If you’ve ever bought a home with a huge lawn and a lot of manicured landscaping, you learn how much effort it takes for maintenance. Suddenly, a big chunk of every weekend is consumed by going back and forth with the lawnmower, grooming shrubs with clippers, and attacking weeds.

As beautiful as the result may be, it is ultimately lost time. Your free time is so valuable that there are literally hundreds of more enjoyable and/or more important things you could do. Pretty quickly, you are calling a landscaping company to take care of your property for you. It’s a great moment of decisive delegation that you’ll never regret.

When to let go

In every area of your life, professionally and personally, there are opportunities to delegate that can make big improvements to the quality of life. If you declutter your time from the burden and busywork of tasks that can be done by others, you feel a cleansing and streamlining of daily living. Distractions and stress are reduced.

Here are four natural opportunities to consider delegation:

• Things you don’t enjoy: The “maintenance” tasks associated with many things, such as homes, vehicles, and the practice, are frequently on our least-liked list. Not only do they take up time, but they drain our energy. 
• Things that require specialized knowledge or skills: There are some things that, even if we might enjoy it, we don’t have the knowledge or skills to do it at the right level. Wouldn’t hire myself to renovate a kitchen or write a legal agreement, and I definitely want a pro preparing my taxes.
• Things that dilute the value of your time: This is a big one, especially in the practice. Most RCTs can be completed in under an hour of actual treatment time, but most endodontists only complete 3 to 4 cases per day. It’s a sure sign they are diluting their time with too many other tasks. 
• Things that are trainable: Some of the easiest things to delegate are those that can be trained and repeated consistently once trained. Teaching your kid how to mow the lawn when they’re old enough is a good example.

When to hold on

The flipside of delegation is what you retain in your tasks and activities. Here are some guidelines to consider:

• Things that are mission critical: Enjoyable or not, some things you have to do. Only you, because you have to ensure it is done right. For example, you should always be the person signing business checks, and you should always interview and do reference checks on anyone that you hire.
• Things that are enjoyable: Hobbies and pastimes are things we love to do. You might be one of those people who absolutely love to work in the garden. Keep the things that make life fun!
• Things that are meaningful: Some things we do are not for family, business, or enjoyment, but they add meaning to our lives. We might feel a responsibility to our community, faith, or social causes, and we devote our time to feel a sense of contribution or personal growth.
• Things that are rewarding: By rewarding, I mean tangibly rewarding, as in the things that drive our income, wealth, and lifestyle. For most endodontists, that means being a practicing endodontist and becoming more productive and successful in their business. 

Practice delegation rule

While preferences and priorities can influence many delegation decisions in your personal life, in the practice, there is a pretty clear line. Your reference point for delegation should be: What is the doctor legally required to do? 

With that frame of reference, you can focus on what training and coaching needs to be done with the team. For everything that you are doing as part of patient appointments that can be legally performed by a team member instead, you should be training your team to that level and then delegate (aside from a limited number of personal preferences).

That process will completely change your perception of how you should be spending your time in the practice. It will open up your schedule to allow for growth. Most importantly, idle unproductive time will not be able to hide in the clutter of activities you did in the past. You will have time and energy to focus on marketing and growth so your daily cases number begin to rise. 

Adding just two cases per day to your schedule through more efficiency as a result of delegation will feel effortless. In fact, once you have optimized your time, doing more cases each day will actually feel easier. And the economic benefits are significant. Two more cases per day can result in a $400,000 to $500,000 increase in annual profit. That’s a very sweet and stress-free life!