Use the Delete, Delegate & Do filter to find freedom and focus.

The French have given us champagne, Chanel, croissants… and Fabrice.

Last year I had the privilege of attending a small business group discussion with Fabrice Beillard– Strategy Coach to multiple 10 figure businesses. Fabrice has a thick accent and speaks as fast as I do- this means twice as much wisdom per unit of time!

I want to share with you his tool that changed the way I assess tasks and has given me more:

• Free time

• Fun

• Focus

How Do You Classify Your Tasks?

In his book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”  Stephen Covey shows us the way to categorise tasks dependant on their urgency and importance.

We simply create a list our tasks and then place them into the box that best fits best.

I first read this back in 1998 when I was School Captain and felt the need to get organised.  It helped me prioritise study, sport and prefect commitments- largely so I could spend more time with my girlfriend at the time! The idea is to get the important things done first.

Fabrice presented a slight spin on this framework by removing urgency to accommodate our values and mission. Introducing Delete. Delegate. Do.

What Is Your Time Worth?

There is one thing that nobody can create…. it’s TIME.

Once a minute is gone, we are never getting it back.

By choosing to spend time doing something, we are by default, choosing not to do something else. There is an opportunity cost to every minute.

As practitioners, we trade time for money – unless we have a way to leverage the time and the efforts of other people or technology.

We can always make more money but we will never get a second chance to watch our kids’ first piano recital or celebrate Mum’s 60th Birthday.

What is your time worth? Is it $100 an hour? $500 an hour? $1,000 an hour? Or $10,000 an hour?

When we know how much WE value our time we can then take steps to figure out what tasks WE should be doing. We can then focus on doing only these tasks.

We should avoid doing tasks we don’t enjoy when the cost of getting that task done is significantly less than our time value.

The Delete, Delegate, Do Filter

I’m always surprised when I ask friends, many of them surgeons, what they have planned for the weekend. Often the disgruntled reply is “mow the lawn”, “weed the garden” or “vacuum the house”.

My  followup question is “Do you enjoy it?”

The answer is often along the lines of “Are you crazy?”

But then they look at me like I’m crazy when I suggest the idea of getting a gardener or cleaner.

Hmmm, who is the crazy one?

As busy practitioners, we’re always juggling multiple balls- typically these are clinical, business and home/ social.

For each of these elements there are tasks that we have to DO but there are many we can ELIMINATE or OUTSOURCE.

Fabrice got us to get a piece of paper and divide it into 3 columns. You could do a similar thing in Evernote or on a Spreadsheet.

The columns were titled Delete, Delegate and Do.

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First we identify and place our regular weekly tasks into these columns

Then we take look CRITICALLY at the Delegate and Do lists to see how many should actually move to the left side.

Delete

Tasks that are not important, not necessary and not enjoyable. Often these are time or attention leeches that give us little in return.

Delegate

Tasks we don’t need to do ourselves. Often we don’t enjoy doing them either.

I found this is the hardest list. As medics many of us have a little OCD- no one can do a job as good as we can. Or we have trust issues and can’t fathom the thought of an outsider having a key and entering our home.

We need to realise that the values that are good for a successful professional career (eg working long hours, 7 days a week) may be in direct conflict with a healthy family life or our own happiness.

Do

The tasks only WE can do. Ideally this list should have contain those things that bring us the most joy.

Only I can be a father to my children, a husband, son, brother and friend. Only I can take my Mandarin lessons, go for my morning run and meditate.

Here are a few things from my list:

Delete

• Watching unnecessary programs- weekend Netflix binges used to eat up hours. Now I limit my viewing to programs that I really enjoy- Billions, Suits (now over), Game of Thrones and Brooklyn Nine-Nine (I have a slight man-crush on Andy Samberg)

• Facebook- stopping my thumb reapeatedly tapping the little blue square has left me engaged at meal times and reduced FOMO.

• Checking the news app- ending habitual news checking has made me much happier.  Does good stuff actually happen in our world?

• Writing a monthly patient email- after analysing the open rates, bookings and effort required, we stopped creating an email with no negative effects and spend those hours elsewhere.

Delegate

• Social media- handed the reins of our Facebook page to one of my Admin team. Outsourced my Instagram account to a virtual assistant in the Philippines. They do a better job than I ever did and get more engagement and followers than I could achieve.

• Gardener- trims the hedges every quarter

• Lawn mower- comes round and mows the lawn every 3 weeks. No jungle, no petrol, no lawnmower servicing headaches.  

• Cleaner- they have the keys and alarm code and every Wednesday the bathrooms sparkle. Having worked in my parents take away shop from a young age, I’m happy to avoid vacuuming and mopping at any cost.

• Car wash- $20 gets my car cleaned while I take my kids out for lunch or work on my websites

Do

• Treat patients will attention and respect

• Be present with my family, undistracted by work or electronics

• Exercise daily

• Regular conversations with my practice managers and business partners

• Create useful content for this blog

Free Up Bandwidth to Focus

Like a computer that’s running too many programs runs slowly (and often eventually crashes) our minds can only deal with a small number of tasks at any one time.

By knowing the tasks only we can DO we can then focus on doing them to our best ability.

Have you heard about decision fatigue and ego depletion?

Ego depletion: the idea that self-control or willpower draws upon a limited pool of mental resources that can be used up.

Decision fatigue: the deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision making.  The reason Steve Jobs always wore black skivvy and jeans.

With fewer tasks bouncing around our head we can preserve energy to achieve peak performance doing the things that matter- whether that’s operating on a complex case or choosing a flavour of ice cream to share with our kids.

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So what tasks are on your three lists?  Are there things you should be deleting or delegating?

Made your list? I’d love to see what’s on yours- send me an email andrew@epichealthcare.co

Cheers Fabrice for sharing this simple yet effective task filtering tool! Hope you guys find it useful too.

‘Til next time.

Live Life. Laugh Lots. Be Epic.

Andrew