'Tis the season to be working?

Hang on I think I have that wrong - isn't it meant to be the season to be jolly or to rest? One of the challenges of working for yourself is that your boss can be a real *****!

So why do we do it to ourselves? One of the challenges is the level of uncertainty - where is the next dollar coming from?  No one knows the business as well or cares about it as you do. You can save money if you do it yourself.  But what are the risks with this approach? Well believe it or not we are not experts in everything and often take longer or have a more emotional view when making tough decisions.

It is critical that you work out your strengths and maximise your time in these areas of your business and seek assistance in all other areas. That does not mean that you ignore these areas; you should have oversight of them and still make critical decisions that impact your decision. That said, it is much quicker to brief, review and approve than to research, draft, learn, redraft, get pulled into something else for a couple of days,  implement and  measure and still not being quite sure whether you fully understand the nuances of the subject matter!

I challenge you to write down everything that you do at the moment over a week, yes everything and allocate a time to it. Once you have completed this, leave it be for a day or two and then come back to it; you will have discovered even more tasks that you had forgotten. How do you ever sleep, eat or play?! The next step is to group similar tasks into categories such as social media, finance, technology build or business development.

Now what can you outsource to free you up to focus on either your areas of strength or the critical areas of your business which you should not outsource? Please let me know you what you decide so that you can focus on what really matters - your business!

Natasha Hawker owns Employee Matters Pty Ltd; an HR Consultancy that assists small to medium businesses with their HR functions to make them more efficient and profitable. Their offering includes HR Management, Recruitment, Training, Coaching, and Exit Management – find them at www.employeematters.com.au