EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

How did you go with keeping score of your time this week? Let me know. And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you got to go back, watch last week’s episode, do the work, then come back to this one. The first time I did this exercise with a client, she cried. It was there in black and white screaming up at her from the page. She spent on average over six hours a day doing things she loathed. No wonder she was at the point of wanting to give up her business and struggling in her personal life. I’ll give a little disclaimer here. If you think your life can be 100% all the fabulous deliciousness of things you love, think again. Life is 50-50 and not always in equal parts. Sometimes it’s 90-10, like those moments where you have a mad deadline or an event that you have no control over. This is about creating space for more of the love stuff, and the first way to do that is by ditching stuff, very technical term there.

I’m guessing you can see lots of time that you’ve wasted, and probably some money too. If something is costing you money and costing you time, that stuff’s got to go. Get rid of it. That is the king of ditch it, baby. You do not want that stuff in your life at all. And that’s the thing, it’s the stuff we waste our life on, and so much of it’s ego based.

Then there’s procrastination, fear of success, lack of systems, loss of control, failure to plan, inability to just be, and that’s only naming a few. We don’t want to actually do what we should be doing at that time, so we fill our time with stuff. It’s like collecting notches on a bedhead. See how much I did. Come on, admit it. You’ve run late to a meeting because you were laughing at random TikToks, then you blamed the traffic when you simply didn’t want to be at the meeting because you ironically thought it would be a waste of time. Don’t get carried away now, you can’t just look at everything you wasted time or money on and get rid of it all. As I’ve said before, sometimes we simply got to do some stuff. But there will be some things in there that you can get rid of, I can’t click, pretty quickly.

If you don’t like Instagram but you think you need to be on it because everyone is, gone-ski, you don’t. If you wasted money on Uber Eats meals this week that you didn’t even like, delete the app. Go online and try a meal prep delivery company. Sure, making the meals yourself will take some time, but it’ll save you money, be better for you, and who knows, cooking may soon go on the love it pile. You may want to throw newsletter subscriptions, social media, television out, straight away. I’m cheering you if you do. But if you get some true relaxation, laughter, or education, for example, from them, maybe it’s not about getting rid of them at all. Maybe it’s about being more selective with the time it takes. Remember this is about creating time for you to do whatever with, not about finding time for you to go back to being a doing machine. No, I’m not ditching making school lunch.

The next D is delegation. Hang on, Sam, delegation is something only people in business do. I call (censored). It’s been said many times. Delegation is not a dirty word. It’s not even four letters. Delegation is available to all of us in some form. Back to those lunches. I could delegate that to Elodie, but no, I delegate a couple of dinners a week to her list. A cleaner is a delegation, and it’s one of the most freeing, bestest, yeah, I know it’s not a word, uses of your money so far. Your kids or partner will not remember how well you cleaned the stove top, but they will remember the conversations around the table, so make time for that. In business, it might be letting go of the bookkeeping that you do, just because you can. Within your family, delegate the hell out of things like dishes, pet walking, et cetera, to other members of the family. You’ve all live together. You’ve all got to contribute.

And this may seem like a bonkers one, but I can’t stand online grocery shopping. Clothes are another matter. So, after I’ve done some meal planning or have a party coming up, I’ll do the basic list and delegate the actual going online to Kohl’s, or Woolworths, or Harris Farm, wherever it is to order it, to someone else. Those sites suck me in like a vortex. The next thing I’m randomly scrolling the 563 weekly specials going, “I need that.” No, thanks. I can hear those thoughts rumbling in your minds, like a hungry hippo tummy, “But Sam, I can’t afford to delegate anything.” Stop. Remember that bit about costing time or money, and if you loved it or loathed it?

Say you don’t like writing things, and part of your job is wordy proposals, I love writing these scripts by the way, so it takes you twice as long as you think it will. You grimace with every word and afterwards you think the job you did was subpar. Try someone out on Fiverr or Upwork with a simple writing task. It’ll be so much more cost effective than you think or look at some of the amazing AI that’s available online to help with writing. Even if it gives you an outline that you then need to flesh out, it’ll save you time and brain capacity, and if you can spend that time doing something else, maybe you’ll even make money. Woo-hoo. What a win.

Let me do a quick rundown on how to delegate. You know me, I love a good acronym. D is define the task. What is it exactly that you want and need them to do? E, establish a timeline. When it’s finished is not a timeline, people. L, liaise with the individual or the team. That means actually telling your partner that you’ve delegated the gardening to them, not assuming they’ll do it because you mentioned one night over dinner that you didn’t want to do it anymore. We’ve all done that by the way. E, education and equipment. Remember those dinners I mentioned? Elodie started doing this because I provided her with a meal subscription service. She was educated and given the equipment with every delivery and now she loves to cook.

G, give them responsibility. Always double-checking every email your VA sends out is a waste of everybody’s time and will no doubt cause issues in the working relationship. So, I don’t mean that. A, agree on checkpoints and adjust if necessary. Don’t go all upward and downward workplace assessment for everything. But yeah, have checkpoints and adjust. Checking they walked the dog and realizing you need to move the expected time to before school would probably be in this category, because they’re tired after school. T, take time for communication and support. Don’t delegate and run. Be there to support whomever in whatever they are doing for you. Yep. That’s a good use of time. E, again, evaluation for everyone. You might realize you actually want to keep booking all your travel arrangements for work. That’s okay. They might realize they don’t have the skills necessary or it could be something that doesn’t need to be done.

Some quick homework for the week, and no, you don’t need to submit it. I’d love it if you posted three things that you’re going to delegate this week on social media and tag me @samanthaleith, so I can go, “Woo,” from the sidelines. All of this has reminded me that I really need to get into delegating cleaning up my Dropbox. Oh, my god. I’ve been avoiding it forever. Anyone want to do it?

Thank you so very much for spending your very precious time watching this week’s episode of the Samantha Leith Show. Now, don’t forget to head on over to the interwebs samanthaleith.com/freebies to get any of the worksheets that I mentioned. Now, you probably know many people that could do with a little extra help with their time, so do them a favor and share this episode. And if you tag me, I’m going to encourage you on the journey. Till next time, remember you have exactly what it takes to be extraordinary.

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Produced by Rebecca Saunders and Pyrmont Studios

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Manic Monday
Songwriters: Prince Rogers Nelson
© Npg Publishing

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Produced by Samantha Leith / Michael Tan
Vocals by Samantha Leith

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