Anytime you do uninspiring, lower priority actions, you will tend to procrastinate, hesitate, and frustrate. Anytime you do inspiring, high priority actions, you will tend to be disciplined, reliable, and focused.

Consciously, or unconsciously, you live hour by hour by a set of priorities or values, things that are most to least important to you. This set or hierarchy of values is fingerprint-specific and unique.

Whenever you are doing and achieving something that is truly highest on your list of values - in other words, the most important and meaningful thing that spontaneously inspires you – your self-worth goes up, your confidence goes up and your belief in yourself goes up. You automatically expand your space and time horizons, wake up your natural born leader, and give yourself permission to go and pursue something greater.

The subcortical thalamic region of your brain filters your sensory perceptions and reality most affectively, helps you make quick decisions most efficiently and helps you take actions most effectively whenever you are doing the resultant actions that are highest on your list of values.

However, as you go down your list of values into lower values on your hierarchy, ones that are less valuable, fulfilling or meaningful to you, you are likely to be less engaged, enthused, inspired and present.

Think of a young boy who loves playing video games. He is likely to play all day and forget time. However, when asked to do certain household chores or homework, he might tend to procrastinate, hesitate, and frustrates.

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If you don't fill your day with high priority ACTIONS that inspire you, your day will fill up with low priority distractions that won't.

In other words, if you do not fill your day with high priority actions that are meaningful and inspiring and productive, that serve people, and that you become remunerated for, you are not likely to have the income to delegate lower priority tasks and your day will tend to become consumed by low priority actions.

When this happens, you are most likely to self-depreciate or devalue yourself, lower your confidence in yourself, and offload decisions to others. As a result, you might end up becoming more of a follower instead of a leader.

If you do not delegate lower priority actions, you are not likely to liberate yourself from the things that weigh you down, that you aren't inspired to do, and that ultimately distract you. This is when you will tend to procrastinate, hesitate, and frustrate and therefore become less efficient, effective, and profoundly impactful.

Delegation is an essential component in self-actualization and in living an inspired life.

Through delegation, I can fill my day with research, writing, and teaching – in fact, mostly with teaching. My highest priority or value is teaching and my second is research or learning and writing. So, if I'm not teaching, I'm learning. If I'm not learning, I'm teaching or writing.

When I fill my day with teaching, learning and writing and delegate the rest, I am liberated from an uninspired life. As a result, I end up making more income, reaching more people, having more impact and living a more inspired life.

If the person you delegate to does not have the delegated responsibilities high on their list of values, they are likely to need micromanagement.

When you screen people to delegate to, look at finding out what their highest values are. If the specific duties, responsibilities or actions that you want to delegate do not help them fulfill their highest values, they will tend not to want to do them. In that way, you might find that you need to micromanage and oversee them, thereby distracting yourself from your highest priority action or something more valuable.

It is therefore wise and liberating to find somebody who would love to do the delegated actions more effectively and efficiently than you do. It really is that simple, albeit not always easy to find the individual.

TIP: Use the FREE Value Determination Process on my website to determine the values of people you consider hiring and what they are committed to.

If you are not delegating, you are more likely to feel trapped and thereby lower your vitality and self-image.

Your self-image and self-worth are proportionate to how liberated you are from low priority things. It really is that simple.

Let me give you an example of delegation so you can see how this can play out.

When I was 27 years old, I had opened up my practice and hired just the one assistant. About six weeks in, I realized that I was doing everything in my practice from picking up the trash and ordering supplies to all the administrative work. I realized that instead of doing what I had studied to do and what inspired me, I had allowed myself to become bogged down with other essential but less productive tasks

When visiting a local bookstore, I came across the book, The Time Trap: The Classic Book On Time Management by Alec MacKenzie. The more chapters I read, the more I realized that I was in my own way and that I was going to limit my growth if I didn't delegate.

I also realized that one of the reasons why I wasn't delegating was because my perception was that by the time I delegated the task, I could have done it myself – maybe even better than they would do it.

So, I was trapped doing a $10 to $20 an hour job back when I was capable of earning a $1000 an hour or more if I was doing what I really was specially trained for and skilled at. It suddenly dawned on me that I was devaluing myself and diluting my business potential because I was diluting what I was doing per hour and not delegating tasks.

I then went on to create a chart with six equal columns:

Column #1: What do you do in a day?

I wrote down every single action that I did in a day, at home and at work, from the time I got up to the time I went to bed. I did this over a three-month period because some days were different from others. I included every specific action from answering the telephone and writing a letter to seeing a patient or taking out the trash.

Column #2: What income does it produce per hour?

I then wrote done how much income each action generated. I quickly realized that each hour was being consumed by a variable amount of income generators, and that a good 20 - 30% of what I was doing was generating zero income. In other words, I was very busy doing actions that weren’t producing income nor serving patients to the fullest.

I also noticed that when I was doing a low priority action, it was generally uninspiring to me. I felt bogged down, frustrated and devalued.

Column #3: How much meaning does it have on a 1 - 10 scale?

I then worked through the list and rated each action according to how much meaning it had for me or how inspiring I found it - 10 being so inspiring that I couldn't wait to get up and do it, and 1 or 0 being something I really didn’t want to do or something I felt I was doing by duty instead of design.

It was while working on this column that I noticed that many of the actions that were most productive and that produced the most income were also the ones that were the most inspiring and that I couldn’t wait to do.

Column #4: How much would it cost me to delegate that to somebody and find a specialist to do it to the same quality and quantity that I could do it?

I included everything in this list - not just salaries but also the use of space, training, insurance, parking, equipment, computer, telephone, and every other relevant cost I could think of. My aim was to know how much it would cost to delegate someone to do that low value or low priority task for me while also completing it to the same standard or higher that I would.

I then looked at where the biggest spreads were between what was produced per hour versus what it cost per hour if I delegated that task so I could do what was most meaningful to me while still making a profit.

Column #5: How much time do I spend on each of these actions?

This required me to write down the exact amount of time, to the minute, that I spent on each task per day.

Column #6: Which tasks can be seen as priorities – from the most meaningful and productive to the least?

This process helped me solidify my view that I am a man on a mission with a message. I saw clearly how sharing that message was the most productive thing I could be doing, whether on radio or television, and when talking and speaking.

The second most important thing to me was clinically working with highest priority and impactful clients.

Way down the list were tasks such as paperwork, ordering supplies and doing the cleaning.

I then began hiring people.  Over an 18-month period, I went from a single office with one assistant and myself to five doctors and twelve staff members with a 5,000 square foot office instead of on that was less than a thousand square foot.

You know what? My income increased tenfold.

This was significant because I realized that unless I delegated, I was in my own way.

If you really care about other people and yourself, it is wise and meaningful to want to fulfill their highest values while also fulfilling yours.  

Fulfilling yours brings meaning. Fulfilling theirs brings increased productivity.

There is no such thing as true time management.

Getting your most important and inspiring actions done each day is not about managing your time. It is about choosing to focus your attention and intention wisely during the precious time you have and delegating the rest.

POINTS TO PONDER:

• Delegation liberates you from the bondage of weighing yourself down by doing things that are uninspiring, living by duty, living by what you think you should do and ought to do, because you haven't given yourself permission to go and do something that is deeply meaningful and more inspiring and productive.
• It is wise to ask yourself, “What is the highest priority action I can do today to serve the greatest number of people in the most efficient and effective way that allows me to be inspired and to help inspire other people? If you do that, you are likely to move in the direction of an inspired life and delegating your way into liberty.
• Delegation doesn't cost if it is done properly, but it costs if it is not. So, make use of the FREE Demartini Value Determination process on our website to assist you in hiring the right people for the job. That way, you can get on with doing what you love doing and what you're effective at, while they become great at what they do.

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-> If you're ready to determine your own unique hierarchy of values, you can do so for FREE on our website. Just click HERE to access the online 13 step Demartini Value Determination process to gain clarity on what is most important to you. Determining your highest values is the foundation of all human empowerment and fulfilment.

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