If you look at the glossy covers of the magazines at the checkout stand, it’s easy enough to see the Hollywood supermoms–Angelina Jolie, Halle Berry, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Garner–looking svelte, gorgeous, and, most discouraging of all, effortless. Realistically, though, how many of them do you think could stay trim without a personal chef to prepare their under-1000 calorie diet and without their buff fitness coach? How much work do you think they’d get done without their half a dozen nannies? Plus, how awful do you think their outfits would be if their stylist wasn’t there to check any missteps?
Don’t look at these women and woe the state of your own meager bank account! I understand your quandary–After all, wouldn’t we all like to have Bob Green on speed-dial and Ken Paves waiting in the wings to style our hair? There is a lesson to be learned from these Hollywood moms, though: When you have too much to do, and it is your job to appear naturally confident and in control, you MUST delegate, delegate, delegate.
So how does this apply to us busy people living a ‘normal’ life? If you need help, admit it first, and then start with your family. If your kids are too little to be of help, do you have a mother, an in-law, or a sibling with any extra time to help you defray your overwhelming list of tasks? Don’t be afraid to ask–there may be a chance to bond over the activity, or an opportunity for you to return the favor when you’re less stymied. If the whole family is old enough to help, it’s time to divide tasks and conquer. Make a chore chart and assign each family member a task to carry out for the week. If your kids drag their feet, give them incentive–a movie night at the end of the week or a weekend dessert fest. My kids earn ‘Bear Points’ for doing chores. They get to be spent at ‘Build-A-Bear Workshop’ when they’ve earned enough points to go shopping.
If you’re still buried in an insurmountable number of tasks, make a list of these and take a look at it. Which of those tasks do you intensely dislike? Is it weeding the garden or scrubbing toilets? If you’re a writer, is it editing that you despise? Highly successful people will universally admit that they rarely perform the tasks they abhor most. They’re smart enough to be where they are, after all, and smart people hire someone to do the dirty work for them. Think you can’t afford to hire a housekeeper or gardener? Calculate how much time it would take to complete the job yourself. If you think of your time as money, how much does it cost you to do it yourself? (For example, if you think of your time as worth, say, $20 per hour, and it took you 5 hours to complete the gardening, that’s $100!) Surely you could hire the job out for less than that. Plus, it’s worth the preservation of your state of mind to let someone else lighten your load. You’ll be more productive doing what you enjoy most and the peace of mind in that is truly immeasurable.
Where Has The Time Gone? Blog 