Lifestyle Mastery Boxed Set

by Scott Allan

  If you spend day and night working in the office but neglect to build a strong relationship with your wife and children, you won’t be truly successful in your efforts. Your family will grow apart and you might be faced with a broken home, losing everything you were working for.

  If you forget to make improvements on your character development every now and then, you’ll eventually build up a deep emptiness inside through character deprivation. You can be totally successful in one or two areas of your life but a complete failure in others.

  The most successful people are those that dedicate time to the various parts of living. Commit your time to each vital area, even if it’s only a short amount of time, and you’ll feel fulfilled and satisfied. Working sixteen hours a day and rushing home to eat and sleep isn’t exactly a well-balanced lifestyle. You can do it for a while, but if this continues for an extended period of time, your balance scales will tip over.

  In other words, your efforts will result in misery and burnout. Balancing the importance of your life takes time and practice. It is a skill that becomes easier the more effort you put into it. Know what matters and contribute a piece of each day or week to a healthy way of living. Don’t work too much, and don’t play too much. But do both as much as possible.

  Organize Your Systems

  Organization plays an important role in saving and investing time. Nothing defeats an organized individual with a clean desk who has every paper put away into neat files. You can build fast, efficient systems for everything you do, even the housework. I can’t stress enough the importance of utilizing this powerful skill to save time and money.

  To organize your paperwork, make files for things you want to keep. The trick is simple: move everything only once! That is, if you have moved the same piece of paper around six times, it’s obviously not in the right place. Organization is about putting things in the right place so when the time comes for you to use that material, it’s in your hands within seconds.

  You know where it is and you don’t spend minutes, hours, or weeks looking for it. If you lose something valuable, you have to replace it if it’s lost. How much time have you spent looking for things that could have been filed away in their proper places?

  Now, try these ideas for getting organized and maintaining that organization.

  Make files for everything. Important papers, especially your goals and working statement, need a place you can access easily and quickly. If you spend more than twenty seconds looking for something, it’s in the wrong place.

  Touch it only once. Don’t shift a pile of papers from one desk to another. You will only end up shifting them again. Move it once and remember where it is.

  Practice getting organized. This is a skill that improves over time. The more you do it, the more efficient you become at it, and you save thousands of hours in the long run.

  Put everything back when you’re finished. One of my habits is to use something and leave it someplace else. This means that the next time I want to use it, I have to spend time looking for it, or somebody else does. It only takes a second to return what you used.

  The Power of Delegating

  “Until we can manage time, we can

  manage nothing else.”

  — Peter F. Drucker

  What would you do if your biggest dreams and lifelong goals required some special skills that you didn’t have? What if you needed some high-level technical training or years of schooling in order to accomplish the things you really wanted to do? What if you had very limited time to get that training? How would you deal with a project that required the trade, skills, and ideas of a thousand individual minds?

  The answer to these questions brings us to the power of delegating, the fastest and most efficient way to increase efficiency and save you years, if not decades, of time. This is the secret behind the success of thousands of people that have accelerated their growth and development at a phenomenal rate, combining the skills, knowledge, and work of the many in order to succeed and achieve the impossible within a limited timeframe.

  If you take a look at any successful business entrepreneur, president, or world-class, high-level achiever, you will see the work of hundreds or thousands of people involved in the success of this individual. These successful people found the people that had the skills, information, talents, and knowledge they didn’t have and hired them.

  This goes for anything that requires dozens of individual skills working together for similar goals. The success of an individual, company, city, or country is realized by the combined effort of the many. Each of us has the same amount of time every day, and you can only accomplish so much as one individual.

  When people combine their efforts and skills and dedicate these talents to a specific purpose, their productivity and efficiency increase exponentially. If two people working together can do double the work in the same amount of time, imagine what a hundred or a thousand people can do if given a specific job and priorities to fulfill. Cities and empires are created this way. Families are created this way. The success of global companies and world change is created this way.

  We all have the same amount of time every day: twenty-four hours. This is constant, non-negotiable, and will never change. We have just twenty-four hours in which to sleep, eat, work, and enjoy recreational activities. Maybe you think this isn’t enough time. Some days it certainly feels this way. You have loads of housework to do, a report due by the end of the week, and a task list that grows daily.

  These are obstacles everyone faces as we struggle with deadlines and hectic schedules, and only have twenty-four hours to do it all in. The clock is racing, and you can’t catch up to it.

  What if I were to tell you that you could expand your time and resources? What if, instead of the usual twenty-four hours a day, you were given thirty-two hours a day? Would it make a difference in the quality of your life? Could you get everything done? Would it be more time you could spend with friends or family? Would you be able to relax, knowing that the work needed to get the job done is in more capable hands than just your own?

  Well, through delegating work to other people, you can increase the time you have available for other things. It is a strategy used by businesses, entrepreneurs, and successful people all over the world, all of whom have the same time available to them as you and me, yet they achieve so much more in a day than most people can get done in a year. The reason for this is simple: they delegate the tasks that others can do, and they do the tasks that only they can do.

  It is through this method that you exponentially increase your time. You pass the work on to people that possess the proper skills and qualifications to achieve the goals you desire. Movie makers, writers, corporate CEOs, musicians, and even performers—everyone benefits from delegated work. They understand the importance and significance of delegating their visions and dreams to people with similar interests.

  It doesn’t matter what your dream is, how big it is, or how impossible it might seem. It is only impossible if you try to do it alone. People that go about it alone accomplish very little. They become masters of nothing because they are too busy trying to master everything.

  “I Can Do It All!”

  Delegating sometimes costs money, and other times it doesn’t. You don’t have to fork over huge amounts of cash to get something done. Not all of us can afford a personal secretary or a private team of advanced professionals working around the clock.

  However, when faced with a situation where they don’t have the time, resources, or proper skills to get a job done, those with mega success outsource the work instead of spending hundreds of hours researching how to do it. The golden rule of delegating is to do what you can and delegate the rest.

  There are people that hate to delegate any kind of workload. They don’t like trusting others to do the work because they think and believe they can do it much better. They want to get all the credit for the job, and to show everyone else that they did it and can do anything on their o
wn.

  People operating from this position are rarely willing to listen to the advice of others that could add new input or take a project in a new direction. They often do the one thing that places them at the bottom of the list: they fail to learn. Furthermore, they fail to give others the opportunity to express their own talents and creativity. You might eventually get all the credit, but you won’t have anyone to share it with if you try to do it all.

  Through delegating necessary work, you’re increasing the productivity and efficiency of projects. If you’re able to convince others that your vision is a real winner, you could develop a powerful support system of professionals willing to lend you their invaluable ideas and input.

  If you don’t find a way to delegate at least a small portion of your workload, thereby adding more time to your days, you’ll end up working longer hours, your stress will increase dramatically, and—eventually—you won’t be working at all.

  If you try to make it on your own, you’ll be a tortoise racing against lions. Success in work or with projects is accomplished much faster and easier through the combined efforts of a group of individuals sharing a similar vision and working toward a definite purpose.

  Time really is money, and if you consider this when delegating, remember that for every hour you save through delegating, you could be doubling your income, doubling your private time spent at home, or kicking up your feet on a beach in Bali, while those at home are doing the work that you organized.

  If you follow the steps for successful delegating listed in the section below, you will reap some powerful rewards from distributing work to others.

  It pays to delegate because it…

  Is the fastest way to boost your efficiency and productivity

  Expands your valuable resources

  Provides you with more time to focus on personal goals

  Significantly reduces mistakes and increases damage control abilities

  Reduces personal workloads and stress

  Provides others with the opportunity to boost their confidence and increase their personal skill levels

  Reduces pressure to do it all by yourself and helps increase your trust in others

  Whether you’re a company CEO or a homemaker, delegating gives you more time and energy to do the things you want to do.

  The Ten Pillars of Delegating

  “Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people

  spend it for you.”

  — Carl Sandburg

  These ten delegating steps to success are utilized by successful managers, organizations, corporations, and private individuals to meet workplace demands in the everyday world.

  Clearly share your vision with everyone involved.

  Clearly explain the goals, objectives, and expected outcomes to everyone involved in the work. For families who share housework, at the beginning of the week, the family will hold a short meeting in which they discuss their goals for the week, as well as each person’s responsibilities for the week. The chairperson—the mother or the father—delegates the work to be done.

  Every morning in Japan, factory and shop workers gather together for a brief “warm-up” session before starting the workday. They discuss each other’s responsibilities and the goals for that day, followed by a short stretching session. It is important that everyone have goals and understand the important role they play in helping achieve those goals. The vision is shared by everyone, and each person involved works to bring that vision to life.

  Keep an open line of communication.

  When it comes to delegating work, have an open line of communication with your employees, staff, coworkers, or family members. One of the keys to success for any organization is to hold regular meetings to check everyone’s progress, discuss problems people are having, and discuss some of the solutions to those problems.

  A lack of communication results in heavy time and money losses. If it isn’t always feasible to bring everyone together for a meeting, sending out regular email is a viable alternative.

  Offer suggestions, feedback, and evaluate progress.

  When you delegate work to another person, even if it is a professional with years of experience, they still require your advice and feedback on the progress of the work. If you don’t give this, they could make mistakes that could have been avoided, and once again, the resources that you’re trying to protect are wasted.

  If you’re too busy to do this, find a delegate to represent you—somebody who knows the work as well as you do and can track its progress and offer positive suggestions and feedback to everyone involved.

  Make a tracking list for delegated tasks.

  Always keep a list of who is doing what, what their deadlines are, and any pressing problems or concerns that people need help with. It depends on the size of the project, but if you lose track of where your work is, it will be very difficult to monitor progress and talk to the people directly involved.

  Keep records of everything that has been handed out and regularly follow up with the people performing the work. Remember, though, that your work isn’t done once you delegate tasks; rather, it is just beginning.

  Train people if necessary.

  You might have times when work or a project delegated to people requires an upgrade in their skills and knowledge. This training might be in the form of a small presentation, a seminar, on-the-job training, or a meeting to discuss the job at hand and what is involved. The scale of the work is not important. When you delegate, you are still responsible for the final outcome.

  If someone makes an error because they didn’t have proper training or lacked the information to do the job right, you are accountable. Mistakes and errors are going to happen no matter how well people are informed, but you can greatly reduce the damage through training people beforehand. Once again, communication plays a powerful role when delegating work.

  Furthermore, an investment in upgrading people’s skills is an investment in yourself. I have known employers or managers that have fired loyal, long-standing employees simply because that person’s knowledge and skills were a little outdated.

  Instead of taking the time and investing a little money in a valuable asset, they brought in new staff that had the proper skills but lacked familiarity with the environment and systems. These people had to be trained despite their education whereas that money could have been spent instead on the employees that just had outdated information. Whose fault is it? I think you can guess.

  Once again, remember to show people what is expected of them, and then show them how to get the results you desire. Don’t give up on people before they show you what they’re capable of if given the chance.

  Don’t pass the blame. Stay accountable for your work.

  When things go wrong, the first instinct for some people is to find the person responsible and give them a good scolding. Unfortunately, thousands of people lose their jobs every year due to an error made not by them, but the person they reported to.

  Perhaps that person didn’t have all the details or lacked the proper skills to complete the task. In any case, the responsibility for work passed out is shared by you and the delegated individual. Passing blame to another is a lose-lose situation for both parties and is something you want to avoid at all costs.

  Praise good work.

  Work that is worthy must be praised. I have worked for people in the past who, no matter how hard you worked, never recognized good efforts. They only acknowledged work done poorly or wrongly. It doesn’t matter if the person delegated the task is getting paid for it or not; they still need to be praised.

  Acknowledgement of good work feels good and boosts the confidence of all those involved; it instills in people the motivation to do even better the next time. Something as simple as praising people is good for families, business, and relationships.

  Assign work to the right person.

  Before y
ou delegate work to someone or hire an outside source, first make sure that person or company is right for the job. It is your responsibility to find the right people, and making a mistake, such as passing the work on to someone that doesn’t have the proper skills, could cost you a lot of money and valuable time. For example, I wouldn’t ask somebody to fix my car’s engine if they couldn’t identify a spark plug. Always assign work to the most capable person and provide them with as much detail as possible.

  Don’t overload.

  Don’t overload any one person with more than they can handle. This is a terrible waste of resources because if you value that person as an effective resource and a key delegate, loading them up with too much work causes them stress, and the work won’t be done properly. People that are overworked will work faster to get rid of the things on their to-do list, but the work will be sloppy and not as good as it could’ve been had they only had one task to accomplish.

  Be professional.

  I have worked with many people, and I cherish those experiences when employees were treated as part of the business: the managers provided praise and encouragement, feedback, and training for my weaker areas. This was a very professional way to keep morale high and encourage people to do the best they could.

  I have worked in other professions that treated people just the opposite. Workers were considered expendable and verbally mistreated and very little encouragement was provided with regard to the quality of work done. This is unprofessional and creates a negative environment.

  If you’re in charge of delegating work or are the one receiving responsibility, remember that a professional attitude is something that people will always remember you for. It will also keep the good people in your company, and when you have enough good people working with or for you, the opportunities to build and create something new are increased tenfold.