Become lazier — and have people thank you for it!
True story: Someone thanked me today for showing them how to do what I was doing for them.
I have a specialized role at work. It involves moving files from one system to another.
The project needs people who can do this, and I raised my hand at one point.
I'm one of two people on our project with this role, so everything gets routed through us.
It's not hard work, but it does take time away from my primary tasking when people need it done.
What I concocted won't eliminate this task, but it will reduce it …
I missed my first opportunity to offload the task
As it turns out, not all kinds of files need me to get involved to transfer them.
For those that don't need me, the team can do it themselves.
One request a couple of weeks ago let me trial-run the process.
It worked, and the other team member should have been able to do everything I did.
I didn't miss the second time, though.
Today, I got another request from another team member that was similar.
I worked the exact process again, and it worked.
But this time, I wrote down what I did, and put it in a Confluence document.
(Confluence is what we use at work for our project's knowledge management.)
I also inserted a link to this new document in our procedures so that people would check their files going forward.
When I told the team member that her file was transferred, I said this:
File transferred. You actually didn't need me to do it. Here's how you can do it next time >>> (link to document)
Lazy mission accomplished.
She responded: “Ok great! Thanks for writing this down!!”
This is a whole class of transfer requests I won't have to deal with.
And she sounds happy about doing it herself!
Mission accomplished.
How have you made your life easier by delegating?
Let's chat about it in the comments!
If you look for ways to work smarter, then consider giving me a follow or subscribing to my stories!