You sit down at your desk, ready to work on the big picture. Today is the day you finally tackle that growth strategy. But then—a client email needs a response. Your website glitches. You realize you haven’t posted on social media this week. Suddenly, three hours vanish, and you’re back in reaction mode, playing whack-a-mole with your business.
You tell yourself, “I have to do this—it’s faster if I just handle it myself.”
But every task you hold onto is costing more than just your time. Every admin task you complete is time stolen from strategic growth. Every decision you make adds to the mental exhaustion that keeps you from thinking clearly about what comes next. Every delay in delegating or automating means months—or years—of missed potential.
Maybe you tell yourself delegating takes too long. Or that no one else can do it quite like you. You justify it in small ways—”I’ll wait until things slow down,” or “I’ll train someone when I have more time.” But deep down, you know the truth: things never slow down unless you make them.
Think back to the moment you realized that doing everything yourself wasn’t a sign of efficiency—it was the thing holding you back. Maybe you’ve already started tracking your time, like we explored in You’re Working Too Hard to See the Hidden Time-Wasters in Your Day, and began seeing the small distractions that drain your energy. Now, it’s time to take that awareness deeper—to not just see where your time goes, but to reclaim it by letting go of the tasks that keep you small.
The real shift isn’t just outsourcing work. It’s understanding where your highest value lies.
Think about what your time is worth. Take your annual revenue goal, divide it by 2,000 hours (a full-time work year), and ask yourself—if a task is below that value, should you really be the one doing it?
Let go of what’s keeping you stuck. Automate something small. Delegate one task today. Even the tiniest shift—handing off one recurring task—can spark momentum. You don’t need to change everything at once. Just stop holding it all.
