The difficulty in delegating stuff.

The critical skill of an entrepreneur is the art of delegation. They can get other people to believe in their vision and do everything that’s needed to fulfil the vision.

The magic of being a freelancer on the other hand, is to do stuff on your own. Especially the stuff that nobody else can do but you. Bob Dylan can’t delegate singing songs to someone else, nor can AR Rahman delegate music direction.

But as a professional freelancer, we need to learn to delegate. It may not be our top skill or even the critical skill, but in order to be the best in the world, we need to delegate all the tasks in which we don’t seek to be the best in the world.

But, for us, delegation is scary. We tend to hold onto tasks that won’t have much difference whether it is done by us or anyone else.

I think this is because we are not measuring our time; in other words, our time is not explicit. Money is, but not time. So, when we spend hours doing the meaningless tasks, it doesn’t count, but when we spend a few bucks to save those hours, that we can see.

I think, the way we can make delegation easier for ourselves is by making the time explicit. By knowing where it goes, and understanding the implications of losing it. If we do that, we will be able to move from $1/hour tasks to $1000/hour tasks.