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Delegating work to other people requires some finesse, if you want to do it right and still allow it to be fun, especially if you have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). And there are a lot of things you can do that just don’t quite work right when you’re trying to work with delegation and have ADD, too.
Probably, the number one objection from ADD people is, “I can’t afford it. I don’t have that much cash flow coming in. When I make more money, then I’ll learn how to delegate.”
The fact is that if you are going to be paying out of pocket for all the things you’re trying to delegate, that would be true. But, as an entrepreneur (ADD or not), one of the things you should do, especially when starting a new project, is figure out how you can have the least up-front expense. Decide what you already have and make that work. You may not realize it, but you are already delegating at least half of your life to other people!
When you start delegating intentionally, that’s when everything really changes. People with ADD are extremely capable and extremely good at adapting to situations and generally very intelligent. Consequently, ADD people know that they themselves have the ability to accomplish all these different things they’re delegating to other people.
Most people with ADD love the challenge of developing new skills, and would rather get excited by the new learning process. This happens on a conceptual level, right before delegation occurs, and consequently, people with ADD find it hard to delegate.
People with ADD just love to learn!
One of the traps ADD people fall into is when something sounds exciting, they can just go read a book about it and learn about it. Because of their voracious appetite for learning new information.
However, there’s a flip side to this. Sometimes, if you have ADD, when you have a skill that you should be outsourcing, you keep doing it anyway because you can do it a lot faster yourself.
For instance, say you need to get a spreadsheet imported into a database and have a high tech background. Maybe you can do that job in 30 seconds. Yet, in the process of being a leader, you have delegated too much and nobody knows how perform the task. Teach your delegates: “Here’s how you do it,” and you're on your way. So, when it’s something that you already have knowledge about and can do, then why not do it and in the process, teach others to do it, too?
But, there is a third thing about ADD, and this is a big one--the issue of control. People with ADD don’t really want to give it up. They have this perception that in order to delegate, they’re giving up control. But, you really can delegate and not give it up, not feel like you’re out of it. And you'll still be able to sit down and do things you want to be doing.
Once you get good at delegating and start practicing it more frequently, you'll see that you're suddenly making more progress, more quickly. In fact, you'll gain an exponential amount of control over everything that happens in your business because through delegation, things move forward much faster. You actually get more control over everything that’s happening instead of less. It’s a little deceptive at first, but it turns out that way every single time.
So, remember: Even when you're delegating, you’re never giving up control. When you have ADD, it’s just in your nature to want to hang on. So, that’s the key--focus on gaining freedom, instead of giving in to the resistance of “What if?”.
By: Tellman Knudson And Stephanie Frank -
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