Making a Habit of Delegating

If delegating more is your goal, then you can jumpstart this practice with this habit-forming hack.

Our brains are wildly complex and infinitely fascinating, yet somehow easily manipulated and quite malleable. Always striving for efficiency, our brain loves repetitive actions. The more you do something, the easier it gets and the less you have to think about it. Take driving for example. When you first started driving, it required a tremendous amount of thought and awareness. But once you got used to being behind the wheel, you quickly found that you could turn, stop, merge, and navigate while you ate, carried on a conversation, or drifted off into a delightful daydream. Once we show our brains this is something we’ll be doing a lot of, our brains back us up with some extra support. And delegation is no different.

The hardest part of delegation is getting started. When you’re used to doing everything yourself you haven’t shown your brain that it should be selecting out the tasks to let go of. Becoming a master delegator takes practice but the more you do it the easier it gets. When you make it a habit, your brain finds helpful shortcuts so the process can flow with ease.

Any habit can be created or transformed in just a few steps using the method outlined in Charles Hudigg’s book, The Power of Habit.

CUE > ROUTINE > REWARD

It all starts with finding your cue. Pairing delegation into an existing habit is the easiest way to bring it into your life on a regular basis. Whether it’s checking your email, going through your to-do list for the day, or setting your intentions, using this practice as the cue to identifying what to delegate will help lock it in place.

For many, the simple practice of an accountability check-in helps habituate the action of delegating. Knowing you’ll be identifying tasks to let go of triggers your brain to go into motion. You know it’s coming so you start to prepare for the download. One of the benefits of leveraging our check-in calls at Pursuit, is we help identify what on your list can be delegated.

Whatever jumpstarts the action of delegation works as a cue. The routine is identifying and letting go of the tasks that can be done by someone else. The reward, well, that’s up to you.

The feeling of relief that comes with delegating a task, particularly a daunting or stressful task may be rewarding enough. But you’re also welcome to come up with a more alluring reward if you think it will help. Like, giving yourself 10 minutes to walk outside or play with your dog. You just earned yourself those 10 minutes and then some by tasking someone else with the task you were going to do.

As you form the loop: CUE > ROUTINE > REWARD, the entire process will begin to flow with ease. As soon as the cue appears you’ll be automated into delegation mode. Leading you straight to your reward. You’ll find more tasks to let go of and find more ways to treat yourself for a job well done. It’s a win-win and it feels great.