Let someone else do it

Hi writers and fellow overwhelmed overachievers! Just a quick blog post today to remind you that when overwhelm threatens, remember that one of your best defensive responses is delegation.

I know delegation itself can feel overwhelming! So unfortunate. But keep trying. Coach yourself through any resistance you feel with a reminder of how nice it will be on the other side: you've gotten way more crossed off your to-do list than you could have done solo.

Let me give you an example of why this is on my mind.

A couple weeks ago I went to a sweet-sixteen party where the theme was Pink Disco! So of course I went all-out on glam, including painting my nails bubble-gum pink with two coats of rose-gold glitter on top.

I never regretted my decision, even when the pink polish stained my natural nails underneath and the glitter was one of the hardest thing I have ever tried to get off my nails. The acetone wouldn't dissolve the glitter (in hindsight, why did I think it would?) so I mostly ended up trying to dissolve the polish under the pieces of glitter and then chipping them off. They came off in the end. But what a piece of work.

I absolutely did not want to do that again myself with my toenails. But I delayed making a pedicure appointment for a whole week because I felt terrible about how much work it would be for my tech to get the glitter off.

When I was finally in the chair I apologized profusely but to my suprise she waved her hand and said it would be easy and she had taken off waaaay worse.

Huh?

While I was still taking that in she grabbed her coarse buffing sponge and just a couple minutes later it was bye-bye glitter! Wow.

It hit me that this is such a great example of delegation, how somebody else can do a way better job than I can on things like this, and in a lot less time as well. Plus, it was nice to get a beautiful treatment for my feet and relax for an hour and not work. Win/win/win.

Now go delegate something!

Image credit: Photo by Klara Kulikova on Unsplash