Generally, it is seen that the entrepreneurs get caught up on the day-to-day running of the business. They don’t spend enough time laying down a vision for the company, planning to achieve big goals, and thinking about the future. If you’re too caught up and attached to the actions and tasks that are required to run the business, then you’re probably not looking at the bigger picture.

Today, I bring in front of you an exercise which will help you build a system. A system which you can help you expand your business to great heights. A lot of entrepreneurs struggle with the task of letting go of the need to do things their way, letting go of the idea that nobody can do things better than you can. But this system will surely change your life.

Everyone you meet might tell you that you should work on your business, not inside your business. And saying this they leave, leaving you with absolutely no idea of how to exactly do that. So whenever I used to figure out how to exactly do it, I too ended up being stuck. But gradually I build a system which helped me break through and finally I found a way out.

In the initial stages of business, when you are only worried about expanding it, you are in the headspace that nobody knows your business better than you do. Am I right? Well of course I am, and this statement is justified too. I mean who better to know your business than you. But then one day, I ran into someone who explained to me that you can find somebody to do something 80 percent of what you can do and that’s good enough. For example, you can find an HR employee to help you with recruitment and salary management, it is not necessary for you to take charge of the whole process. And that employee might actually do the job better than you. So, by the next morning, this idea really hit me hard. I started with an exercise which helped me outsource and manage my time.

Today I want to share it with you. It’s a simple one but could make a huge difference. Let us start. I want you to bring a notepad and make two sections on a page. Do this by dividing the page into two halves by drawing a line in the middle. Next, make two headings: “Things you do in the office” and “things that you can delegate”.

Now write every single thing that you do throughout the day in the “things you do” section. Just brainstorm and think about each and every single thing you do in your office. You can put on basic things like opening up your email, returning phone calls, closing the deals, marketing, taking follow up from clients, networking so on and so forth. And I want you to go as detailed as you can.

When you build this list, this list is going to be extremely long. After you are done with it, look at each and everything that you have listed, and transfer those things to the right-hand side of the page that you can easily delegate.

Once you are done, you will have a clear idea of what all things you are doing, and how much time you can save by delegating the activities thus saving up your time for more important stuff. Now, of course, as an entrepreneur, you would want to focus your energy on things that contribute to the actual growth of your business. So what you do? The first thing you should do is to start delegating the tasks that don’t require your attention or the tasks which other specialists might do better than you.

This is the best way to help you know what you should stop doing. For example, you take follow-ups from the clients in your things you do list. But you can always hire a salesperson to do so. In this way, you can delegate a lot of your work which is not allowing you to concentrate on bigger things that need your attention and time.

With this exercise, you will know what you need to delegate or what you need to get rid off. This is the big step achieved as the things on the left side were causing you time, but they were not all contributing to the growth of the business.

Following this exercise slowly you will see that your left side of the ‘things you do’ is reducing thus freeing up your time to concentrate on the actual and important things which need your attention and which cannot be delegated. And this is exactly when the business gets fun. And where your business starts expanding and growing bigger and bigger.