information as needed for another person to be able to read and understand.  This is a very thoughtful and some may say tedious process, however, the clearer that you can be in your list, using examples when needed, the easier it is going to be for someone to follow in your stead.  

 Here is an example:

Task: *Wash the Car*

Frequency: Every Saturday

Where: in the driveway

Steps: 
1. Remove the trash from the car,
2. Put away any accumulated objects (such as umbrellas, books, etc)
3. Remove floor mats then vacuum
4. Vacuum the inside floors, upholstery and trunk of car
5. Wash the inside windows
6. Wipe down the dash
7. Wash the outside of the car with soapy water and soft sponge
8. Rinse car with water from hose
9. Clean up all materials when finished

After your list is compiled and you feel comfortable with the steps and procedures added as needed, then you can start the job of matching the right person or the right team of people, for the responsibility.  The task of informing your delegates relies not only on concise, concrete responsibilities, but it also requires some respectful finesse in getting your delegates on board with the plan.  Whether it is your family, co-workers, children or employees, each person you enlist to help you with your list of responsibilities needs to feel empowered, valued and appreciated.  Relay the importance of working together as a team.  

If you are a parent, remember, your children are a viable source of help.  Get your kids involved in washing the dishes and cleaning up the communal areas of the house.  Kids can do so much and it is our duty as parents and caregivers to teach them how to take care of their own house one day.  Once your children have been conditioned how to put away their own laundry, or take out their own trash, etc. then you can start adding more duties to those they have learned. 

 Strategize your housework with your housemates so that you do not feel overly burdened.  Likewise with your office mates- coordinate a list of time-lines and duties that all team members will share in doing- who will clean the microwave this week, or throw out the old food in the fridge?  Make sure that your peers are on-board with the plan; this is where finesse is required for success.  Emphasize the fairness of sharing the load, and be sensitive to what people are capable of doing.  Sometimes it is a fair deal to rotate all of the shared duties; sometimes it is better for the team to strategize who is gifted, efficient or enjoys certain chores such as shopping, cooking or paying the bills and assign a regular delegate.

Employees need to be given particular instruction when doling out responsibility checklists.  See the article “How to Support Your Support Staff” for more information.

Finally, after you have allotted each item to a team member, you can take a deep breath, close your eyes, and start to re-route your own pattern.  This is an important step.  You will have to find a good equilibrium between letting go of the stress you had revolving around your imposing responsibilities, and the fact that ultimately, you are still the responsible person for what tasks you’ve delineated to others. It’s a fine balancing act to let go and still manage to maintain guiding control.  Each person and each instance will need to be measured for how much support and follow up they will require to do the job well-enough for your standards.    

Creating a detailed list, identifying and explaining tasks to your team members and then checking up to ensure things are completed will be initially time consuming if it is thorough and thoughtful.  When you put in the time and energy to make a solid foundation for your plan, you will be rewarded by forging a new and efficiently balanced system.

 “Many hands make light work”

For more information on how to communicate effectively with every person in your life, I highly suggest this book: Nonviolent Communication A Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg.