TIP 18
DON’T BE AFRAID TO HIRE HELP
The difference between the rich and poor is that the poor do everything with their own hands and the rich hire hands to do things.
Don’t be afraid to hire help. This may also mean that you need to delegate some tasks. Men tend to be better at delegating than women and they don’t usually feel guilty about hiring a housekeeper, a personal trainer, or an administrative assistant. In contrast, women tend to think they have to do it all.
One of my clients was in a complete dither because she had to give a 10-minute presentation on her lunch hour, attend a sales presentation of new computer software, and take the cat to the vet. She had scheduled all this on her lunch hour! This is the wonder woman mentality at work. I asked her why she was taking the cat to the vet—was it dreadfully ill? No, her husband couldn’t, and the cat needed his annual shots. Mind you, this client is an extremely bright woman with an income in the top 10 percent of the country. She works full time, is starting a business on the side, and has a husband and two small children. She feels like she has to do it all—star employee, wife, mother, housekeeper, businesswoman, and gourmet chef. She’s been doing it all, but at the tremendous cost to herself of added stress, frequent colds, exhaustion, and frustration.
I asked her to arrange her schedule to work for her and to eliminate 10 things she thought she had to do that week. She rescheduled the vet appointment and moved the sales presentation to another day. Suddenly her life was a whole lot easier. In order to do something well, you need the time and the space to do it. Hire the housekeeper, hire the babysitter, send out the laundry. Get the support systems in place that will free you up to do what you really love to do. Hire a tutor instead of trying to learn a new software program on your own. Yes, there is an initial expense, but in the long run, the time and frustration saved will be well worth it.
Any time you catch yourself struggling and frustrated, ask yourself how you could delegate the task or get the training to make it effortless. For every job you don’t like or aren’t very good at, there is an expert who loves to do it and does it well. My bookkeeper loves to balance the accounts, and she does it with a certain zeal. I can’t say I feel the same way about it. It makes sense to let the person who loves to do taxes do your taxes. This in turn gives you the time and energy to do what you love to do.